SXSW 2011 – The Highlights

I have just returned from the most amazing and overwhelming two weeks of my life. The South by South West (SXSW) music, interactive and film festival was the most awesome experience I’ve ever had. I have a few blogs planned which I will post over the next couple of weeks about what I did and what I learned but I thought I’d start off with some of my favourite parts of the trip. There are so many and this isn’t a complete list because every single day was just that awesome.

Love Pod and #winning

The whole group of 14 I went with was fab. The names were based on our apartment groupings – #winning consisted of myself, Abs, Jordan, Matt, Ahmed, Damian and Hans; and Love Pod consisted of Lauren, Pon, Seb, Will, Richard, Stephen and Andrew. The group was big enough that we would usually have someone else who wanted to do the same thing as you but not too big that it would be an effort and a half to go anywhere. Thankyou so much to Lauren for organising the apartments for us – without you we would have been totally screwed.

Pulled Pork and Fish Tacos

In-jokes with Love Pod and #winning ftw.

Project Cashmore

Before SXSW started, my goal was to meet Pete Cashmore, the editor of Mashable because he’s just awesome and Mashable is one of my favourite websites. We soon discovered that Pete was going to be interviewing Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley (another of my fave websites) at one of the panels and one of my friends, Ahmed, told me I should ask Pete Cashmore for a hug. I really didn’t want to embarass myself in front of 3000 people in the audience, so he did it for me.

Project Cashmore was a complete success and hugging Dennis Crowley made it a billion times better. I don’t think I stopped smiling or giggling like a fan girl for about 24 hours after that.

Dens Night

Because of Ahmed’s question, he was awarded a massive Gap poster featuring both Dennis and Naveen Selvadurai – the cofounders of Foursquare. However when Mashable realised that Ahmed lived in Australia they offered to cut it up and post it, which Ahmed didn’t want. That night when a few of the guys went to the the Mashable party (I was at the Foursquare party) they decided to take the poster and Dennis Crowley’s Big Night Out was born. They spent the entire night taking photos and after getting home they developed an entire website and social media presence for the poster.

Check out the site here.

When I met up with them the next day we all worked together to post photos and updates and it soon got the attention of Dennis and he started to reblog and retweet some of our content which was really awesome.

Free Stuff

I learned my lesson for packing too much because the amount of free swag you can get at SXSW is ridiculous. Some of the free stuff I got included stickers, posters, books, tshirts (last count I had about 12), magazines, bags, water bottles, badges, sample products, USBs, food, drinks, alcohol, toys, CDs, socks… it was insane. And they were also big brands as well – Tumblr, Rovio, Youtube, Foursquare, Gowalla are just some of the brands I got free stuff from.

#fuckvevo Kanye West Concert

Vevo put on a concert on the last night of SXSWm which was headlined by Kanye West. There was a massive convoluted RSVP via phone scheme which was an absolute joke (hence #fuckvevo on Twitter) so Vevo tried to bandaid the solution by letting the first 1000 SXSW badge holders gain entry as well. There was absolute chaos at the line – a few of us lined up about 6 hours before doors were to open and a few hours later the line to get in stretched for at least a kilometre. The way Vevo handled it was ridiculously bad but somehow we got in at about 12:30am and watched Kanye West, Jay Z, Kid Cudi and a whole other pile of big names perform a 3 hour concert (Kanye performed for 90 minutes – so like a proper concert). It was an amazing vibe and was worth the wait.

Interesting Food

Texas has a lot of interesting food. I ate a scorpion in a lollipop.

The Social Media Obsession

America embraces social media so much more than Australia – I felt so at home there and in some cases I was the one not using social media as much as others! One night we even received a round of shots from the Foursquare Mayor of the bar we were at because he recognised us as the ‘Aussies’ from our check ins.The big players were the location based apps such as Gowalla (which was created in Austin, Texas) and Foursquare as well as Twitter which I think I saw nearly everyone use. It’s great that it’s so popular over because businesses then embrace it and make it more fun for everyone. Foursquare and Gowalla also released badges and items specifically for SXSW so it made me feel more special being able to get these limited edition items.

Meeting other Deloittians

Shout out to the other Deloittians we met at the Social Media Club House – it was great to be able to network with you and meet some of our American counterparts who were also into the web and social media. It’s good to know I work in an organisation that has social media and web ingrained into it all over the planet.

Meeting and seeing celebs

<namedropping>Apart from the Cashmore/Crowley hug, I met a whole pile of internet and music celebs including Guy Kawasaki, The Oatmeal, Josh Bernoff, Bill Jensen, The Gregory Brothers (Bed Intruder/Double Rainbow songs), Steve Krug, Art Vs Science, Washington as well as randomly spotting on the street celebs like Taylor Momsen, Donald Glover and Tim O’Reilly. And then there was the actual presentations with Perez Hilton, Yoko Ono, Clay Shirky plus hearing people from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Klout, College Humor etc. </namedropping>
What was also awesome was that most concert places were really small – so you’d always have front row seats. It’s weird seeing big Australian names like Art vs Science, Dash and Will, Washington and Little Red playing less than a metre from you when in Australia you’d be lucky to get a ticket to any of their shows.

The entire atmosphere

It is so hard to describe but during SXSWi there was such an innovative atmosphere and then when SXSWm rolled around the atmosphere became a massive party. On 6th Street (where most of the bars were, an equivalent to George or Oxford St in Sydney) the road was shut down and the most amazing street party with weirdest and coolest stuff (haircuts from the future anyone..?) was happening.

Will I go again?

Yes. I WILL BE BACK FOR SXSW 2012. The SXSW Interactive part really inspired me and the SXSW Music/Film had such an awesome vibe to it.

Stay tuned for more blog posts about some of my key takeaways from the Interactive festival and what you need to know when attending SXSW.