

Why SXSW Sucks - AgentIcarus
http://jolieodell.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/why-sxsw-sucks/

======
whalesalad
I think a lot of SXSWi's downfall is due to the "Social Media Experts" who are
starting to infiltrate our world. I saw a tweet the other day that said it
best... Social Media Experts are just people who can't design or build. I
can't agree more.

I went 2 and 3 years ago respectively, primarily because I had heard so many
interesting things about the panels. I'd see tweets or blog posts about
interesting design panels and new technologies or startups being announced and
talked about in Austin. I remember really enjoying the scalability one with
the guys from Automattic (Matt Mullenweg), Digg (Joe Stump), etc... I haven't
heard a single thing like that this year, and am glad I didn't go. I don't
doubt that there were some decent panels, but no one seems to have cared about
them.

Why? It's become a place to party among the twitterati and "elite" of the
startup and web world. It's like going clubbing on Sunset in Hollywood and
hoping to run into Lindsay Lohan shooting up in the bathroom. Spotting guys
like Kevin Rose, Daniel Burka (digg designer), Gary Vaynerchuk, Ashton
Kutcher, (and girls like) Justine Ezarik, etc.... I'm not saying it doesn't
sound like fun going to parties every night and getting hammered, but thats
really all that it has become.

I could go on and on complaining about how lame SXSWi was... my company was
going to pay completely for me to go last year and I turned it down knowing it
would suck. There are much better things to spend money on. If I lived in
Austin I might go just for the social aspect... but really the conference
itself is worthless.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_Social Media Experts are just people who can't design or build._

In other words, they're like the other 99.9% of humanity? The ones we built
the web _for_ , the ones who bring all the money and attention and customers?
;)

~~~
brandnewlow
Social media experts are best considered as the power users of the stuff being
built by the hackers and designers. They have an audience and can be an
influencer for you, but at the end of the day, they're squarely on the
consumer side of the divide. As such, it's important to reach out to and build
relationships with these folks, but not to act to surprised by the
uberconsumer behavior, which we all display at some time.

------
otto
SXSW isn't a tech conference. It's a music/film festival with an "interactive"
section.

I don't think I would consider the interactive section which is primarily made
up of bloggers and web startups(and not focused on the tech they use) as a
tech section. Bloggers are not tech oriented(unless they primarily write about
some sort of new technology).

I went a few years ago for just the music festival and had a blast. Andrew
W.K. showed up and did a scavenger hunt under a highway overpass. I had one of
those expensive badges and found other badge holders were pretty nice. Chatted
with someone from SOMAFM for a while.

~~~
Goronmon
It's funny, I first heard of SXSW only in the context of the music/film stuff
and was thoroughly confused later when I heard it mentioned as some sort of
"tech" event and actually thought maybe they were two different events. It's
good to know I wasn't totally off-base.

~~~
_delirium
I think it's also only recently that the interactive part has been big at all.
Not entirely sure, but it feels like 2007 or 2008 was the first year it was
one of those big all-the-cool-kids-in-SF-must-fly-to-Austin deals. Certainly
the late-90s SXSWs didn't have anyone flying there for the tech content
(though plenty were flying there for the music and films).

------
larrykubin
Why SXSW is awesome:

\- Discovering a lot of up and coming talented musicians

\- Seeing artists like Arcade Fire, Beirut, Muse, Ben Harper, and Tom Morello
play at small bars.

\- Catching the world premiere of a film where the director and all of the
stars are in attendance

\- Free day parties with free beer

\- Seeing Ice Cube, Public Enemy, Talib Kweli, and Del tha Funkee Homosapien
perform for free by the lake.

\- Having some drinks with a bunch of business guys at some startup-of-the-
month's party

\- Making new friends

\- Making business contacts that lead to jobs or business opportunities

I live here in Austin and SXSW is my favorite time of year. Yes there are some
sucky tech panels, but there are a few gems. I saw a few great panels such as
"Beyond LAMP", discussions on location based services and mobile advertising,
and talks by DHH and Jason Fried. Best of all, I got to do all of this for
free by volunteering, and got a free music badge for doing so. Here's my music
schedule:

<http://my.sxsw.com/user/schedule/larrykubin>

How exactly does it suck to go to hundreds of concerts, see dozens of movies,
and party with thousands of technologists and entrepreneurs?

The author should rename the article to "why SXSWi sucks" at least, because
SXSW is a lot more than a tech conference.

------
jdrock
Anyone saying the interactive section is not tech-focused is out of the (tech)
loop.

Case in point: I attended the Infochimps Data Cluster Meetup. They kicked it
off with a debate around SQL vs NOSQL. 5 minutes into one of the NOSQL guys
saying why his stuff is great, Werner Vogels gets up and basically lays the
smack-down on the guy. This talk is followed up by BOFs on different aspects
of working with big data.

I guess this wasn't an official SXSW party, but you'd really have to not be
keyed into the events around the conference to not know it was going on.

EDIT: I should also point out that the guys from Factual, WolframAlpha,
Rackspace, Cassandra, (oh and me from 80legs :) were there. It was really
awesome.

~~~
njharman
First that type of panel was rare. For every panel like that there were four
such as "Twitter and Dating in 140 Characters or Less", "Crowd Sourcing
Innovative Social Change", "Interactive Documentaries: A Multidimensional
Narrative", "Millionaire or Artist? how about Both?"

Second "tech" focused has different meanings for different folks I don't think
debating SQL vs NOSQL is very tech-focused. Tech focused for me is here's this
thing, maybe some of why/how we built it, but definitely some how you can use
it, and esp here's the code.

SXSWi maybe a tech conference. It sure isn't a developer conference. But, I'm
glad it's not. People whining that SXSWi is not the type of conference they
want need to stfu and go to the correct conference.

~~~
jdrock
Well I think your definition of tech-focused is too narrow for me, but fair
enough.

User Groups are more for that stuff. The cool thing about SXSW is that you can
totally set up an impromptu user group and get 20-50 attendees if you want. In
fact, that is how the Data meetup happened last year.

------
Semiapies
I've seen a remarkable dearth of "genuinely interesting tech stories out of
SXSW" reports in the last...well, _ever_.

The music side of things is rather more interesting; I'd actually like to go
to that, one day.

~~~
jolie
I got some good interviews done last year, but this year, it's been much more
challenging, if only because I've had to jump through hoops to track down the
newsmakers this year, while last year, they were all kinda hanging out
together in the Blogger Lounge.

I've been laying low for a couple days and plan to come out only when
Interactive is over and Music is in full swing. Next year, I think I'll just
buy a Music badge.

~~~
Semiapies
I hope the music portion is much less douchey. :)

~~~
brandnewlow
Did you read that before you hit publish?

~~~
Semiapies
Beg pardon? Did I miss your mentioning that you'd be there?

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noodle
meh. i've not really ever viewed SXSW as tech-focused. i consider it basically
a communal geek vacation/retreat. and if you treat it as such, it fits pretty
well into your expectations.

------
kadavy
I had the same worries about SXSW, and while I agree there was too much
walking, talking spam this year, that didn't prevent me from having an awesome
time, and great conversations from some of the most genuine people I've ever
met. I'm not exactly sure what "we all deserve to have fewer people and more
and better technology" means, but it seems we should be happy to see
technologies turned into tools that all these "douchebags" can be excited
about.

It's sad to see it become less of a grassroots conference than it was, but
that's how a market evolves. Then again, the first time I ever went was only
three years ago, so maybe I'm just not cool enough?

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wehriam
I am on a fight back from Austin. On my trip I got to meet dozens of happy
users, answer customer support questions in person, hang out with my co-
workers in a non-work setting, meet with a number of company founders and
brainstorm on ways to make our products better, and chill out with some really
interesting folks from Skype.

So no, it did not suck.

It's ironic that a journalist is complaining about a lack of developer
attendance. And I appreciate that the web has a growing and vibrant culture.
There are whole categories of jobs that didn't exist when I went a few years
ago. I had a great time, the more the merrier!

------
joe-mccann
It seems that this will be the third time on a reasonable followed site/blog
that I have to explain to so many whiners why SXSWi is cool/fun/beneficial:
the tech splinter parties/events/hackfests that AREN'T associated with SXSWi.
Now granted, to say that there was a "lack of tech" is total horseshit. Web
frameworks face-off, server-side JavaScript, CVC not MVC, even the Google
hackfest brought out just that: real hackers. And the this list goes on from
there...

Moreover, the events/parties with the most DBs (douchebags not databases or
decibels) were mainly the ones that were officially associated with SXSWi.
Note to anyone especially those trying to find movers and shakers to interview
them or simply network: the movers and shakers are NOT at these parties.

You need to check places like the Hotel St. Cecilia, The Highball, the East
Side of Austin in general, all within 1-3 miles of the convention center.

Finally, local Austin groups put together some stellar
parties/events/hackfests: Austin Rails, Wordpress BBQ, Austin JavaScript
Party, etc.

Yes I am a local so I didn't have to pay for flight, hotel, rental car, etc.
but what I do have to do is continue to defend the techies of Austin that make
SXSWi fun and worthwhile.

BTW, I'll be at the (mt) closeout party tonight at Mohawk. Come say hi, we are
friendly in Austin... ;-)

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NathanKP
Personally I don't see that much evidence that SXSW has gone down hill. Of
course things change from year to year, and one year you might have a bad
experience with other attenders being rude, but overall I think it is still a
great opportunity.

Of course I live in Austin, so I am probably biased. Also I don't have to pay
for a flight to Austin to attend, so the value for cost is much higher.

------
jasonkester
Shame to hear it's gone downhill so fast.

I'll always have a soft spot for SXSW, since they pretty much put Twiddla on
the radar by giving us the Technical Achievement award a few years back.

That was the only one I attended, so I can't comment on whether it's getting
better or worse. All I know is that it was pretty cool back in 2007.

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th0ma5
The tweets I am reading suggest most everything is regurgitating things we've
all read in our aggregators? I heard about the Digg redesign, and that a
couple of the interviewers suck, and some other self-help-sounding axioms, but
that's all I've seen come out of there. Anyone know of anything else really
big?

~~~
njharman
This is the biggest thing I've noticed. For example, the HTML 5 sessions were
all stuff I've read about. The thing to know is SXSW isn't for the we're all
hardcore HTML5 experts lets get into the grittiest depths of the subject. It's
more hey all you folks who don't have a clue, this is why HTML5 is hot.

The key to SXSWi is to go to panels you know nothing about, and/or you're not
sure are that applicable to your "world".

Both this year and last year the best panels were the ones I ended up in cause
I got lost and went to wrong ballroom or I thought were gonna suck.

------
meeker
There is no question the growth of the conference has made it harder for the
hallway conversations to happen.

As for the changes in the content, you can judge for yourself, here's an
archive of the 2006 schedule which includes 14 sessions with the word "blog":

[http://web.archive.org/web/20060315165103/http://2006.sxsw.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20060315165103/http://2006.sxsw.com/interactive/programming/panels/)

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msluyter
Interesting variety of "douche" usage:

douchebag (n), douchey (adj), douche up (v)

Still, I think she needs a new word.

~~~
jolie
Yeah, I think I had 9 instances of "douche" in one sentence.

Comedic value aside, it wasn't exactly Shakespeare.

------
VonGuard
Just another reason the serious hackers and geeks amongst us just stay here in
the Bay Area. We can all go get drunk with super famous geeks and then take
BART or CalTrain home. And the only douche bags here are at the W hotel.

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rriepe
I imagine the event sucks a little bit more if you're a journalist. Or an
attractive woman.

The author is both, which probably makes for the worst SXSW experience
possible. The theft and hit-and-run are the cherry on top.

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jdrock
Interestingly enough, Jolie didn't approve my comment on her blog that
suggested she might be out of the loop.

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spencerfry
Having the best time ever at SXSW. Like anything else, it's what you make of
it.

------
aero142
Douchebags ruining things isn't unique to SXSW, it's more a universal
constant.

------
fleitz
TL;DR SXSW sucks because when you leave your shit unattended it gets stolen
and nothing interesting came and knocked down her door.

Instead of dismissing people she's never met as douchebags maybe she should
talk to them and she'd find something "bloggable". "Content" isn't bloggable,
it's the context and the story behind it all and how it relates to people. I
guess when all you have is a douche, everything looks like a douchebag. The
last thing the world needs is yet another blog entry about "twitter" or
whatever the latest fad is. The tomorrow's stories are in today's crowds, a
big part of finding the next big thing first is sorting an incredibly huge
pile of shit.

