Still light on sleep, though.
Suggestions for next year's SXSW:
- segregate beginner, intermediate, technical tracks much better and confine them to a specific area of the convention center. having to run about from one conference room to another is bullshit when the transit time is +15 minutes. No time to have the "hallway conversations" that SXSW used to be famous for.
- add a second slice - perhaps something like "legal", or "social", or "web design" to each conference/discussion and group them in the same area as well. Allow some cross-pollination by letting two adjacent areas have overlapping meeting rooms so you can still have the hallway conversations.
- require panelists to submit a "position paper" or something equivalent so you know they have a POV and won't just get up and say "my startup did this, and this, and this". It's become way too self-congratulatory and pitchlike on the panels.
- get more academics in on the panels. All-academic panels with maybe a "practical" moderator. This could lead to exposure to real social science and methodology, something our industry sorely needs if it is to mature.
- Consider capping attendance. 7000 people is just ridiculous because you never see people again after having met them once (or at least, much less frequently than in the past). Cf. hallway conversations.
- Add workshops. Some of us have real technical problems that we need to solve.
- Add an angel/VC track and meetups with the above so we can have an opportunity to learn how to present our ideas and have them criticised/analysed by VC/angel community.
- build a better Web site. The SXSW site is pathetic for a conference with such a design focus and so many good designers in attendance. Make it easier to use. Do a better job of enabling mobile device interaction/use with the site/schedules. We shouldn't have to hunt for third-party schedules to get a useful schedule on our iPhones.
- improve the WiFi. If you're going to have 7000 frikkin' people in the ACC, make sure your bandwidth can handle it without crashing every five minutes as it is now.
- issue podcasts or videos of all the conferences within a week, not six months as has been the case in the past.
At a very conservative estimate, this conference nets $2MM+ without sponsorships. For that sort of money, a lot of people could do a better job.
And what's with 700 presenters? I can assure you that we didn't get 700 good presentations. Start filtering them, damn it.
Posted by artandscience at March 11, 2008 11:41 AM