Dance With Strangers

Picture courtesy of the great Jim Storer

Everyone returned home (for some of us that was only a few miles away) from SXSW Interactive this past week and the blog posts started rolling through the RSS feed. Most were highly negative with complaints that ran the gamut from “not enough tech” to “people are douchebags” to “I’m never going back to SXSWi”. Almost as popular as the Red Sox Gnome meme is the “I hate SXSWi meme”. The problem is, those people just didn’t work hard enough to make their time a success.

Any conference is just like college, it is purely what you make of the time you spent at the institution. The reason I can make this statement adamantly is that last year after SXSWi I griped myself. Fortunately, later that day, my Dad sent me an email telling me that in the post I really was complaining about things that were essentially my fault. As usual, my Dad was right.

Learn Your Lesson from Past Conferences

The lesson I learned was not solely for SXSWi, but any event, conference or party that I attend. During these I try and find any panels or sessions that could possibly help me in my job, or just entertain me as a human. Preparing for this SXSWi I knew that my time was going to be short at the show itself (just Saturday and Sunday), so I dug through the hundreds of sessions and found some promising events to attend. Did each of them turn out to be great? No. But what do you expect? Are you great at your job each day? No. When you have a bad day, what do you do? Dust off and come back swinging.

After leaving one session that was not particularly helpful for me I immediately looked around at the other sessions, picked one and dove into that room. But what I’m seeing from other folks post-con is that they would rather sit in front of their computer and moan about the show itself. It is not the show’s fault that you did not make the most of your opportunity. Don’t get me wrong, SXSW interactive could do things differently and improve…and they ask for that feedback every year. This is the same for every conference I have ever attended.

Don’t Let the Haters Get You Down

All too often people listen to the hate spewing from people on their blogs, Twitter and Facebook and make up their mind about an event, even if they were not attending. I’ve even had people I know who had a great time at the con suddenly shift their thinking because some “social media pontificator” decided that the show was an #EPICFAIL. The lemming mentality does not suit these people well and I hope that they can break through and remember what made them smile during the show.

The reason I had a positive experience at SXSW interactive 2010 was not because of the parties. Although they were fun. The reason was not because every panel I attended were informative. They were not. Or that the weather was perfect. It was.

The reason was that I had decided before the show that I was going to make the most out of:

• every moment
• every panel
• every introduction
• every hug from an old friend
• every hug from a new friend
• every photo with a gnome (and a Technosailor)
• every piece of brisket
• every ray of sunshine (and Cowbow Todd)
• every live band
• every late dinner
• every joke about babies with machetes
• every beer
• every bright orange boa
• every goodbye

If you didn’t make the most out of your time in Austin the blame is on yourself, not the conference. And next year when you are gearing up to come down to Texas, give me a shout and we’ll make the most out of your time here.

*All Photos Courtesy of Jim Storer