SXSW Interactive 2011
April 20, 2011 | Posted by
That's Blake Mycoskie, Founder and Chief Shoe Giver of Toms Shoes, and he's one of the reasons I LOVE Austin, TX. There I said it. I never thought I'd love anything in Texas at all, let alone a whole city, but the place is just too damn cool. Austin is an up and coming epicentre, like Seattle or Portland, of techie goodness. Multiple successful startups have their roots in Austin, most notably Gowalla, one of the geo-location crown contenders. I recently had the pleasure of attending a conference in Austin, the 2011 SXSW Interactive festival (SXSWi) and wanted to share my experience with you!
To start, SXSWi is the LARGEST interactive festival of its kind. Although official numbers haven't been released yet, rough estimates by festival volunteers have pegged attendance at over 20,000 people this past year. That's a lot of interactive geeks!
After attending over 20 different panels in a five day span, I noticed three distinctive themes this year:
- Mobile web
- Gamification
- Group messaging
Instead of writing about all three of those topics here, I've decided to include links to my favourite sessions, a few of them even include audio recordings. So click the links and download the MP3's, you'll be glad you did.
- Web Anywhere: Mobile Optimization with HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript
- Keynote: Seth Priebatsch - Audio Available
- Cure for the Common Font - Audio Available
- Lean UX: Getting out of the Deliverables Business - Audio Available
- Steve Krug Explains It All For You - Audio Available
FLIPP blog readers don't despair, I do plan on writing individual posts about these themes and topics specifically. So check back every now and again.
Now FLIPP wants to hear from you! Did you attend SXSW? What were your favourite parts? If you didn't attend, why do you want to go? Why do you NOT want to go? Leave a comment below, we want to hear it!
Edit: While browsing the interwebs for photos of SXSW, I came across these amazing SXSW Slideshare presentations, SXSW 2011 Recap 1. Jesse Desjardins is an amazing Canadian presentation designer and his SXSW recap is wonderful. Enjoy!
Photos are courtesy of Mashable and Flickr
