Tech Capital Partners Blog

I recently returned from Austin, Texas where I had spent a week enjoying the interactive portion of SXSW. A short summary of my SXSW Interactive experience and some tips for those of you thinking of attending in the future:

Panels
I learned quickly that it was a much better idea to pick a panel based on the speakers rather than how interesting the topic seemed. Panel discussions were hit or miss and the great ones usually had more to do with entertainment value. For the misses it wasn’t  necessarily because the content was of no value but because in most cases it wasn’t anything new. This isn’t a bad thing because I think for most people if you’ve been keeping up with industry news then you shouldn’t be completely blown away by new concepts during every panel discussion.

Networking – Parties (Free Beer) & Food (BBQ and Tex-Mex)
Networking, this is what SXSW is really about. If I wasn’t attending a panel session then I could usually be found in one of the many lounge areas talking to all sorts of people and I made a number of great contacts this way. At night there were plenty of parties to attend and of course you always had the option of chatting with someone while eating some awesome BBQ. If you decide to go to SXSW then attending the parties and hanging out is a must…I know, it sounds like a lot of hard work, but it needs to be done.

Experience
One of the greatest benefits is just being there to get a sense of the “scene” and to be part of the excitement. A kind of learning through osmosis I guess, something you can’t substitute by watching podcasts and reading twitter status updates. For the experience alone I would recommend attending SXSW.

· trackback ·