SXSW: 2010 Highlights

It’s been a whirlwind four days in Austin for 2010’s SXSW Conference. While I would have loved to stay for the film and music events, part of me is certainly glad to be back in Florida (those parts being, in no particular order, my feet, my back, and my liver). The last few days have been a crazy mix of education, parties, and networking, and there were certainly a number of highlights that made this year’s SXSW Conference one for the books:

• FourSquare Mania – While last year Twitter was the runaway winner for SXSWi press, this year’s love went to FourSquare (or Gowalla, depending on which camp you’re in). Not only did the
  

  SheBlogs' Michael Conner playing four square outside Austin Convention Center with Dennis Crowley, founder of FourSquare

  company take part in Brian Solis’s presentation about engaging through social media and host daily sessions of the beloved playground game outside the Austin Convention Center, but they created 16 new SXSW-specific badges that kept conference goers busy checking in to sessions, buildings, restaurants, bars and parties (and kept PR people running around the city to find them!). LA-based technology blogger Sean Percival also showed us how FourSquare is the perfect tool for the stalker in all of us.

• uStream Rocks – Thursday night’s calm attitude gave way to all out conference partying Friday night with uStream’s party, which featured celebrity guests like Pete Wentz (from Fallout Boy) and Jamie Lynn Sigler (Sopranos, Entourage) and a surprise concert by Gym Class Heroes. The party was busy, but thankfully, didn’t have the lines that later events did, which made it enjoyable. Oh, and we got to hang out with the band after the show – which always makes events more memorable!
  

  Hamming it up with Travis McCoy, frontman for Gym Class Heroes at uStream's party

• Sessions, sessions, sessions. Numbers varied, but word around Austin is that this year’s conference boasted 29,000 attendees, a 40% jump in attendance from last year. And the sessions created for this mass of people were just as, well, massive. Between barbecue, live music and networking parties, we were schooled by some of the industry’s leading voices. Gary V from WineLibrary.tv told us we needed to “Crush It.” Mark Horvath (InvisiblePeople.tv) talked to us about using social media to enact social change. And Social network researcher Danah Boyd taught us the difference between public information (information that can be found online somewhere) and information that we want publicized about ourselves. Best of all – these sessions will all be online (we’ll be posting links here) in the coming weeks for anyone who couldn’t attend.
• After Friday’s kickoff uStream party, Digg showed us Saturday that they throw a mean Shindig, and Sunday’s dueling PBS and MashBash events, combined with a completely party-filled 6^th Street, likely had many attendees thinking back on Danah’s session, hoping that their photos would end up as neither public, nor publicized, information.
• SXSW is kinda like Disneyland. We heard from Jon Swartz that SXSW was a bit like spring break for geeks. To us, it also smacked a bit of Disneyland. Lines for Sunday’s parties had guests waiting in line literally for hours (thank you, Wm. Marc for sneaking us in!), and guests spent as much time Tweeting about what they saw on line as they did about what they saw inside.

We also learned a quick lesson about good PR. One unnamed party host, in its invitation to party VIPs, noted one of the title’s perks as “being able to stay away from the ‘unwashed masses.’” Note to publicists – if you’re going to call paying party guests (the only ones who are willing to wait on line for hours to get into your event – and the ones who are likely avid users of your service) “unwashed masses,” make sure that you don’t put it in writing where one of those unlucky peons might “stumbleupon” {sic} it.