I am going to try something new this time around. A story that is highly visual — my story of SXSW told through the photos I found on my phone.
The day started pretty unpredictably. The bane of on demand startups is that you are frequently out of a fallback. Because you expect and have so often been given a high level of service, a cancelation is not expected, 3 cancelations are pretty rare and 5 cancelations are the rarest of rare events. Well, it happened to me and I had to drive out to the airport and park there — this is so that when I am airborne, the car could still get retrieved (#blessed for Ruoxing)
After I miraculously made my flight, I spent most of my airborne time getting to planning my trip. A 3+ hour plane ride is tolerable, it’s just about at the zone where I can be ok with the duration of the trip. Austin gets props for being in the zone of tolerable plane rides. After landing there in what seemed to be a sunny rain storm — I summoned my Uber. I had not seen this interface before but it seemed like a good way to get people UberPooling since you want to circulate the max number of warm bodies using the least number of cars — I am sure that is a metric somewhere out there on a PMs desk at Uber.
I picked up my badge at the convention center after dropping off my baggage at the hotel (physical, not mental). After that, it was off to see the setting of SXSW. This was by far the most imposing structure. Given the cord cutting nature of my TV viewing, I am yet to get USA Network. I can hope for Hulu or Netflix or Amazon Prime soon?
Not to be outdone with this amazing display, we also had room for a giant flyer — “End of the world party” — not too apocalyptic, maybe just enough
After walking around, I decided I was hungry — it wasn’t so much a decision as it was an increasing amount of irritability to people’s voices. So I headed to the Stanford alum party which was amazing and had the best mac and cheese I had ever tasted.
After prepping for the panel, and by prepping , it is the absolute loosest definition of prepping (Props to Ward and Araceli for having the presentation down), I decided some sleep would be nice. So to act upon my decision, and as any rational person would do on their first night out at an unplanned SXSW — in sequence I did the following things —
1/ Tried to get into a party with my gold badge, remembered that “oh, yeah, I know no one here” and went out in about 3 minutes
2/ Tried to get into @midnight taping 15 minutes before start — needless to say — I did not make it in
3/ Tried to see a comedy taping — which was either over or was not scheduled until the next day
4/ Defeated, I went and had some of this deliciousness (Who knew they opened in Austin, I thought they were a Portland thing)
I summoned my Lyft and was out and about to my hotel. In 15 minutes I thought I would be at the hotel. Turns out the awesomeness of Google Maps doesn’t really translate to Austin. After 3 weird turns and getting dropped off in a residential area next to a giant garbage bin which clearly wasn’t called the Orangewood — I realized the folly of my ways and not letting auto complete dictate my life. Anyway, having turned around and after a few U-turns, I made it back to the hotel and in under 10 minutes was asleep.
The next day was all about the panel. It was a ridiculously awesome feeling to be on a panel. We even moderated a table each. It was a pretty amazing experience
The rest of Saturday was more or less a congratulatory affair walking around feeling glad that SXSW now transforms to a spectator sport for me. In my excitement and relatively early session jitters (Show up at 8:30 am for a 9:30 am panel), I had downed a ton of coffee, consequently not much of food had gone in and by the time the noon session kicked off, my stomach started asking incoherent questions through its rumbling. Pro tip — have some food handy like snack bars et al — the lines at food trucks are pretty terrifying when you have session breaks. And session breaks are all timed together so good luck trying to be the person who sneaks out 5 minutes before and lines up at the taco truck — everyone else will have the same idea.
After the noon session, I drifted down to my favorite part of the exhibitions — the Gatorade Fuel Lab — you get a custom designed bottle and get to look at what is now being designed for athletes specific to their routines and workouts. It was, needless to say, really cool.
I got back and took stock of all the stuff lying around as a part of the opening package. Needless to say, its all pretty overwhelming
I found something given out by the organizers that would have been useful the night before had I not been all sugared up on VooDoo doughnuts
I came back and tried to find sessions to get into, remember to find the right gates to enter otherwise the doors will send you mixed messages like so
But I eventually did make it — to me this was the most thoughtful and honest session of the day — Jimmy Wales changed the world with Wikipedia and he was amazing in conversation with Guy Kawasaki
I made my way back to the convention floor and I must say, VR totally dominated Austin. I couldn’t walk half a mile in any direction without a headset gearing up for attack. It also had a ton of great international participation — with the Canadian startup program of particular interest. The Nordic countries, LatAm, Japan and Korea also had their own sections
The startups were also out there in full force — didn’t feel that far removed from SF at the moment you looked at the flyers and the problems up for grabs
I also made the trek to the Mashable house to see the greatest startup of them all showcased in all their glory for the April 24th premiere
So were these flyers plastered all over the wall
Remember I mentioned VR? The McDonalds (Yes, that was not a typo), the Mashable house, the Samsung house (Gear VR w/ Oculus), aforementioned Gatorade lab all had VR setups. I painted this — it doesn’t look incredible but with a headset on, I was creating modern art
I also collected Bless Up tattoos in continuing with the DJ Khaled meme at large
You basically can’t walk around or away without looking at all of the information being thrown at you
The nights at SXSW were also pretty spectacular but definitely skewed towards the bar scene at Rainey Street and the Dirty 6th. Check out the modified houses that have now become bars — they are home to some pretty epic parties. And if drunk walking isn’t for you, try out the huge range of options available
As I headed away from Austin — you are a mixture of tired, fatigue and guilt. You are tired because not since undergrad have you been inundated with so much info being thrown at you. You are fatigued because you haven’t slept all that well with the gallons of alcohol inside you. And you are guilty because you have missed a session (or few) that you really wanted to attend. For me, I minimize guilt by having one session I know I am sad about missing and having the remaining stack ranked as “Yeah, its sad I missed it but I also missed this one which I REALLY wanted to attend”. For me, it was missing out on Grumpy (JK, it was Bourdain)
Well, as my amazing trip comes to a close and my flight back is delayed by another hour, I can tell you this is a spectacular conference — and for once, its ok to let the shimmering lights distract you
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