SXSW 2011 Thoughts: Interactive

There’s no getting away from the big issue of this year’s South by Southwest Interactive was the size of the conference. With close to 20,000 attendees, all the official hotels sold out (something that Interactive has managed that the Music Festival hasn’t), and multiple hotels around the city of Austin holding conference sessions throughout the day, there is no doubt that SXSW Interactive is just mind-bogglingly huge.

Was it worthwhile?

That’s always tough, because everyone is going to go to Interactive wanting to get different things out of SXSW. This year I was doing a mix of reporting what was going on (for STV, SXSW Baby and others), connecting with old friends, and getting my annual “feel” on what’s happening in tech circles. On the whole, I was pretty pleased with my personal outcome – while there wasn’t any major victory, I wasn’t looking for one of those. It was the cumulative little victories that added up (and made it, in the words of one… “awesome!”)

What I found interesting was the evening party scene. Unlike other years, i didn’t feel turned away or crushed out of any of the evening events – now that could be down to planning out various choices in advance, going with the flow (and Foursquare), or not wanting to “touch Pete Cashmore”, but not once during the evenings did I feel I as missing out. And the once event that I did not want to miss (whatever was on at Six on the Tuesday night…) wasn’t missed.

Whatever was tweaked to improve the Interactive evening experience, same again please. But SXSW Interactive are going to need to seriously think about the logistics around the sessions.

First up, I think there are too many of them. And with such a high volume of sessions, they had to be placed over something like nine campuses (Hotels and Conference Spaces) to get them all in. That’s just crazy.

Somewhere, the decision was made to have a lot of sessions, and to get as many speakers in the doors as possible. After the last few years at Interactive, I’d say the pendulum has swung too far to quantity and needs to be brought back to quality. That means a radical look at how sessions are decided on. I’d like to see three criteria applied.

• A radical reduction in the number of session that are put on, for the reasons above.
• Far more curation involved from the organisers and a curtailing of the panel picker – turning session choice into a popularity contest is a natural inhibitor on new stories and technology coming through
• Make the submission and decision process much closer to the event. How can you stay cutting edge when you ask for submissions in June the year before. The internet struggles to predict what’s going to be hot next week, let alone nine months down the line

It goes without saying (ie I say it every year) but there needs to be some thought put in to have more professional panels and speakers. People buying tickets to SXSW need to have panels, moderators, speakers and others who are on top of their game and can deliver. SXSW may be spring break, but speaking at SXSW is not a free pass to have a wee holiday. Organisers need to send more than an email that essentially reads like a scout’s promise to “do a good panel” and if that means having mandatory training sessions on the first day or your complimentary badge gets pulled, so be it.

But there were a lot of gems in the mix this year, and while there were a lot more attendees, I think this year went far better than 2009 in terms of value v. noise in the halls and streets of Austin. There is still room for improvement, and the elephant in the room of quality sessions is still there, just another year where it gets bigger, and more out of control,