{"id":2700,"date":"2010-02-14T22:33:23","date_gmt":"2010-02-14T22:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ewanspence.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/14\/the-ted-conference-elitism-and-south-by-southwest\/"},"modified":"2023-04-18T23:09:54","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T23:09:54","slug":"the-ted-conference-elitism-and-south-by-southwest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/2010\/02\/the-ted-conference-elitism-and-south-by-southwest\/","title":{"rendered":"The TED Conference, Elitism and South by Southwest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sara Lacy laid into the rise of even more elitism on display at the TED conference last week, but this quote, from her rant about the TED conference<\/a> caught my eye:<\/p>\n

\n

Now when the day\u2019s sessions are done there\u2019s a hierarchy of parties throughout the LA-area with strict lists and security. Cliques within cliques, if you will. One friend I spoke with yesterday told me it was so bad last year he couldn\u2019t even hang out with his friends much of the time. Because that\u2019s what you want when you\u2019ve paid $6,000 to attend an event\u2014to be told your friends are still better than you.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And it caught my eye because SXSW Interactive is coming up. While it\u2019s not a $6000 a head event (although once you add on hotel costs it can be close if you\u2019re not careful), the interactive portion of SXSW has a problem. And it\u2019s Austin.<\/p>\n

Austin is a great city for the music part of SXSW (which, if you talk to Austinites, is actually SXSW \u2013 mention the interactive bit and you get a bit of a blank look). Lots of small venues that can hold 50-200 people with a band and you get a great vibe; bar hopping to hear a new different band is a great experience.<\/p>\n

But Interactive, and specifically the parties in the evening, is a killer. because people are looking to single venues and one company name \u2013 the Mashable party, the Digg party, the Opening Mixer at Six, all nicely scheduled to not clash\u2026 and there\u2019s no venue in Austin that can cope with over ten thousand people looking to get into one party.<\/p>\n

\"Sara <\/p>\n

So you will get haemorrhaging in Austin, you will get people wondering just what to do in the evening because Party X has a 90 minute queue to get in\u2026 you will get people new to SXSW Interactive feeling completely lost and out of place\u2026 and you will get the A-Listers all on the guest lists, all waved through on a nod and a wink, and one of the key benefits of SXSW \u2013 the mix of people \u2013 appears lost.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re heading to interactive, please don\u2019t loose heart. By all means sort out a ticket on Eventbrite<\/a> for your favourite event, but be aware that doesn\u2019t mean you won\u2019t queue, or that the event  won\u2019t be overbooked. Because they will be. Here\u2019s my advice. Just find a group of people, doesn\u2019t matter who they are, tell them \u201cwe\u2019re going to have a good night\u201d and go find a bar, a diner, a restaurant and talk to these brand new people. Make a point, right now, to have at least one meal where you know nobody you sit down with<\/em> \u2013 and I\u2019ll bet you that night will be one of the most memorable nights of the conference.<\/p>\n

Parties don\u2019t make conferences\u2026 people make conferences. Connections make conferences. Work on some new ones no matter which conference you go to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sara Lacy laid into the rise of even more elitism on display at the TED conference last week, but this quote, from her rant about the TED conference caught my eye: Now when the day\u2019s sessions are done there\u2019s a hierarchy of parties throughout the LA-area with strict lists and security. Cliques within cliques, if you will. One friend I spoke with yesterday told me it was so bad last year he couldn\u2019t even hang out with his friends much of the time. Because that\u2019s what you want when you\u2019ve paid $6,000 to attend an event\u2014to be told your friends<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1574,22,38,52],"tags":[1617,1616,122,963,86,1615],"class_list":["post-2700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010-conferences","category-conferences","category-sxsw","category-web-2point0","tag-a-list","tag-clique","tag-conference","tag-parties","tag-sxsw","tag-ted"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p58Gl0-Hy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65611,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2700\/revisions\/65611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}