This year was my first trip to the SXSW Interactive Festival, and I’m finally getting a chance to cull my impressions and thoughts about everything I experienced.

Event:

• It’s all about the people. Yes, I saw some inspiring and informative sessions, but I also came away having met a lot of amazing people, some for the first time and some who I’ve known or worked with but never met in person. The sheer quality of most everyone I met was pretty incredible. I was a bit nervous attending by myself, but I quickly learned that you’re only alone if you want to be at SXSW.

• It’s ok to check out. Wonderful people aside, I reached a point around the 4th day where I kind of maxed out – on lack of sleep, on energy of making new introductions, on mental capacity to focus on one more session. So, I unplugged. I rented a bike, and spent a couple of hours outside in the sunshine. Biked the path around the river, ate Tex-Mex at Chuy’s & blackberry ice cream at Amy’s, perused the rows of boots at Allen’s Boots. It was probably the single best decision I made the entire time I was there, and gave me the energy to finish out strong. (I also had to learn at SXSW that it’s ok to walk out of a session if it’s not doing it for you. I got stuck in one that I really should have left, and didn’t make that mistake again.)

• You can’t be everywhere. I had to come to terms with not being able to attend everything I had hoped to. (There were a couple days in particular where a number of really strong sessions overlapped.) I’m sure I missed some great things, but know I will be able to catch most everything online. (Some videos are already up on YouTube, podcasts on SXSW and more video promised to come.)

• Preparing is good. I spent some time before leaving for SXSW planning out a schedule (with built-in overlaps) using both the my.SXSW site and the SCHED*SXSW site. (The SCHED site ended up being the better performing of the two and included more unofficial events.) I imported both to iCal and my iPhone, and it made decisions and getting around much easier (especially if I was ditching one session and heading to another).

Themes:
From the various keynotes, presentations and panels I attended, seven themes emerged for me. (I tried to sample across a range of corporate, non-profit and education sessions – areas where I’m involved professionally – and also a few purely inspirational sessions that weren’t necessarily business-related.) Read more