SXSW Interactive 2011

we're going west, yes, and a little south Yes. South By Southwest. Yeah, it's um, it's funny. Uh, you know, it's a big thing now. Yeah, it's a huge thing now. So south By Southwest is this amazing, bizarre, insane crow ow did awesome conference that takes place in Austin, Texas, the main one, anyway, you'll see little little satellite south By Southwest events happen in other places, but the big one happens in Austin. And it actually started out back

in seven as the south By Southwest Music Conference. Yes, actually my band played south By Southwest in two thousand and four. Is the last time that I was actually there and um, yeah, actually at one point there were a series of events. Uh there was north By Northwest and north By Northeast, which the latter I think is still going. Um and uh yeah at the time, I can tell you, and it's not the main focus, but you know, it's it's it was all kinds of bands

representing all kinds of music. Basically. It lots of little establishments, clubs, bars and things like that. And um, the idea that you were an indie musician at south By Southwest in the early two thousand's, I mean, of course it's that was almost twenty years in. Is the music conference that was a pretty big thing. We were really excited to

have the opportunity to play. Yeah, I mean, independent bands would use this as an opportunity to get to get out there, to get seen by new fans, to possibly get picked up by a record label, even because he had record label executives going to these conferences to see which bands were hot, which ones got got really good fan reaction, which ones might be a good investment from a record label standpoint, Even if small record labels as well as big ones would go to south By Southwest

and check out the acts there, and uh, you know that was the whole real purpose of it. I mean, Austin has always been known as a live music town. Yeah, because you've got the University of Texas there. Yes, um ghost sooners. Just kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Please don't come after me, long horns. I love you, I love you. I think I think the phrase you were looking for was hookum horns, go a and m anyway there, just asking for trouble, you know, And if you want to

get at me, just say go yellow jackets. So so, Austin is a is definitely a college town. There are lots and lots of students there at the University of Texas and it's a great place to uh you know, they like to go out for entertainment and do all kinds of hanging out. So it was a good place to go see live music. I'm sure quite a few of them are in bands. Uh. Texas is known for its music programs. I think Austin, Texas shares a lot with Athens, Georgia, which is where I went to college.

And Athens, Georgia also has a very lively live music scene. And it was a joke at least among me and my friends that if you attended the University of Georgia, you are either in a band, you were good friends with someone who was in a band, or you roomed with someone who is in a band. Yeah, so you were you were. You were at most a degree of

separation away from a band. And when I say band, I mean a group of people who would get together at generally the same time and generally play music instruments and generally the same way. You have to be really loose with your definition. But uh yeah, so yeah, you had all these great venues. You had the culture in in Texas that Austin has this great kind of unofficial motto I guess it's technically official now called keep it Weird. Where they got this kind of wacky weird sense that

you've got the improv everywhere. Guys coming out of the University of Texas, I mean they're brilliant. Um well, I mean college towns are are often known for the you know, sort of counterculture thing where all kinds you have people with all kinds of different interests and people who are uh learning more about themselves and so they try try on different hats, so to speak. But Yeah, it's a it's a great place to go see a show, great

place to get something to eat. Yeah, the food there so but but we were saying, you know, it's not just it's not just music. But started to become attracted to this conference and and because there were some companies in Austin that uh, that we're in the technology space and and you you've got a lot of cross over here.

I mean, not everyone. You you know, we can't just easily define people into a simple category like this is a musician, this is an engineer, this is you know, a film producer, because a lot of these people have interests that go across those boundaries. Yeah, we had, uh, you know, in the in the nineties and the two thousands, there were lots of kids who were getting into technology. Um, you know. Plus, you know, you have the big companies relocating, as we were talking about Dell and and some of

the places who opened shop. There are a lot of a lot of software companies. A lot of game companies were out of Austin up so tragically many of those have closed since then. But during the big computer game boom, there were a lot of offices that opened out in Austin that led the people who who managed south By Southwest to expand the conference to to be more than just music, to be a film and technology as well. Yeah, was the first year where they officially created the the

south By Southwest Film and Multi Media Conference. Uh. Now, at that time it still was that that was you know, the earliest years of it. By a few years later and they actually had three tracks of programming, which was south By Southwest Music, south By Southwest Film, and the new south By Southwest Interactive and interactive is pretty much all things technology computer mobile, although at that time in mobile was still a few several years off, you know,

people were just using cell phones, not not smartphones. Yeah. And and let me tell you that that uh, you know, south By Southwest over the past few years has become a really big thing for the technology sector. But um, even a few years after, uh, after its expansion into the interactive front, UM, I could tell you that when my band played there, Now, I wasn't admittedly I was,

I wasn't a tech journalist at that point. Um, but the inter active side, while I was sort of interested and wanted to go it was it seemed more closed off to me. It wasn't really uh nearly as big a thing in two thousand four when I went as it is now in two thousand and eleven. UM, And I'm not quite sure exactly what happened with that. I mean, there are there are some things that we can point to, uh and I'm sure we'll get to this in just

a minute. But UM, I'm not certain exactly why south By Southwest took off, other than the fact that it's a really cool place to be. You know, you have I don't know, I has to use the word competition. You think about Macworld and uh, you know E three UM and the C E S conferences and in places like that and UM C T I A and places where you would also go look for technology. UM. But they're not the same. They don't have the same vibe

that south By Southwest has. Yes, south By Southwest and world the conference is all about sharing information, right, and sharing knowledge and and kind of looking ahead at what where technology is going and how to take advantage of that. We do have to remember that chiefly south By Southwest is a conference. There are kind of two worlds that go on at a south By Southwest. Yes, there are, right,

You've got your world of conference. Whi's got all the panels and the discussions, and you've got these really smart people all getting together and really talking about what makes people tick, what makes technology tick, where the two intersect and the best way to take advantage of it. Yeah, it's it's it's at two pm down there and at the hall and go check it out. And that's when

and where it's going to happen. And it'll be a panel discussion with some Sometimes these panel discussions have really I mean big movers and shakers in the technology world. We're talking about folks like Zuckerberg has been speakers at south By Southwest Rights founder of founder of Facebook. All right, were you like the alleged founder of I saw this documentary anyway, I believe him to be the founder, but

others disagree. Founder of Facebook, the tesla is the inventor of radio, founder of Facebook, and the uh so, yeah, there you've got. You've got that world. But then you have the other world that happens at south By Southwest, which is their vampires and werewolves. It depends on what part of Austin you're in. Their vats. Austin's got a lot of bats. There are bats. I recommend going to see the Bridge with the Bats. Yes, that's that's kind

of fun. My wife, my wife and I went and saw it, and my wife said that was the one and only time she ever has to do that. But it's cool. It is cool. She was not a big fan. But yeah. The the other world is the party world, the world in which people are getting together to schmooze and kind of network and hobnob and they're hanging out

at various parties. UM south By Southwest has actually gotten some criticism about this because the party scene has really exploded over the last few years, particularly once Interactive really

started getting big. Becau you suddenly all these these guys, these young guys and women, these young people, i should say, these young people who have a big influx of money, often from venture capital, and they're trying to get noticed, and they're throwing extravagant parties and they're hosting food trucks where you can get free food from them, and which is always a great way of of getting a bunch of people to really be happy about your products, at

least for the you know, a five minute segment of time. UM. And there's some criticism being directed that it's taking focus away from the whole thinking about technology and people element of the conference. The parties are overshadowing it um But at the same time, the parties are a way for you to actually meet with other people who are launching products.

There may be potential partnerships you can strike up at these meetings, or you can meet people who are actual users and get real time feedback from people saying, you know, I tried using your app and I think it's a great idea, but it's you know, I really wanted to do this with it and it doesn't let me. And the kind of the person who've developed the app might say, oh my gosh, you're right, that's brilliant. I don't know

why we didn't build that in. We will. I am going to make a note and we are going to build that into the next version, and who knows, that might be the thing that makes that particular app take off in the market. So it's a really valuable part of the conference experience, but again it's kind of started to overshadow the actual conference. There are people who will tell you, because I've talked to them, that you don't need to get a badge to go to this conference.

This conference is not just it's open to the public, but you have to pay to go, and it's expensive. A badge to this conference. We're talking over a thousand dollars, depending upon the level of access you want and and how many of the tracks of programming you want access to. Because it's just interactive, it's going to be a different amount than if you want pass to the entire conference. So, uh, the thing about the parties is you don't necessarily have

to have a badge to go to those. So there are a lot of people who go to south By Southwest who are not actually attending the conference. They're just going to all the other satellite events around the city. I was one of those, in the interest of full disclosure for for south By Southwest eleven. Well, Caroline McCarthy at sen basically, by the way, the day we're recording this, which is May six, two thou eleven, is her last day at Senet. Really, Caroline's leaving Senet today. That's terrible.

She's a great reporter. She's moving on to Google. Okay, okay, so we'll see more, yes we will. But she wrote a piece and I want to talk about the main thread of that in a moment, but um, she was she actually traced it back. It was Twitter, yep in two thousand seven, which is when Capital E everything, Capital

C change. Yeah. One of the things we see of south By Southwest especially recently is that companies that especially social companies, companies that depend upon some sort of social media or social push or social element in their their service, they use south By Southwest as kind of a launching point. It's not an official launch, but it's a good way to get some of the movers and shakers and technology

interested in your product. If you can get them using it and and talking about it, then their word of mouth is worth millions in advertising dollars. Well. Yeah, and if you think about it, it's exactly where the Music Conference was when it started. It's it's a place where people go to discover stuff, be discover stuff, and be discovered. Um. And apparently it was Twitter in two thousand seven that decided to basically use south By Southwest and it's as

it's coming out party. Hey we're here, check this out. You can catch up with everybody with your smartphone. Again. Art phones around two thousand seven were starting to become a consumer thing and suddenly it's the same year of the iPhone, and that's when things started getting crazy. And the main focus of uh, Caroline's article was you know, people who are of the old timers, if you will, who are used to Hey, I got a booth at

the conference. We gave out some t shirts and key chains and talked to some people, uh, you know the people and looking back on it, that's the way it was. But now people are dressing up in costumes and walking down the street. There are are mobile people in vans and cars who drive around until they find a group of people then you know, basically make a sales pitch

to them out in the middle of the street. And just all kinds of weird guerrilla marketing tactics that are there for companies that are launching or or trying to gain market share. There's even established companies that will use us. Like Chevy did this at eleven. They had a really clever a pair of really clever tactics. One was to promote the Vault. They gave free rides around Austin, so you could hop into an official Chevy Vault and be

taken to a different part of Austin. Now, the important part of that is being able to recognize a Chevy Vault and not jumping into some random person's car that is then your car, jacking that and and and getting back Yeah, and then however are but they also had also had they also had mobile charging stations for you to charge your electronics. I saw that from a few companies.

A few companies had these. Uh. Either you would go to a specific place and you could plug your device in and have it charged while you are hanging out and chatting with people. Or they would have people walking around with essentially battery packs on backpacks and you could plug into them and and recharge your device while they gave you, you know, a pitch about whatever the product was. Um. So that was a very clever way of doing it. Yeah, and uh, it's a lot of companies have been taking

advantage of that. Meanwhile, the conference is still going. Don't don't ignore that. I mean, there were some interesting panels, especially in this past year, like, um, here's one beyond

the check in location and the social web. So one of the big things to come out of both South by Southwest and apps in general is this whole idea of location check in which you could argue was really kind of champion by four Square, which four Square had a big launch it south By Southwest in the in the past, and that's kind of where it first got that big word of mouth. I mean, the service had been active already, but it really started to hit the

ground running at south By Southwest a few years ago. Uh. But the panel here was talking about how do you add value to checking into a location? Because just checking into a location is you know, you're a lerning your friends where you are, which can be cool, but if if you want to have your apps stand apart from others, you have to find ways to partner with companies so

that you create reward systems for checking in. So it's it's giving people a chance to think beyond just how do I achieve this technologically, to how do I achieve this in a way that's a sustainable business model, you know.

And it's really that element of south By Southwest is invaluable to people who are launching a product, not just to get the word of mouth, but really to get the perspective of people who have tread this path already, who kind of know, you know, the pitfalls that are ahead, to build their knowledge and say, oh, you know what,

we can learn a lesson from this person's experience. We can we can do the things that that helped this person succeed and avoid the things that set this person back and uh and implement that into our service, and then we have a better chance for success. It's still not a guarantee, of course, because I mean the public's fickle, right. There are how many how many different versions of of

Twitter we're there? I mean besides Twitter that you know, you had other uh short messaging service type um uh projects out there, and really Twitter is the only one that has has had any true success, and even Twitter has had a problem making money off of that. So, like I said, it's not a guarantee for success, but it does help you out. But I mean there's everything like learning about user interface design and what kind of interfaces appealed to users and which ones don't appeal to users.

And sometimes there's a psychological element in there, like why do people prefer prefer one method of input over another? What's holding people back from doing more voice recognition apps? Or is there anything holding people back? Is it? Is it a technology thing? Is it a user thing? These are the sort of discussions that go on at south By Southwest that are very important from a development standpoint. Yeah,

they're they're very high level. Yeah, because it's very conceptual. Right, it might not be the sort of thing that the general public wants to sit in and watch unless you're just interested in the subject. But it's not like you're going to go to one of these panels then walk out saying, you know, um, uh well, I'm glad I went there. I can I can use this information in the future. You may not have any real use for it. You might have more insight, which to me is almost

as valuable. But not No, that's not the case for everybody. Other people might say I could have gone and had a taco well there, and you know it's also Austin is also used as a stomping ground for new technology before it really becomes big. I mean, Twitter's one example. Uh. You know what I found in doing research for the podcast that in two thousand and ten, um, there were QR codes. PC World actually had an article about the

the QR codes that were popping up everywhere in the city. Um, and this was I mean, it's they're not even really common. We just did a podcast on QR codes and how uh and Pan. They've been old hat for quite some time. But uh, here in the United States, they're still not widely widely used. A lot of people don't know what they are. They just see him as those funny looking black and white boxes. They're popping up more frequently than than a couple of years ago. I mean, I've seen

them on advertisements the train system here in Atlanta. But but they're still not you know, at that that point that was, you know, a year and a half ago, they still weren't widely used. Um, but you know, the flavor of the conference really is changing, and it's being noticed by far greater I mean you mentioned Chevy. I think the other big name this year was Apple and the sudden appearance of the Apple store out of nowhere, right yeah, in Austin. I think Austin has and folks

in Austin you can correct me if I'm wrong. Once you're done yelling at me for yelling ghost Senners and go a and m um, you can yell me for being wrong if I'm If I'm wrong about this, but I believe there are two Apple stores in the general Austin area and I there of which are convenient to downtown and the first day of the south by Southwest Conference Interactive Conference of happened to fall on the same

day as the iPad to launch. So here's Apple saying, hey, look are key demographic the people who are most likely to adopt our technology as soon as it comes out are converging on Austin. Uh this day, And we could get some good PR and make a lot of sales if we just created a temporary store in the downtown Austin area to cater to this crowd. And so they did, and uh and the line for this place was really impressive. I was actually there. I was watching, uh this Weekend

Tech cover the line. So Brian Brushwood, Jason Howell, a couple of other people were out there kind of interviewing folks in line. My wife got in line. She actually bought one of the iPad two's from the temporary Apple store in Austin. And uh, yeah, it was. It was. It was like a party atmosphere. And that was exactly the right move for Apple as far as a PR move is concerned, because it it was catering to their most passionate fan base. Yeah, this this was an example.

I think this is a foreshadowing of things to come, both Chevy and and Apple doing this. Um, yeah, that was the funny thing because apparently there was a very poorly kept secret because this the store before it opened, the store to have any indication, it had no signage, had had black opaque plastic film over all the windows, so you could not see into the store. However, I will say that the entrance to the store shared an

entrance with a gold gem. You would walk into the first set of double doors, and then there's a stairway down to a gym, and then the second set of double doors would lead directly into the store. So you had all these people who were using the gem, which was remaining open, going in and out, and it's possible that maybe some of them cause a glimpse of what was going on. That might have been the source of

the initial leak. I don't know, or it could have just been, you know, some Apple employees saying the wrong thing to the right person. I don't know. I would just I would just like to take this moment to make it completely irrelevant aside and say I still don't see how Batman could build a bat cave with all that technology stuff inside and have nobody understand. He didn't do it by himself. Somebody had to have leaked that anyway.

I think he talked to Clark Kent about it, but they know the the you know, if Apple can't do it well. And it was also kind of interesting to watch them the progress as people lined up to get into the Apple store. They actually assigned each customer their own Apple rep to go in and talk about the iPad and then walk over and get a sale. And that's how they made they kept traffic. Uh, they would only allow the same number of people in as there were available Apple reps, so they people would go in.

As Apple reps became available, another person would go in, and then the next person would stay up up. It was a neat way of keeping the traffic going. But at the same time you saw these huge men and women, I mean bulging with muscles, just sauntering in then thinking what the heck is going on here before they going downstairs to to go work out. It was entertaining. I actually saw several of them walk in and walk back out.

As I was waiting for my wife to get out of the Apple store, she apparently engaged the Apple representative in a long philosophical discussion about the IPEd two before she bought one. I love my wife interesting. I waited a long time for her. But yeah, it's it's definitely changed. It is. It is really becoming a a a mixture, I guess and I and there's some people who are disenchanted with that change. They feel that it's grown too much. It's that it's the focus is off of what it

used to be. It's kind of like the old It's just like the way you feel if you if you were a fan of a band when it was really obscurely what I was thinking of. Yeah, and then the end gets really really popular, and then you're like, but I like them when they were when no one knew them, and I liked them back when they were you know, they had these intimate shows and they interacted with fans. Now they're so huge that they don't do that. They're

not the same guys anymore. You've sold out, man, and that that or when you're you're the store or the restaurant that you always go down to the corner because they're like the local store and they're they're the nicest people. And then they got featured in the paper and now you can never get in there, yea, or they you know, they open another location and then another location and suddenly they're in seventeen states and you go, well, I don't

want to go there. And it's so you know, it's you kind of And on the one hand, you're you're excited because they're they're succeeding south By Southwest. Interactive is as its own thing now it's not the you know, the little brother of the music conference anymore. It's its own thing. Yeah, Interactive has gotten huge the point where um, I mean like I attended uh, like I said, the peripheral stuff in twenty eleven and I got to see a lot of this going on. I will say that

the themes of eleven were interesting to me. Uh. It's all about mobile, which isn't a big surprise because that's that's where everyone's focus is right now, because everyone's you know,

adopting the smartphone or tablet uh form factors. So mobile has become a big, big concentration in the world of technology in general, not just at at south By Southwest, and so uh, I would say, like one of the companies that had a really big presence at South By Southwest and a lot of word of mouth was group On, which of course we already knew about before south By Southwest, but it really got very popular, possibly because they were giving out free impanadas um as well as other elements. Uh.

Four square remained huge. Scavenger, which is a kind of a it's sort of a four Square type model paired with a game element. Actually, gamification was a huge topic. The whole idea of adding a game layer to your service so that there is this or the intrinsic reward system within your service that keeps people coming back to it and using it over and over. They don't just find it, discover it, use it for a month and

then forget about it. They want to keep using it because they get tangible rewards or sometimes even intangible rewards if it's the right kind of reward. It doesn't matter if it's tangible or not. Well, that's that's pretty impressive. This Gavenger was there considering you know, Goala is based in Austin, Texas, made by a company called Alamo Fire. Yeah, Goala was also there. Of course, you're in their backyard. Yeah, yeah, it was. It's a lot of companies treading on each

other's toes. And then another thing that I thought was interesting was that UM group messaging services were We're big. Beluga was one UM, which I think Facebook has purchased Beluga since then, I can look, yeah, check check that out. I might be I might be wrong about that, but

it was. It's this idea of creating a service where you can send out messages to a specific group of people, as opposed to like Twitter, where you're broadcasting it to everyone unless you've created a private timeline where only people you've you've UM designated can follow you. But like Group Me and Beluga both had this sort of h broadcast to a specific group of people. Yea the Facebook. Facebook acquired Beluga in the beginning of March eleven. There you go,

so right around right around south by southwest. Um. So the group me and Beluga both have kind of similar functions where you you text to this group of friends. So it's kind of what Twitter was supposed to be when Twitter first launched. You know, Twitter has changed dramatically in a use case scenario, right like the service itself

has remained more or less the same. They've added some elements, a lot of the elements they've added were elements that were introduced by users to make the service more uh useful. But then Twitter went and said, that's a great idea, let's incorporate that into the model, like retweets and hashtags and things like that. Um. They weren't necessarily part of Twitter's original uh model, but they got incorporated once people

started using them. Well, originally, when Twitter launched, it was this idea that you could maintain contact with your group of friends by writing what you were doing, and other people would who are following you, who are friends of yours, see what you're doing and they think, oh, awesome. You know, Bob's just down the street and I haven't seen him in forever. I'm gonna just pop in and say hi.

Uh and uh. You know, that was kind of the concept behind Twitter, and now it's totally grown beyond that. It's become a marketing uh tool. It's become an interactive tool for for people who have a following who want to maintain contact with that following. It's become very useful. It's become a news gathering tool. News breaks because of Twitter, the you know, the at the time we're recording this, of course, the biggest item in the news is the the death of Osama bin Laden and that news bro

on Twitter before it broke anywhere else. Yes, so you know this, this tool has become an amazing uh a part of our lives since it's since its initial launch. But I would say that goes well beyond what the inventors of Twitter thought they were getting into when they launched the product. They thought, I think based upon the interviews I've read and the just based upon the evolution of Twitter itself, they thought they were more along the

lines of Group Me and Beluga. But but it's interesting that that's still really important that still played a big role in south By Southwest. Well, I mean even big companies were launching products too, because um, Microsoft really pushed Internet Explorer nine south By Southwest this year. So um, you know, it's it's definitely changed in character and grown to a scale that probably not even the founders of

south By Southwest really had imagined. Speaking of things growing beyond belief, um, so I say it's it's definitely becoming one of the places to be for, you know, the tech sector and to keep your eye on. If you can't go, yeah, I would, I would recommend try and take a trip out to Austin one year and at least go to some of the uh the parties and stuff that. You you know, if you don't, if you don't have the might to invest in a badge, you're

not gonna get the whole experience. Because I mean, I can say honestly, I did not get the full experience. I didn't attend any of these panels that are actually genuinely interesting to me and I think would have been very enlightening. But I didn't have a pass. So what I did was I went to the parties. Now, the parties are great. I'm not gonna, you know, downplay that. The parties are a lot of fun. I went to

a party by held by Revision three. I went to one tech media yeah st I went to seen Nets party. I went to this weekend text uh party. Now, these these companies, what they end up doing is they end up renting out a bar, or a restaurant and or even a even a huge space in the case of Revision three, and then they invite to come that Usually you have to register beforehand because these places have a limited amount of space and therefore a limited number of people.

Can come in. Um, it's not that, you know, it's not that we're trying to do preferential treatment. It's just that there's literally only so many bodies you can cram into that space before the fire marshal will shut it down. Uh. And then they usually have some sort of programming there. They might have a band play, they might do in the case of Revision three and Seen That and Twit. You know, all of these are are tech have tech

journalism elements to them. So they would do shows, live shows in front of the crowd, which was kind of cool, and uh, it was neat seeing how these tech journalists were interacting with their fans, how they were covering the conference itself, how they were covering tech news in general. Actually had quite a few fans come up to me who recognized me and they talked to me about Yeah, it was crazy. I was being treated like a celebrity.

And of course, for one thing, I was hanging out with all the hosts because I happen to I know them because their peers, right. But uh, but it was weird to be have that turned on me and people were like chatting. I just thought they were chatting with me. And then they're like, I really like your show. Oh you're a fan. Awesome, that's great. I keep forgetting people listen to us, um something. I figured we'd just come in here to talk in the microphone sometimes. But yeah,

it was a great experience. But even as you know, there were some of those parties no one knew who I was, which was great too. I just got to hang out there and watch the show and listen to bands play. I got to see some exclusive content that was released right there at south By Southwest. It's a really neat experience, and you do get a chance to you know, the person who's staying next to you might be the next uh, Mark Zuckerberg or biz Stone. You might be staying next to the next big mover and

shaker and technology. You never know, so it's really an an amazing experience. Plus the person on your left might be in the next band. That makes it huge. That's true because a lot of the bands like to hang out at the various events as well. You know, you never know. I got to uh, I got to eat barbecue in the same restaurant as Felicia Day. I saw her come in and I was like, oh, she's so pretty and I thought, I'm gonna go up and say hi, and then I thought, no way, everyone in the world

has come up to Felicia day to say Hi. I'm going to let her eat her barbecue in peace. Yes, And that's when I became a grown up. Well, so yeah, I would say that if if you're going to look for the latest gadgets, you'd go to see Es. You're going to look for video game cardware and software, go to E three. And if you're interested in the experience of using daily, everyday type technology the web, mobile devices and how they are used, south By Southwest Interactive is

probably the Yeah, that's really the define. I mean, they're all great conferences, but they really have different focuses, and you know, I think it's uh yeah, especially if you're if you are interested in developing product products, south By Southwest is a great place to go, just again to see because there's an engineer aspect where you're like, oh, I've learned a cool way of how to do such

and such. But then there's the social engineer aspect where you think, well, are people interested in using this, and how are they interested in using this? And are there ways that they would want to use this, and I haven't thought of that. Perhaps I should think about before I release it. South By Southwest would be invaluable to you because you've got people who have done that already and they talk about what works and what doesn't work, and and a lot of the stuff there is just

playing crazy fun. We had pee Hermann out there doing a special show. Yeah, he did his He did his Broadway show for I think it may have been one night only, but I know he did a performance. I wasn't able to get in. I didn't know about until literally I walked up to the theater and saw that it was happening, and I thought, oh my gosh. If I had known about this beforehand, I would have secured tickets. Um.

But I mean you get to see that. You get to see there's their television and movie stars walking around. I got my picture taken with one and it was awesome. Musicians. It's just it's a cool vibe and everyone's just kind of hanging out and chatting and eating tacos. I mean, that's like my ideal of heaven, right, hanging out and talking eating tacos. Well very cool then, So guys, um, that's our that's our kind of our overview of south By Southwest. I'm sure that that event will continue to

get larger and larger. Who knows, we may see uh yet another spinoff conference happened because of this, or it may even be that we see venue scaling back because it's getting so big that it's getting out of control. And it's kind of hard to say at this point. I would consider south By Southwest twenty eleven to be a success based upon the people I talked to and experiences I had. But then that was my very first south By Southwest, so I didn't I wasn't going there thinking, man,

this ums to be real. Man, not real anymore. See, I had a different experience. Let see, I I get that. You know, I've been on both sides that I understand it well. Hopefully in the future we'll be able to send some house stuff works folks out to south By Southwest and we'll keep you guys posted on that if it does happen. Uh Yeah, it would be awesome because then we could stand around talk about stuff neat tacos and I'll be happy. I'll be the bald guy with the huge smile on his face and a taco in

his hand. So we'll keep you guys posted on that. We'll let you know if anything develops. Um, there's nothing in set in stone right now, so but we'll we'll we'll try it because I'm determined to make sure we get back there. We'll stare at them with puppy dog Yeah, we'll do the puppy dog eyes look and maybe that'll help anyway. But I do recommend checking it out if you're interested in the social aspect of technology and kind of how people work. Really, uh, take a look and

Chris and I will talk to you again soon. If you guys have any topics you want us to tackle, let's know on Twitter or Facebook. The handle there is tech Stuff h s W or you can shoot us an email and that address is tech stuff at how stuff Works dot com. Chris and I will talk to you with tacos in hand really soon. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works

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