Simon Willison’s Weblog

Is Quora an effective tool for participating in realtime conversations at SXSW?

Not really. Quora tends to deliberately under-emphasize the time aspect if when something was posted—I’m still seeing unanswered questions from SXSW 2011 popping up in my feed!

What new apps were used most at SXSW 2013, and why?

Lanyrd will be at SXSW again this year, and we’ve continued to refine our unofficial schedule guide and session planner for SXSW Interactive. Here’s our site for this year:

Are there specific elements of SXSW that make it a successful conference?

SXSW is a great event because of the people who go. There is no other technical/creative conference I can think of which attracts talented, interesting people at the same scale (20,000+ attendees).

How do I get out of being on panel at SXSW?

People drop out of panels all the time—it’s not a big problem, provided you give the organizers a good amount of notice so they can find a suitable replacement. Let the panel organiser know ASAP. Even better: offer to help them find a replacement panelist.

What tech and/or start up events are you attending at SXSW ’12?

Our unofficial sxsw schedule site currently has 66 sessions with the “startups” topic—you can browse and search them here: http://sxsw.lanyrd.com/?topics=s...

What are the best SXSW blogs?

My co-founder has put together a very useful Twitter list of SXSW blogs and twitterers: https://mobile.twitter.com/lanyr...

What Y Combinator companies are going to SXSW this year?

Lanyrd (W11) will be there, we’re promoting our SXSW schedule planner / coverage tracker tool: http://sxsw.lanyrd.com/

Which Bay Area startups are going to SXSW 2011?

http://lanyrd.com/ will be there—both myself and Nat.

What are the differences between GDC and SXSW? Which one is better for a web entrepreneur?

I haven’t been to GDC, but it’s a game development conference. SxSW interactive is almost entirely web stuff, so it would be a better fit for a web entrepreneur.

Why would or wouldn’t SXSWi be worth attending in 2011?

Yes, it’s worth attending every year.

Why are tech conferences so expensive to attend?

Large conferences with big name speakers are expensive to organise. They are also priced to what the market will bear.

List of SxSW 2009 panels with “social” in the title

• A Hard Sell? Social Media & Your Boss
• Can Social Media End Racism?
• Digital Urbanites: How To Become Part of the New Social Capital
• The Future Of Social Networks
• How Social Networks Are Killing the Revolution
• Making Whuffie: Raising Social Capital in Online Communities
• The Mix at Six Hosted by Social Media Group
• Mobile Social SXSW BBQ
• My Boss Doesn’t Get It: Championing Social Media to the Man
• PBS’ Interactive Social Media & Online Video Studio
• The Search for a More Social Web
• Security for the Social Set
• Social Engineering: Scam Your Way Into Anything or From Anybody
• Social Gamers: Away From the Keyboard
• Social Media For Social Good
• Social Media Marketing
• Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day
• Social Media Nonprofit ROI Poetry Slam
• Social Media: If You Liked it, Then You Should Have Put a Digg on it...
• Social Networking in Health: e-Patients, Data & Privacy
• Social Patterns and Antipatterns For the Win
• Suxorz ’09: The Ten Worst Social Media Campaigns
• Twitter for Marketers: Is It Still Social Media?
• Using GPS & Location to Enhance Social Networking
• Using the New Digital Social Media to Accelerate Sustainability

Flickr without the Flash

One of my favourite panels at SxSW this year was the Flash vs. HTML Game Show, in which a team of HTML/JavaScript gurus took on a team of Flash gurus showing off pre-prepared solutions to tasks set for the panel. One of the challenges was to come up with enhancements to Flickr using the team’s assigned technology.

PyCon observations

I’m back from my two week stint in the US, and currently suffering from vicious jet-lag (my body wants me to go to sleep at 5am and wake up just past noon). Herewith some observations on PyCon, SxSW and the differences between the two.

Choice SxSW quotes

My American adventure is ongoing; I’m still in Austin at the moment, but I’ll be off to Washington D.C. in a few days and there’s a small chance I’ll get there via Dallas. This doesn’t leave much opportunity for online shenanigans, but there were a few things from SxSW that really needed a mention. The conference, as ever, was awesome—if not for the panels then certainly for the socialising. If anything I stretched myself too thin this year trying to keep up with the Brit Pack, the WaSP crew, some ex-colleagues from Lawrence and the people I met in San Francisco back in May.