South By Southwest 2007 Summary
I’ve now been home a few days and have successfully recovered from what was the whirl-wind of South By Southwest. Each day of the conference was filled with compelling panel discussions followed by party after party where it was easy to meet an endless number of talented people shaping the future of the web in their own way. Everyone at the conference, even the most notable rock stars of the industry, seemed to welcome conversation with anyone.
Not all of the panels were worthwhile, though. Some were focused on practical information you can use, while others were just frivolous jabbering that seemed a bit like a bad high school reunion where only the panel participants were alumni. For me the highlights were as follows:
- Mark Boulton and Khoi Vinh’s talk entitled “Grids are Good, and How to Design With Them“: A quick dissection of the modularity of a grid system and its application to web design, culminating in a brilliant, hypothetical re-design of Yahoo!
- Jason Santa Maria and Rob Weychert’s talk entitled “After the Brief: A Field Guide to Design Inspiration“: Not the typical advice for cultivating creativity. Rob and Jason are both skilled speakers, and were well prepared with an arsenal of personal examples that truly were inspiring. The point that resonated with me the most was to not confuse Influence with Inspiration. It’s the difference between doing what someone else has already done (being controlled by an idea), and channeling the creative energy of an experience (using an idea as a point of departure).
- Jim Coudal and Brendan Dawes talk entitled “Making Your Short Attention-Span Pay Big Dividends“. Although I came in late after fleeing a talk that was not what I had hoped, this panel was a favorite of mine. Dawes shared some humorous, yet inspirational examples of how he let a simple idea germinate in a short period of time, and in return was able to build brilliant work that evolved into more and more brilliant ideas.
- “Browser Wars Retrospective: Past, Present, and Future Battlefields“: This panel was filled with brilliant minds who brought us many of the key pieces and ideas that have made the web possible. I have to admit I did not always understand what was being debated, but I was humbled to hear the likes of Brendon Eich (inventor of JavaScript and now CTO of Mozilla Foundation), Chris Wilson (worked on Mosaic and most of the Internet Explorer releases), and Charles McCathieNevile (Now with Opera, long time W3C luminary) sharing their ideas for the future of the web.
I recommend subscribing to the SXSW podasts as all of the great discussions were recorded and will be release free to the public.
Aside from the great panels, I met some great people worth mentioning. I finally met Jonathan and Mark in the flesh and was able to say thanks for their recent Skype guest lectures to my classes. I spent a good bit of time hanging out with Jason Beaird, who is an exceptionally cool guy and whose book, The Principles of Beautiful Web Design, sold out in record time! It was fun chatting about JavaScript with PPK. I did some bowling on team SitePoint Orange (see the post on the SitePoint blog), and although we lost in the first round, we had a blast. Andrea, Matt, Jason, Ove, and Lucas, you are the best!
I hope to be back at SXSW again next year to do it all again, but next time I will sleep more often!