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by whalesalad
5941 days ago
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I think a lot of SXSWi's downfall is due to the "Social Media Experts" who are starting to infiltrate our world. I saw a tweet the other day that said it best... Social Media Experts are just people who can't design or build. I can't agree more. I went 2 and 3 years ago respectively, primarily because I had heard so many interesting things about the panels. I'd see tweets or blog posts about interesting design panels and new technologies or startups being announced and talked about in Austin. I remember really enjoying the scalability one with the guys from Automattic (Matt Mullenweg), Digg (Joe Stump), etc... I haven't heard a single thing like that this year, and am glad I didn't go. I don't doubt that there were some decent panels, but no one seems to have cared about them. Why? It's become a place to party among the twitterati and "elite" of the startup and web world. It's like going clubbing on Sunset in Hollywood and hoping to run into Lindsay Lohan shooting up in the bathroom. Spotting guys like Kevin Rose, Daniel Burka (digg designer), Gary Vaynerchuk, Ashton Kutcher, (and girls like) Justine Ezarik, etc.... I'm not saying it doesn't sound like fun going to parties every night and getting hammered, but thats really all that it has become. I could go on and on complaining about how lame SXSWi was... my company was going to pay completely for me to go last year and I turned it down knowing it would suck. There are much better things to spend money on. If I lived in Austin I might go just for the social aspect... but really the conference itself is worthless. |
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In other words, they're like the other 99.9% of humanity? The ones we built the web for, the ones who bring all the money and attention and customers? ;)