Data & Stuff // Neil Houston

As with all good things, there has to be an end at somepoint. It’s been an eventful view days, from Friday through to Tuesday a lot has happened here in Austin, for SXSWi.

It’s amazing to think that one of the biggest things that has happened here is the conversations that I have had with other Birmingham, and West Midlands folk. For whatever reason being in Austin has helped start discourse that would never have happened back at home. I’ve also had the opportunity to meet a whole set of people from my area, that I’ve never really connected with before.

Of course, now that the event has ended I can indeed celebrate that with a Mojito, poolside downtime Austin whilst waiting for the bats to appear an then heading off for some BBQ action. [I may have attended the closing bash, and stayed and had free drinks from 8PM-2AM, and watched 'We Are Scientists']

The amazing thing for me, is that the ideas and lessons, and experiences from the panels and talks I’ve attended have started to solidify into practical real life uses. I’m wondering whether some of the things that we are doing on Kitcrowd are not the right things to be doing for our community. I’ll go into that in more detail later, as there are a ton of ideas and notes taken from all the panels which I’ll try and form into a series of blogposts, and aggregate in other notes taken by people and that have been published.

Today, music has come into town and the atmosphere has certainly changed. I’m also on the guest list for Motörhead this evening, so that will definitely be a deafening experience!

For me, this has certainly been a worthwhile experience, it will take further time for it all to settle out. And hopefully I’ll be able to use my travel time to get some of this out of my head, and do a full braindump!

So, we are on day three of the event, and what a few days it has been. The initial overwhelming experience has now settled down into a comfortable routine.

The journey over was long, a 9AM flight (UK time), and an arrival round 8.30PM (Austin time). Luckily after meeting up with some of the other West Midlands (#WXWM) folks we managed to pick up our event passes without the need to queue. Which meant that a few beers could be had before heading off to our Arts Council of England accommodation (nicknamed the Big Brother house). It also had the side benefit of being able to have a decent lie-in, as things were not kicking off till 2PM on the Friday.

Now, a lie-in would have been nice bit unfortunately, the jetlag had a side effect which meant a 6.30AM start. A productive morning ensued of catching up on the admin that I hadn’t been able to look at for Kitecrowd for quite a while.

Session wise, I’ve managed to visit a wide variety, from panels, solo speakers, core conversations and duo talk. I must admit in some cases I’ve learnt a) how shoddy my hearing can be, or b) how badly setup sound wise some of the rooms are.

That experience means that some sessions I chose based on their locations, as well as their content. The other key point is not to be afraid of walking out of the session if it’s not what is expected. After all there is always something else occurring around the corner.

Another side benefit, is free. Free is good, whether it’s water, coffee, beer or food it can be found if you know where, and when to look!

I’ll be doing a catchup of sessions I’ve been trying to hit and we’ll see what my notes really look like. Meanwhile, checkout the Saturday opening keynote notes, by Danah Boyd on SXSW.com. (Also available, her full talk notes

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