[liberationtech] My SXSW exposé in the Washington Post!

[Shava Nerad]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 1:56 PM, John Adams <jna at retina.net> wrote:

> "I went to a corporate conference and exposed the corporate-ness of it."
>
> See, if you'd stayed for music and avoided the douchebaggery that is
> #sxswi, you'd not have written this article.
>
> The counter-culture aspirations are all about music, which I assume you
> have never attended.
>
> I'm still there. For the music.
>

Technically, that's a different conference -- SXSW/I is a separate event
that doesn't even run the same dates, last time I went (though they
overlapped).  It means you get to go to the films and music and run your
trip longer. ;)  However, SXSW/I isn't just douchebaggery.  It just
includes a great deal of it.  You get pretty much what you want out of it.
 The past attendees vote in whatever panels they want to be presented, so
it's a popularity contest in social media every year.  Every year it gets
more gamy and gamified.  But there is essentially a big marketing
conference, a game industry conference, and a smaller public interest
internet conference at the same venue -- with the disclaimer I haven't been
for ages but I've watched the reports.

It's cool to go and it's cool to say it's completely past it's prime and
useless to go.  It seems to me that anyone who went could make their own
conference for any agenda they arrived with.  Then you balance that against
how you feel about the Minority Report marketing feels to you and so on --
but frankly, although for those who are in the nonprofit world this may
feel excessive, to those in the commercial world this is normal to relaxed.
 If this is a window into how the other half lives maybe we should get out
of the ivory tower more often?

This is other American business people's normal.

That might make you afraid, but I'm not sure it's a reason to pick on SXSW
particularly...

yrs,
-- 

Shava Nerad
shava23 at gmail.com
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