{"id":154,"date":"2006-03-17T17:56:26","date_gmt":"2006-03-17T22:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/?p=154"},"modified":"2006-03-17T18:07:10","modified_gmt":"2006-03-17T23:07:10","slug":"sxsw-interactive-indeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/sxsw-interactive-indeed\/","title":{"rendered":"SXSW Interactive Indeed!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What is it about SXSW Interactive<\/a>? It is just a conference after all. But honestly, it is unlike any other conference I attend. It is simultaneously visionary and insane, brilliant and ridiculous, inspiring and intoxicating. And it dawned on me that whoever named this conference nailed it. The whole point is to interact with each other. To share your wildest dreams, ask preposterous questions, make and renew scintillating friendships.<\/p>\n

Highlights of my experience this year include: realizing that the person that just climbed into my van was Veerle<\/a> (and that she is as nice as her web site is beautiful), reconnecting with my out-o-town friends Andrea<\/a>, Featherstone<\/a>, Hicks<\/a>, Rob<\/a>, finally meeting Faruk<\/a> and Anton<\/a> in person and making so many new friends…like Alun<\/a>, Geert<\/a> and Ms. Jen<\/a>, just to name a few.<\/p>\n

But I think the single most important aspect of my experience started when David Nunez handed me a sheet of orange smiley face stickers on SxSW eve. David started tagging people with these stickers at SXSWi 2005. His intent? To encourage people to be open and friendly and interact with people you don’t know. So, I spent the rest of this year tagging everyone I could find with orange smiley faces. And I was thrilled with the response. From the uber famous to the quietly brilliant…my sticker offer was met with enthusiasm. <\/p>\n

David’s created a delightful guide to tell if you have not had the full SxSWi experience: <\/p>\n

\n * You find yourself back in your hotel room for the rest of the night right after the last panel of the day.
\n * You haven’t shaken hands with people who look and act nothing like you
\n * You haven’t had dinner with complete strangers.
\n * You’ve stuck only to your clique of people that you see daily back at your hometown.
\n * You haven’t attended the EFF \/ EFF-Austin \/ Creative Commons Party on Monday night (free drinks! free food! live music! delicious food! (I should know, I’m responsible for getting it))
\n * You left Austin without fifty business cards of new contacts you expect to email at some point soon.
\n * You left Austin without the intention of calling 3 new contacts to meet up within 2 weeks of getting home
\n * You haven’t crashed every clique you see
\n * You aren’t smiling and smiling BIG
\n * You are talking more than listening,
\n * You haven’t had a conversation or at least said “hi” to me, David Nunez.
\n * You don’t have an orange, happy face sticker on your badge.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hmmmm, I happen to have a few smiley face stickers left. Wonder how they will go over at my next conference stop in Albuquerque, at Museums and the Web<\/a>?!?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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What is it about SXSW Interactive<\/a>? It is just a conference after all. But honestly, it is unlike any other conference I attend. It is simultaneously visionary and insane, brilliant and ridiculous, inspiring and intoxicating. And it dawned on me that whoever named this conference nailed it. The whole point is to interact with each other. To share your wildest dreams, ask preposterous questions, make and renew scintillating friendships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glendathegood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}