Day 1 of my SWSX I (for me) was a sizzler.
Met the head of social media for Amazon, who kindly paid for our cab ride downtown.
Gary Vaynerchuk swore more in his keynote than I do at football practice. But his core message of “give value” to your fellow conference delegates before hitting on them for business smartly tackled the real curse of conferences.
I couldn’t get into my afternoon session, Power of Design Principles in a Connected World, and pouted over a pink Margarita at Manuel’s on 4th street.
Then headed to the SXSW newbies meet up and hung out with a Univeristy of Texas student named Jeff who will graduate this spring and head to Silicon Valley w PwC. This kid has already launched six startups in his life.
After that I went to a presentation by Octagon about reaching diverse consumer psyche groups through sports using multiple channels.
Minutes later I was at the Octagon party and three parties later it was a pricey Uber ride home to my hotel which is Oklahoma I think. (Actually it’s by the airport).
So what did I learn? My conference sucks! Okay not really. It’s not a fair comparison, because SXSW is part conference, part new business investment market, part job market, part party central, part motivational retreat, partly religious, and more than partly cultish.
In short, it’s an experience, amplified.