Complete Immersion at South-By
Yours truly loving this powder day at Chatter Creek Cat Skiing over New Year's 2010.
Due to a recent injury, I’ve been forced to take a little break from heli skiing. Of course, I am devastated, but, on the plus side, this gave me a chance to do some other things with my time during winter for once. A couple of weeks ago, a good friend of mine suggested I visit possibly the world’s most influential festival in music, film and everything- the-internet, none other than SXSW (pronounced south-by-south-west), or just ‘south by’ to the indoctrinated.
So, I hopped on a plane, jetted out to Austin, Texas, couch surfed with two cool, amazing locals who fortuitously lived just 2 blocks from the epicentre, and experienced ‘complete immersion’ with the 20,000 other attendees. There is no other way to describe South-by, and I expect Burning Man has a similar impact.
A young entrepreneur being interviewed from Hipmunk (Ashton Kutcher invested in them).
I could not have imagined the enormity of the event, in terms of both the volume of people, the interesting engagements we shared, nor the amazing overlay on such an exciting, vivid, and totally cool town that Austin is.
Not to be cliché, but I met so many interesting, and friendly people, passionate, and doing really interesting things in their part of the world. I have never seen such a high concentration of i-everything, and Steve Jobs look-alikes , nor learnt so many ‘in vogue’ terms. I had no specific objectives other than to network, and learn about the possibilities emerging now on the internet, and boy, was I indulged. There were no less than 30 sessions of panels, presentations, workshops, films, book readings happening simultaneously at any one time, to immerse in.
Even the police are cool in Austin.
The infamous free beer and whisky tent kicking off at 3 ish most days.
Not to be cliché, but I met so many interesting, and friendly people, passionate, and doing really interesting things in their part of the world. I have never seen such a high concentration of i-everything, and Steve Jobs look-alikes , nor learnt so many ‘in vogue’ terms. I had no specific objectives other than to network, and learn about the possibilities emerging now on the internet, and boy, was I indulged. There were no less than 30 sessions of panels, presentations, workshops, films, book readings happening simultaneously at any one time, to immerse in.