I have been back from Austin and SXSWi 2006 for over a week…and am just now reading over my notes and thinking about the panels and the things I learned. I haven’t had a chance to flesh out my thoughts and ideas due to being crazy busy, but there were some great presentations. I also met some new folks, and caught up with friends and colleagues. All in all, it was well-worth the 14 hour drive out there!

In lieu of posting tidbits here based on what I came back with, I decided to just post my notes. They are in plain HTML format, and mostly just links and ideas that I took down while in panels after connecting with something the speaker(s) said. As usual, I missed out on some panels that I really wanted to go to, like Design Eye for the List Guy. Paul Nixon and company took the popular craigslist and gave it a spin. There were lots of hard choices! Luckily, SXSW already posted video and audio from the conference for all to enjoy.

If you were there, and missed panels, you can check them out now by downloading those podcasts/videos. Or if you didn’t go you can see a sampling of what the hype is all about. I am glad I went again, and hope to be there next year as well. A sampling of photos from my SXSW trip can be had here, here, and here.

If you are attending the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin this year, and use Wordpress for your blog tool, you should come to the Wordpress/blogging meetup during SXSW.

It’s going to be on Saturday, March 11, 2006. Visit Upcoming.org to sign up, hope to see you there. Heck, even if you are just a blogger, you are welcome, I’m sure.

The Tucson Web Standards Group kicks off 2006 with a meeting on Thursday, January 19th, at 6:30 PM. For location and more details, see our Event page on Upcoming.org.

2005 was a great year as the Group got “re-started” after some time in hibernation. Let’s keep it up!

If you can’t be there, make sure to download the full list of podcasts from Web Essentials 2005 in Sydney. I just downloaded 12 podcasts, and am looking forward to listening and learning. One in particular: Molly’s first keynote!

Link to WE05 podcast page: WE05 PodCasts ».

Via: Veerle.

Austin was great, and a good choice for a conference/festival like South by Southwest. The music part of the festival was just getting started when Aaron and I left on Tuesday evening. Even though I’ve had a day or two at home, I am still trying really hard to process all the information and ideas that are in my head and in my notebook.

The biggest thing I wanted to take away from SXSW was a bigger picture of the web community, culture, and technology—which certainly happened. Though some topics were discussed were exactly relevant to my everyday life and work, almost everything could be taken and applied to what the work here at simpledream web studio.

Here are a few simple ideas that I learned:

• Balance and moderation are the keys to success


• Bigger is not always better (act your size)


• Do a few things well, and the rest will come later


• Web standards are alive and well

In case you were wondering: my two favorite panels were Design Eye for the Idea Guy and Making Big Things Happen with Small Teams. Both were great in terms of real-life examples of design and development principles.

Pictures, ideas, and more blog entries to come later as I process and review my notes and thoughts. In the meantime, James Archer posted some great shots already on his blog.

By the way, my favorite after-hours event was “Vox Nox”, where New Riders authors gave us their “B-sides”. It was great! Check out some photos of the event on Flickr.

Only three days left until the start of 2005 SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin. Tomorrow I hit the road with Aaron in “Scout”, the trusty Subaru Forester that will take us all the way to the Texas capitol and back. I’m severely excited!

This is my first time at “South By”, so it should be not only an eye-opener in terms of learning but also a good chance to share ideas, tips, and gripes with like-minded web design and interactive media professionals. The man who helped inspire me to get into the web as a hobby (then) and a career (now), Jeffrey Zeldman, will be opening the Interactive conference this Saturday with a keynote speech. From there it will be panels, award ceremonies, film viewings, get-togethers, and lots more.

I had a pretty hard time deciding between some of the panel choices, since there were superb topics and panelists at several coinciding times during the 4 days of the conference. Here’s my tentative schedule for the panels:

 Saturday, March 12th
 3:30 pm: How to Hot-Wire the Creative Process
 5:00 pm: How to Make Big Things Happen With Small Teams

 Sunday, March 13th
 10:00 am: DIY Now, or Someone Else Will
 11:30 am: How to be Beautiful: More Hi-Fi Design With CSS
 3:30 pm: The Elements of Meaningful XHTML
 5:00 pm: How to Build Your Brand with Blogs

 Monday, March 14th
 10:00 am: Does Design Matter?
 11:30 am: How to Inform Design: How to Set Your Pants on Fire
 3:30 pm: Startupland: A How-to Guide to Starting Your Own Company
 5:00 pm: Design Eye for the Idea Guy

 Tuesday, March 15th
 10:00 am: Typography for the Screen
 11:30 am: Low-Resource Rich-Application Development: Flash, .Net & CSS
 3:30 pm: Spam, Trolls, Stalkers: The Pandora's Box of Community

Of note are 3 fellow Arizona (at least!) residents besides Aaron who will be attending SXSW 2005 in Austin. James Archer, Paul Nixon, and Molly Holzschlag. The latter two I know are on panels—go AZ pride! James posted his tentative schedule last week, and Aaron posted about it today.

If there are any other Arizona South Byers out there, let me know—I’d love to talk to you and meet you at the conference. Also, for SXSW veterans, I know it’s late notice but any tips on what to bring and what not to bring? It should be a great time!