Quick Jabs
- I love BUR
- SJC has a very nice airport
- Having flown Delta almost exclusively the last two years, I missed the at-your-seat entertainment screens. Not to be entertained but for the flight tracker
- Salt Lick in AUS airport is okay but I don't come to Austin for the BBQ. I'm all about pancakes at Magnolia, pizza at The Onion, muffins at The Hideout, and as many meals at Moonshine as possible.
- The Powerskin MyTouch 4G charger was the best pre-SXSWi buy and has already paid dividends. I've never been in fear of running out of juice all day and my phone has been in use since 5AM. I picked that up based on an additional tip from Andy Baio (http://waxy.org) on Michael Pusateri's blog.
Longer Thoughts
Location, Location, Location
Gowalla (my favorite), Foursquare, Google Places, and Facebook Places regularly come up. The two major updates in service from Gowalla and Foursquare and the planned changes to Places means that these will be the big news of the conference this year...and the ones that likely most smell like opportunity to those marketers and Suits hanging out at the Convention Center in large quantities this year.
It's Bigger Than Geek-Hop
A common theme of the early conversations amongst the veterans of the conference that I've spent time with so far is about the size of the conference this year. More people, bigger sponsors, multiple campuses. It's a lot. The biggest change is that Interactive isn't just for the startups and web nerds, the digital space has become THE core of the business for many industries old and new so that means amongst the technologists and creatives and thought leaders, there are now a lot of marketers and, for lack of a better term, Suits. The fear is that will mean less opportunities for those serendipitous moments, fewer chances for the folks who actually make this stuff to connect, and an increase in the noise. And if those things aren't there anymore, how much longer can we justify the cost of attending?
Maybe we're worrying too much, though. Today's activity proved there's still moments of magical happenstance. A stop for coffee led to randomly running into old friends, an interesting mix of people, and an hour's worth of smart chatter and proof that Austin is still weird. A planned dinner for 3 turned into 5 people crowding in to a car and laughing the night away over breakfast foods.
Maybe you still got it Austin.