Like many people, I left Austin with a lot to think about. I feel as though I spent six days taking information in and just stacking it up in my mental overflow lot to wait until I have time to process it (that would be this weekend).
The conference is all about the immediate and the instant, which makes it a shift for me, as my preferred method of interaction and consumption is long-form: long chat, long article, lots of time to think. So before I wander back to my old ways, here's a short show-and-tell on the week gone by.
Instagram is excellent fun
I totally love this service and I'm not alone – we all went a little nuts on it. Instagram turns just about anyone into a decent photographer (Mike Laurie disagrees with me on that but I think his photographic bar is a little higher than mine) and the shareability is so addictive. I am a huge fan.
Austin: such a cool city
Austin is a quirky, laid-back city filled with great bars (O Lustre Pearl!) and friendly people. It's very welcoming to visitors in terms of the effort the city lays on for the conference, one of the most useful of which had to be the fleet of pedi-cabs racing round the city in dedicated pedi-cab lanes.
Another thing I love: the wild, gorgeous, retro-looking signs on South Congress Avenue.
It's about learning new stuff
A SXSW veteran advised me to stick to sessions on things I knew little about. It's good advice. While I couldn't help but attend four chats on the future of news (two were good, one was ok and one, on what WikiLeaks means to journalism, was utterly fantastic), but I did dip into something new: games.
As Anjali said in her post from earlier this week, gaming was a big topic. I have always held gaming in a bit of a low regard, partly as I thought it was all World of Warcraft types sitting in darkened rooms for days on end; mostly because I didn't understand what it was all about. What a misinformed judger I was. I am *so* fascinated by game theory and am as we speak trying to get my head round it. Good advice from that @MelEx.
People are friendlier than you'd think
If you go to SXSW and keep to yourself, you're missing out. For me, the biggest part of the conference is the people I meet. This year I was lucky enough to meet some amazing, inspiring people. It's more than a little unnerving to walk up to someone you pretty much idolise and say hello, but at SXSW, that little step can easily lead to lunch with a new friend.
We are so lucky to work with Skype
Our own Anjali Ramachandran chaired The Last of the Launch-and-Leave 'Ems, a panel dedicated to finding a new way for agencies and clients to collaborate once a platform or service is built and running. It's a tricky transition to navigate: neither party can walk away, but an agency usually needs to ratchet down involvement, and that can be difficult.
Speaking on the agency side were Mel Exon (BBH Labs) and Conrad Lisco (R/GA). Representing the client's interest was Peter Parkes, social media lead at Skype. Peter was the star of the panel – articulate, focused, funny and totally unafraid of calling time on the typical agency approach:
Often we get approached with things that are more representative of the politics of the agency than what is useful to consumers. The work should be in the client's voice, not the agency's. This makes handover possible.
We're genuinely enjoying working with Peter and we're learning a lot from the Skype team. It comes as no surprise that other agencies were tweeting about how much they would like to work with him.
It's good to be part of a family
This year's MxM contingent rented two houses just down the street from each other: the yoof house and Sunny Acres, the old people's home. Sharing a home with my colleagues was unexpectedly great. It meant catching the odd bit of down time together and laughing at silly stuff. We got to know each other a little more, which was nice.
Sat around the breakfast table working, uploading photos and checking in with families and the office over Skype, we Sunny Acres residents joked about being part of some sort of highly dysfunctional, web-dependent family of the not-too-distant future… but it's a family I'm happy to belong to.
For all the growing up we do, we don't change all that much
The surprise bonus of my week was a visit with Jamie Travis, my grade four car pool buddy and now an award-winning filmmaker. We hadn't been in the same room in close to 15 years but Jamie and I recognised each other instantly and had a really lovely, life-affirming catch-up. His latest film is screening at SXSW today and I'm sorry I won't be there.
