sxsw - so much goodness - so much tiredness!

For the last few days, I've been attending SXSW. Having spent a while in Dallas and CA, I haven't been to the festival in a few years and well... it's different. Here's a photo from 2003 - the last time I/my company was involved with SXSW. We had a booth, we all attended the conference, and we handed out the web awards. Now they have famous people handing out the awards, the conference is packed, and booths are mostly big companies (not a boutique interactive firm to be found). Yay Austin. Yay SXSW. The parties were excellent, and having a houseful of guests and seeing people from all over the country that we all know and love has been so much fun. As one person said, "it's like a big class reunion," and he's right, it absolutely has that feel. I was talking with some Five Runs folks at their packed event and we all agreed - the social part of social networking is really our favorite.

Posts on actual insight from the conference... coming soon.

Obligatory SXSW Post

Kathy Sierra's talk at SXSWi focused specifically on how you can improve help for users by helping them find the right context when they are confused. Most context-sensitive help assumes that the user is in the right place when they access the help. But the fact is, the reason they need help is because they're in the wrong place. One very practical suggestion for doing this--capture some real conversation between a user and a support person where the support person is troubleshooting and therefore narrowing down the problem. Her related post on "The Best User Manuals EVER" discusses this in more detail.

SXSW is mind-boggling. I'm soooo not the social creature and am largely just absorbing information rather than participating in the party scene. I've seen some phenomenal panels (some not so phenomenal ones too).

(p.s. I'm probably not the ideal blogger, needing to periodically tune out of e-mail and computers altogether. I've met some delightfully unconnected people this week. They are immersed in technology but their lives aren't absorbed by it.)