1. Mobile devices are finally IT. It's all about the mobiles.
It's possible to manage on just wifi, depending on your city, but an all-you-can-eat data package is still pretty much essential. I'm managing without while roaming, though, but Austin is very wired (KEEP AUSTIN WIRED). Most people here have iPhones, and the rest have googlephones or blackberries. Top apps: Twitter (obviously), FourSquare, google maps.
2. Werewolf in all its forms is just plain evil. And completely addictive.
3. Location and privacy are going to be our biggest struggles for the next few years. Trying to manage privacy while broadcasting a fantastic amount of location-based data is going to be entertaining.
3. Twitter works best in smallish groups, and it really needs private, user-created channels. Non-SXSWers are annoyed by the level of sxsw-related mundane blather from people here ("we're in the Hilton playing werewolf! Where are you?" = folks elsewhere: "oh shut UP ALREADY"), but that same blather is exactly the location-rich data that's making Twitter useful here. Shame we can't take it into some sort of backchannel. There's probably an app out there that does this, but I haven't found it.
4. Games are oddly represented at SXSW. It's very non-AAA (excellent), but also still a bit small for my liking. The how-to-be-indie panel was excellent, although the panel was all the Big Successes and actually people would probably learn most from stories of failures. If someone asks, how do you get successful (and it's happened in both the indie-games panel and the indie-tv panel), the answer is: "have a really great idea, work really really hard on it, and raise money by mortgaging your house or begging from friends and family." The million-dollar question is then, how do you know if your idea is really great before you embark on this long and financially-terrifying venture, how do you know you're doing the right thing? And of course no-one can answer that for you.
In other non-news, the games most people are talking about are sociable ones. Werewolf, FourSquare and the like.
5. Be nice. There's a huge emphasis on this now. Post greed-based economic crash? Or just tech hippy tendencies? Either way, it's sweet, and everyone's at it. "Don't be a douchebag producer", says Felicia Day. "Be nice, be kind to people", says the Waxy-led panel yesterday..
All the iPhones managed to bring the Cingular (cell) network in downtown Austin to its knees.
A "why my game failed" panel would be interesting if you had the right speakers, you should pitch it for next year!
Posted by: Sean | March 16, 2009 at 15:07
Hah! Nice idea :)
Posted by: Alice | March 16, 2009 at 15:16
>Non-SXSWers are annoyed by the level of sxsw-related mundane blather from people here
Agree, though I am getting some value out of live-blogged/live-twitted game-related panel posts.
I'm getting them via FB cause I'm not on twitter, due to the non-SXSW-related mundane blather issue.
Posted by: Kim | March 16, 2009 at 17:54
"The million-dollar question is then, how do you know if your idea is really great before you embark on this long and financially-terrifying venture, how do you know you're doing the right thing? And of course no-one can answer that for you."
This is exactly the same problem that's dogging video/filmmaking/call it what you will right now. Felicia Day may say "you can't make something viral", but if you also can't tell if something's going to be viral, that implies some rather specific things about business models that aren't viable (anything even vaguely long-form).
Did anyone have anything resembling a solution?
Posted by: Hugh Hancock | March 16, 2009 at 18:10
The only problem with the werewolf game is that it's running on SXSW time - not so great for people in the uk ... :-(
Posted by: neil h | March 16, 2009 at 20:38
The back channel app is called http://www.tweetchat.com and uses hashtags. In case you don't know hashtags (where have you BEEN? ;), just append #sxsw for sxsw posts, and you'll be able to follow that tag on tweetchat.
I haven't yet seen an app that allows you to exclude hash tags (or just temporarily block users), though.
It all plays into a wider topic - anybody who tries to stay up on several social networks + blogs + rss + whatnot will (in my case sooner, rather than later) need automated attention management.
Strangely enough, there aren't even any decent google hits on the topic... I guess I need to write something up ;)
Posted by: Rachel Blum | April 08, 2009 at 22:39