But, as last year’s event drew to a close I made the decision that I should be where the tech and interactive minds are as much as possible. Especially because I’m looked to as an expert in this field and I enjoy me some networking with the Twitterati. So, here’s the 3rd-person sharing of my steps, in a calendarized build-up, for this year’s event along with a quick (first-person) “what I expect to get out of SXSWi 2012. Enjoy.

March 2011 – Jeff wails loudly that he should be in Austin. He smiles because he saved $2487, but he still misses spending time with fun tech and social media folks. He also misses the barbecue and beer that is prevalent in Austin during SXSW.

Late March 2011 – Jeff reserves a room in downtown Austin for 21 days from March 2 through March 23, 2012. He doesn’t know what dates SXSW will fall on in the coming year, so he decides to take chance out of the equation.

April 2011 – Jeff calls his hotel – reserved for 21 days – and whittles down his stay to a mere seven nights. He still enjoys the smart rate of $249 per night at a top-notch hotel, instead of the prevailing $400-700 per night that is more common when you reserve a room anytime after August for the following year.

May 2011 – Mike Langford moves to Texas. This ensures that Mike and Jeff won’t be sharing the same room at SXSW and will therefore not kill each other. *The prevailing belief here is that Mike would have killed Jeff for his snoring. It’s a win-win for everyone.

June – Sept. 2011 – Jeff waits for JetBlue to put their March flights on sale.

Sept. 2011 – March JetBlue flights go on sale and Jeff buys a seat next to Steve Garfield on NerdBird 1.

Oct. 2011 – Nothing happens other than multiple conferences, speaking gigs, teaching sessions and other real-life ingredients. But we’re discussing the fairy tale land of SXSW, so these things don’t count.

Nov. 2011 – Jeff contacts the SXSW offices and asks them if he can use the pass he got in 2011 but didn’t use, for admission to the 2012 festival. They say YES! Jeff is ecstatic – and in his joyous response offers up his liaison services to the conference committee (thinking they’ll say, “no, that’s OK, we don’t need you” and he’ll get a free badge). That DOESN’T happen. They say they could use Jeff’s help and he is pressed into service, rendering his ‘free’ badge really not free as he has to work for it again.

Dec. 2011 – Feb. 2012 – Jeff works like a dog as a panel liaison. He starts prepping his liver for SXSW. And he contacts people like Aaron Strout, Peter Kim and Chis Anderson to arrange to see and hug them while in Austin.

March 2012 – The festival approaches quickly. Jeff joins Derek Peplau and John Refford in getting strategy together for their assault on Austin. Jeff also joins folks on a Google Hangout to discuss different events throughout the week. Finally, Jeff rents a banjo so he can practice during his downtime at SXSWi.

Goals and Aspirations…

For this year’s SXSWi, I’m looking to do five things. Yes, this is more than the three things your high-school English teacher said you should start with when writing an essay. Deal with it. SXSWi is a big event and three would be too few when it comes to goals. Therefore, I plan to…

1 – …collect and create and share content. Lots of it. I’m bringing a DSLR that I expect to have with me all the time. I plan to share photos to my Flickr site, videos to my YouTube channel and assorted content to Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and maybe some of my blogs.

2 – …take in at least a few educational sessions and actually learn something about technology, the world around me and the people who are making things happen in the aforementioned world. This will likely require me to be at the Convention Center during the day, so that will also happen. Look for me there. I’ll be the one who looks like me and I’ll be wearing an Adam Cohen name badge.

3 – …enjoy some seriously good food. The BBQ, Mexican fare and other dishes in Austin are great. I expect that some of the people mentioned in this post will also join me for a meal or two. I will be sharing information about the food I eat via my Boston Food Fan blog and various social media sites.

4 – …film an episode of NomX3 with Mike Langford. The chemistry, the humor and the intelligence in this show is unrivaled and we’ve come up with a plan to continue the series. Join us in Austin for a live lunch taping of the critically acclaimed NomX3. To see any of our existing shows, visit NomX3.com where you’ll find 45 episodes of genius and good taste.

5 – …discover some new technologies, meet some new people, and do some things I’ve never tried before. I’d like to experience some bluegrass music. I’d like to run into Lance Armstrong. I’d enjoy talking about new tech gadgets with companies that are there to unveil their latest products and services. These things will be details here, over at The Gadget Reporter, or in video interviews that I’ll post to YouTube.

That’s about it in a nutshell. How do you plan to capitalize on your SXSWi visit? What, if anything, would you want me to search out and report on if you’re not going to be there?

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: #sxsw, Austin, festival, food, mike langford, nomx3, technology, travel

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I just got off a couple big speaking engagements, I have a few more coming up fast, and I have client work that will fall by the wayside if I take this upcoming weekend to go ‘network’ with thousands of my social media colleagues.

Will I miss the barbecue? Will I miss the booze? Will I miss the conversations?

Most certainly.

If you talk to anyone, this event is worthy of your attendance if you do anything in marketing, technology, social media or content. It’s got a target audience that any brand would be thrilled to reach. And it’s one non-stop, energy-packed party.

But, if you chill your heart for a moment and take a look at the event with a green eyeshade on, you might see it differently. As I said in my post earlier this year, I wasn’t going to go if I wasn’t being paid to be there. It didn’t make financial sense then and it still doesn’t. Here’s the nuts and bolts for those of you that still scream, “but the booze is mostly free, the parties are all open and you can get food on the cheap! How can it be expensive?”

Let’s start with the hotel.

$2121.75 for a room at the Hilton Austin from 3/11 to 3/16

$489 for a roundtrip flight on JetBlue – the #nerdbird – if you booked by January 1. The flight no longer has space and similar flights are now upwards of $1400 for that same trip.

$500 for entertaining, meals, incidentals and so forth. This includes the meals you’re going to have to eat. The after-party drinking that takes place. The parties that don’t really give free booze. And the Starbucks you’re going to need each morning.

$2000 for the work I would leave on the table by being absent for six days – my clients often require me to work onsite, so if I’m not around I don’t get paid.

$1250 for the speaking gig I would have to abandon because I’d be out of town. My rate averages between $500 and $2500 for a training session, so it’s fair to price that as possible lost revenue.

So, if you take a pencil to these numbers, you can easily see – even if I estimate low – that I would be spending around $6000 to go south this weekend and party like it’s 2011. That validates my earlier post about not going if I’m not getting paid to be there. And it mirrors to some degree what some other folks have said about not attending this year either.

I still wish I were going. I’m gonna miss it horribly. But for me, there really are 6000 reasons not to go this year.

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: #sxsw, Austin, BBQ, convention, Jeff Cutler, mike langford, networking, nomx3, revenue, robert scoble, strout, training

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1. Coming face to face with a 20-foot Great White Shark while scuba diving.

2. Journey’s Wheel in the Sky.

3. It involved the Kremlin, Russia and a lot of tomfoolery…

If you’d like to provide your answers for this project, send them to me at jeff (at) jeffcutler [dot] com. I’ll put them in the queue and they’ll appear in the order received. *Also include your Twitter handle and one link you’d like included in the post.

Thanks!

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2010. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: aaron strout, Austin, flip the funnel, greg verdino, Jeff Cutler, joe jaffe, powered, salt lick, social media marketing, SXSWi

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There actually wasn’t much, but let’s dive right in…

Getting press credentials was insanely difficult this year. INSANELY. DIFFICULT. STUPIDLY. DIFFICULT. HORRIBLE. DIFFICULT. Get the point? It was ridiculous to the degree that next year I don’t plan on even applying to cover the event. And for a 21-year media veteran, that’s saying something. Was this 1940?

It was as if the organizers of South by Southwest decided early in the process that anyone asking for credentials was likely a blogger who just wanted a free ticket to the festival. I began the application process at the end of the summer and it took more than four months of emails and shared links and editors’ letters to convince the press office that I wasn’t freeloading and actually was headed to Austin to do some work.

Who does that? And what age are we living in? I supplied no fewer than five articles I wrote about last year’s festival and two letters of assignment from publications. On one hand I guess I was lucky. The PUBLISHER of a magazine I work for was denied press credentials as was his TV crew.

Maybe the festival gets enough coverage for having long lines, duplicated sessions and cramped rooms that they don’t think they need press coverage. In fact, the people I discussed the event with confided that they went to zero sessions and a SXSWi badge was an unnecessary expense.

In my case, my press clearance got me three things, a minor anxiety attack because as I waited for the press office to make a decision the ticket price went up by 100+%; four breakfast burritos at the one press event that promised access to corporate representatives from large companies (and didn’t quite deliver); and the ability to stand within spitting distance of Kevin Rose for 11 minutes at one evening event. Other than that, nobody checked my badge for entry to the Convention Center, the hotel session rooms, or the evening gatherings.

Then there were the lines. Not as bad as in 20o9, but still a bit crazy. In the hallways at the Austin Convention Center people leaned against walls and snaked through hallways waiting for sessions. It was as if the sessions were chosen without regard for how many people wanted to attend. Which is also insane because the sessions are picked based on an arcane crowdsourced process that is essentially a popularity contest.

But then when SXSWi staff decided what sessions were most popular, they inexcusably put them in the smallest rooms.

Conversely, the lines at night were a breeze. While 2009 saw people waiting to get into parties for 90 minutes or more, 2010 was different. I recall waiting abotu 15 minutes to get into the Foursquare event, but bailed on that when the rains came…even Ashton couldn’t keep us excited about getting drenched on the sidewalk when there were three other parties within swinging-cat distance.

Another – yet minor – thing that was less than stellar was transportation. I still can’t believe that none of the downtown hotels boasts a shuttle to the airport. They allow taxis to queue up endlessly, too. Which might make you think finding a taxi in Austin is easy. It is if you stand within seven feet of the Convention Center…otherwise you’re either walking or taking a pedicab.

Hasn’t this festival come to town before? Wouldn’t you think taxi drivers might make more money by spreading out a little? I guess I don’t know how things should work, but there were three nights of the four I was in town that I would have gladly paid a taxi for a ride across the city, but none were close by.

Finally, the last FAIL of the weekend was some of the technology. For an Interactive Conference, these four days were a bit disjointed. Both Foursquare and Gowalla were at war in the geolocation battles. The materials telling people how to find things onsite and detailing the session schedule were mostly still on folded and printed pieces of paper. And the fancy QR codes on people’s badges didn’t work because they were too small for an iPhone to accurately take a photo of.

Lest you think I was unhappy with my trip, please go back and read the post before this one. I loved the time I spent in Austin and next year I plan to stay for all three festivals. I’ll just be doing a few things differently. Mostly because I could save myself time, money and aggravation with a few simple changes.

I hope this post has opened your eyes a bit to some of the growing pains…or just plain pains…festivals can have. Even those that seemingly are the premier events in their class.

What was your show like? Will you buy a badge next year?

Share you thoughts in the comments.

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: #sxsw, Austin, credentials, failure, interactive, Jeff Cutler, media, south by southwest

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I’ve been back for about a week now and I’m finally caught up on sleep and have successfully ironed out the event-induced cobwebs in my head. That previous statement isn’t entirely true. I had forgotten about a NomX3 taping we’re doing soon at Turner Fisheries and had to be reminded about it by cohost Mike Langford.

But other than that, I’m back on point. So let’s get this party recap started…

South by Southwest is a three part festival. It’s Interactive (the part I usually attend) video and music. For the purposes of these upcoming posts, I’ll be detailing Interactive events and occurrences. Next year I hope to attend all three parts and then immediately go into rehab when I get home.

SXSWi – The Good…

People – I ran into so many great folks, both from home and from around the world. Here’s the short list…

Aaron Strout of Powered
Brett Petersel of Mashable and other smart enterprises
Owen JJ Stone of Inquiring Mindz Media
Summer Boone of 3ScreenTV and @SummerJoy on Twitter
Walter Elly of MicroArts Creative
Connie Burke of General Motors (yes, Chevy gave us a ride to one of our NomX3 tapings!)
Heather McCabe of Playboy (she’s a Web designer…settle down!)
Heather Jeff Strout of the Austin, TX Strouts – Beer, BBQ and Entertainment Magnates
Liz Philips of HP (a potential NomX3 sponsor and a charming person)
Shannon M. Vargo of Wiley Publishers
Brian Brushwood – the amazing and captivating magician and philanthropist
Julie Huls of the Austin Technology Council
Gary Lombardo of Brightcove
Danielle McGarrh of Kenichi Restaurants
and Jake Dilley and the Color Pharmacy, the kind band that gave us a ride in their camper.

The random photos…

And of course, the random memories…still all good…

A Winnebago ride at 4:30AM. Best pizza on the planet at Jack’s. Burrito trucks. Pedicabs. Late night networking at the Driskill. All night networking at various venues. Running around playing with Gowalla and trying to find Adobe prizes. Connecting with friends I haven’t seen in a year. Meeting Molly Wood and Tom Merritt from Buzz Out Loud. Watching Leo Laporte geek out at the Mashable party. Playing shuffleboard. Testing applications. Tweeting, eating and more.

That’s just a sampler of the good that happened at SXSWi this year. For a rantalicious post about the fails at the show, stay tuned. That post will be coming soon.

What did you like MOST about South by Southwest 2010?

Keep reading!

© Jeff Cutler for Jeff Cutler - columns, essays and opinions, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: #sxsw, Austin, Boston, connections, friends, interactive, Jeff Cutler, nerdbird, pete cashmore

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