Re: [liberationtech] My SXSW exposé in the Washington Post!

2013-03-15 Thread John Adams 
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 1:08 PM, Shava Nerad  wrote:

Technically, that's a different conference -- SXSW/I is a separate event
> that doesn't even run the same dates, last time I went (though they
> overlapped).
>

It is all the same conference, That's why I have a platinum badge that
gives me access to all three parts of the same conference. They have always
overlapped.


> It means you get to go to the films and music and run your trip longer. ;)
>
>

No access to music unless you've paid for music or platinum badges, but
yeah.


> However, SXSW/I isn't just douchebaggery.  It just includes a great deal
> of it.
>

Go re-read what you just wrote.


> You get pretty much what you want out of it.  The past attendees vote in
> whatever panels they want to be presented, so it's a popularity contest in
> social media every year.
>

You're discussing the panelpicker process which doesn't work that way.
Sure, there is outside voting, but extreme levels of oversight from SXSW
itself.  Please see http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/faq


> Every year it gets more gamy and gamified.  But there is essentially a big
> marketing conference, a game industry conference, and a smaller public
> interest internet conference at the same venue -- with the disclaimer I
> haven't been for ages but I've watched the reports.
>

Somewhat, it doesn't exactly work as you've described, though. There is a
single, SXSW conference. The interactive portion takes place mostly at the
Austin Convention center, the Game industry conference takes place at a
different venue (Palmer Events Center), and the so-called public interest
panels and talks take place at the ACC and other hotels nearby depending on
the panel and available space.


> It's cool to go and it's cool to say it's completely past it's prime and
> useless to go.  It seems to me that anyone who went could make their own
> conference for any agenda they arrived with.  Then you balance that against
> how you feel about the Minority Report marketing feels to you and so on --
> but frankly, although for those who are in the nonprofit world this may
> feel excessive, to those in the commercial world this is normal to relaxed.
>  If this is a window into how the other half lives maybe we should get out
> of the ivory tower more often?
>

There's much in this paragraph that comes of as tin-foil hat levels of
paranoia, but I won't address them. Instead, I often wonder if non-profits
used more metrics and got their business acumen together if more things
would get done. There is so much reliance on hearsay and gut instinct that
everything comes across as poorly planned.

There's also the overwhelming reliance to assume that any sort of tracking
is 100% evil. You'd complain if people who didn't pay took your (paid) seat
at that EFF panel you wanted to go watch as well.

The level of fraud that happens at SXSW used to be very high -- they had to
incorporate RFID into badges and QR codes and a database to ensure people
weren't stealing $1500 badges. I don't agree entirely with the technologies
used but I do agree with people not being able to forge the badges.

-j
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Re: [liberationtech] My SXSW exposé in the Washington Post!

2013-03-15 Thread John Adams 
"I went to a corporate conference and exposed the corporate-ness of it."

See, if you'd stayed for music and avoided the douchebaggery that is
#sxswi, you'd not have written this article.

The counter-culture aspirations are all about music, which I assume you
have never attended.

I'm still there. For the music.

-j



On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 3:53 AM, Hamdan Azhar wrote:

> This past weekend, I attended South by Southwest Interactive in Austin. I
> wrote an article exposing corporate dominance of the event and the conflict
> between that reality and the counter-culture aspirations of the event's
> attendees. It was published in The Washington Post!
>
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/post/sxsw-2013-this-revolution-is-brought-to-you-by/2013/03/11/b47dfa10-8a95-11e2-8d72-dc76641cb8d4_blog.html
>
> Enjoy :)
>
> Regards,
> Hamdan
>
> P.S. Follow me on Facebook  and
> Twitter , even Instagram!
>
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Re: [liberationtech] My SXSW exposé in the Washington Post!

2013-03-15 Thread Shava Nerad 
http://www.theonion.com/articles/sxsw-as-cool-and-as-real-as-it-gets-reports-market,31617/

The Onion scooped you.

I think I saw this guy at Burning Man...;)

Srsly, good job, but you know, Twitter had their coming out party there in
2007 at the first Interactive and I spoke there - most of the panels were
on marketing or the game industry.

But my ex-fiance performed at a steampunk benefit for EFF that made them a
lot of money and probably a lot of new adherents they'd never have reached.

I spoke at the seventh most popular panel of Interactive that year:
"Blogging Where Speech isn't Free" - among stellar companions.  The room
was full and likely over half the people in that room flew to Texas on
their company's marketing budgets.  Perhaps for them this was renewal?

There are different ways to look at it - waste, or opportunity, or a
combination of these (keeps you sane and in perspective, I suspect ).

Interactive is that new though - I don't think it's been a counterculture
thing at root ever.  How would you fund it?  Foundation grants?  That's
slow...

In this economy Austin is probably up against the wall funding their big
party though.  I'm not surprised they are dropping standards to trade-show
tawdry.  I suspect it's a survival compromise against maintaining scale.

They are braced for flak if they are smart, and ready to sit it out.

Ideally they will never become just a trade show, and stop democratically
selecting panel topics and doing the other cool things SXSW/I rightly
prides themselves on - but this kind of behavior could transform their
voting demographic, h?  The dangers of democracy.  That would have been
a nice point in the article.

Yrs,


Shava Nerad
shav...@gmail.com
On Mar 15, 2013 4:53 AM, "Hamdan Azhar"  wrote:

> This past weekend, I attended South by Southwest Interactive in Austin. I
> wrote an article exposing corporate dominance of the event and the conflict
> between that reality and the counter-culture aspirations of the event's
> attendees. It was published in The Washington Post!
>
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/post/sxsw-2013-this-revolution-is-brought-to-you-by/2013/03/11/b47dfa10-8a95-11e2-8d72-dc76641cb8d4_blog.html
>
> Enjoy :)
>
> Regards,
> Hamdan
>
> P.S. Follow me on Facebook  and
> Twitter , even Instagram!
>
> --
> Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by
> emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at
> https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
>
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