Our team traveled to Austin last week for South by Southwest Interactive. We caught cool product demos, startup pitches, and sessions with some thought-provoking speakers (you can see photos from our trip on our Facebook page here)!
Now that we’ve had a few days to let the festival dust settle, we wanted to share our Top 5 Takeaways from SXSW:
- Embrace the chaos and choose your schedule wisely. It’s impossible to sprint across Austin 10x/day and you won’t accomplish much. Select the best content to meet your goals and pace yourself.
- Celebrities pack the house. Naturally, if you want to see Anthony Bourdain or Kerry Washington, prepare for long lines or camp out in the room pre-session.
- After parties and offsite events often steal the show. A gorgeous riverbank awaited us down the street from the Convention Center where we stumbled into offsite parties at The Chive HQ and one for film company Luma Pictures (visual effects on Thor, X-Men, No Country for Old Men) at The Four Seasons. Networking galore.
- Bicycles. Bicycles. Bicycles. They will save your life. Rent the bike share and glide in style.
- VR has arrived! Judging by the SXSW Trade Show, Occulus, Samsung, Google and others think we will be mounting clunky boxes to our faces and staring into a brand-filled entertainment abyss. Lord help us.
