Personal Bloggers and SXSWi

Wow.

What a weekend. South By Southwest is an incredible experience that I think lots and lots of people, especially people like you who blog and tweet and maybe even work close to marketing or technology, should experience. I wanted to drop in briefly just to add my two cents to a sea of reports following the Interactive conference in Austin.

South By Southwest Interactive is billed as a technology conference, but in many ways it’s more of a festival. It has become four days filled with panels, workshops, and parties, swarming with something like 12,000 attendees. For me, the best part about the festival is those attendees.

From the perspective of a personal blogger, I’ll share some quick thoughts on why you might want to consider next year’s event:

1. Resources: SXSWi is chock full of educational and forward thinking ideas about blogging and how to do it better. These aren’t really ‘How To Make Money Blogging” as much as you’ll find
   workshops on social media platforms, suggestions on how to be more
   efficient with your time, and how you might really make an impact with
   your participation in the blogger community.
2. New Technology: If you’re a geek (and most bloggers are a little geek) this is like the Mardi Gras of beta invites. Everywhere you turn, you’ll find someone who wants to give you a
   t-shirt or gumball, PLUS an invite to try out their service. A lot of
   these services can be really useful for someone who’s online a lot, so
   you can come away with a toolbag of new things to try which might make
   your life a lot easier.
3. Community: Your community at SXSWi will continue to grow each day, but it starts with 20 Something Bloggers. I’d estimate we had at least thirty
   members in Austin last weekend, maybe more. When you consider all the
   other Gen Y/young adults in town for various reasons, you realize that
   the friendships you’ve made online will quickly turn into offline
   companions at panels and parties.
4. The Big Wigs: The crowd down there inevitably includes lots of the big names in blogging. Are you a Gary Vaynerchuk fan? Scobleizer? iJustine? Brian Solis? Heck, even the guy behind Texts From Last Night was in town (and I’m
   pissed I missed him, sorry Ben!). All your geekcruches are down there,
   and almost unanimously willing to chat with nearly anyone. It’s a great
   opportunity not only to meet some of the people you admire, but to see
   for yourself that they’re just normal geeks like you.

All in all, I know SXSWi isn’t relevant to everyone, but I have a wonderful time there and did my best to represent our community. I want to personally thank Ning’s great Advocacy Team for putting it all together, and you guys for being such an awesome group to represent!

Who’s going next year? Raise your hands!