Austin was great, and a good choice for a conference/festival like South by Southwest. The music part of the festival was just getting started when Aaron and I left on Tuesday evening. Even though I’ve had a day or two at home, I am still trying really hard to process all the information and ideas that are in my head and in my notebook.
The biggest thing I wanted to take away from SXSW was a bigger picture of the web community, culture, and technology—which certainly happened. Though some topics were discussed were exactly relevant to my everyday life and work, almost everything could be taken and applied to what the work here at simpledream web studio.
Here are a few simple ideas that I learned:
- Balance and moderation are the keys to success
- Bigger is not always better (act your size)
- Do a few things well, and the rest will come later
- Web standards are alive and well
In case you were wondering: my two favorite panels were Design Eye for the Idea Guy and Making Big Things Happen with Small Teams. Both were great in terms of real-life examples of design and development principles.
Pictures, ideas, and more blog entries to come later as I process and review my notes and thoughts. In the meantime, James Archer posted some great shots already on his blog.
By the way, my favorite after-hours event was “Vox Nox”, where New Riders authors gave us their “B-sides”. It was great! Check out some photos of the event on Flickr.
The Sensible Leader 