Our SXSW Experience

From a company birthday to the celebration of New Years Day, nothing really tracks another year or us like the coming and going of SXSWi; it is that annual conference we all look forward to each year. It is however much more than just a conference; it is truly for us an annual convergence of a community. It is that time of year that we reconnect off twitter and mailing lists with industry colleagues (and friends) and when we finally put that new avatar to a face, meeting for the first time many new and exciting people that drive this community and inspire us so.

We thought we’d share some of the highlights this year that really got us excited about SXSW.

While we all enjoy a good party (or HappyHour), we definitely look to get a lot of the panels (sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t); here is a round-up of top favorites from the group.

Lauren Moon

An actual favorite of all of ours but most specifically of Lauren’s was Paul Annett’s (of ClearLeft) “Oooh, That's Clever! (Unnatural Experiments in Web Design)”. Paul did an amazing job of really getting the designers (and developers) in the room to literally think outside the box. It was more than just clever favicons and 404 error pages (of which he actually listed none), Paul with his amazing presentation skills and great British whit used a terrific magic analogy to articulate the importance of presentation in design. By looking at what makes a great presenter and showman in magic we develop this different perspective of how appeal and further engage our audience through design on the web. It is one of those panels where you had to be there to fully appreciate the message and left us on the edge of our seats wanting to go back to our rooms and “try that”! In a hast to get our own redesign our before SXSW, we’ve left out a few hidden Easter eggs that we plan on implementing soon; we hope you keep an eye for them and enjoy!

Michael Dick

A Zeldman lead panel is always a sure bet to be among our favorites, and this years “From Freelance to Agency: Start Small, Stay Small” was no exception, especially for Mike. Along with Roger Black, Kristina Halvorson and Whitney Hess; Jeffery Zeldman (of HappyCog) did a terrific job of moderating a group of talent that has gone freelance and of whom some have gone on to develop top respected agencies. This was of particular interest to the team here at nclud as our entire model is built around culture and the desire to start small – it was very interesting to hear the insights of respect talent in the industry to see where our thoughts match-up and differ, for better or worse. Above all else, it was great to hear like-minded leaders in the industry share their thoughts on creating a culture and maintaining that culture with respect to the size of an agency. We like staying a small agency and there are a lot of obvious reasons why, the largest being our ability to keep our culture in tact; never letting the business of running our business over shadow the agency we sought to be.

Dan Drinkard

Dan lives above our heads and we think he likes it that way; we also enjoy his passion for the more technical nature of this industry, which is where the magic really happens. By far, the most inspiring panel Dan sat in on this year was Kent Brewster's (of Yahoo!) "Kick-Ass Mash-Ups with Punk Rock APIs." Yeah, we know what you're thinking--why would you even go to something with that name? Well, Dan did, and from what we hear, it was awesome. Ken had Dan at “Hello” or something to the effect of "every public site has an API, whether they know it or not." Kent showed off some of the exciting stuff he's built with Yahoo! Pipes, and to be honest, It blew our minds a little. We’ve played with pipes a few years ago, and while it's always been a powerful, easy way to splice, filter and manipulate feeds, it didn't really strike a chord with us until we learned about one of its more recent features, YQL (Yahoo! Query Language). It was extremely interesting to hear Kent describe how you can scrape content from a public website. From there it's dead simple to remap your data as you wish and output to rss, json or a pre-made badge. This comes in especially handy in cases where an RSS feed isn't available for the content you want. It was very insightful to hear what Kent was doing with APIs an YQL; really got us thinking and getting us excited for some of the ideas that have been hatching in our heads!

Martin Ringlein

I got a lot out of this year’s panels, but as an aspiring professional “Information Architect”, the most insightful panel for me of the year was Nick Fink’s (of BlueFlavor) “Wireframes for the Wicked”. Nick lead a panel along with Donna Spencer and Michael Angeles where a variety of topics and issues were covered from the basics to the experienced pitfalls and tips and tricks of IA. I think Nick did a great job of keeping the interest of both the novice and the expert, a hard thing to do with just 45 minutes. The biggest take-away for me was the covering of the different types of wireframes and a detailed explanation from three veterans on when to use each as appropriate for scope, schedule, budget and client. Knowing how to wireframe and that process is fundamentally important, but knowing what process is right for what situation can often times be a very difficult thing to do.

HappyHour!

Now that we got the panel mumbo-jumbo out of the way, lets talk about the parties. This year was a big year for us, as we are much bigger than years past – double the size actually. It was great to be able to bring the entire team down to SXSW; to really immerse ourselves in this community we are so very much a part of. For Lauren, Doris and Michael, this was really there first live exposure to the community we talk about so much; a first introduction to many of the names and avatars we talk to and talk about (always positively, we promise).

The amazing talent that leads this industry we are proud to call our “friends”, it is that discussion, ranting and raving, over drinks that really helps spawn our passion for this industry – to want to contribute and push the limits of technical specifications as well as design trends. From new local talent to the experience designers and developers, we have a solid respect for the members of this community – a large part of our culture is being a part of this community. It felt great to have the entire team together in Austin to be a part of that with us, many for the first time.

Also, a special thank you to everyone who played with and helped us "beta" test our HappyHour! web application. We had about 1,500 people using it each day during SXSWi, which was much higher than we expected, very exciting. The SXSWi version was just a small taste of what it is to come, but we really appreciate the support and feedback we've received. We are excited as we continue to work on the next iteration of the "big idea". We'll be out of pre-game mode before SXSW 2010 for sure (hopefully).

We can’t wait to see everyone again next year!