There are six-hundred-and-eighty-three proposal submissions for next year's South by South West, and once again it's up the the Internet to filter through all of them and choose which ones are worthy of becoming real events.
How absolutely absurd.
I didn't like the crowdsourced voting last year and with this astonishing amount of submissions I fail to see how the quality of the SXSW experience is going to improve. I heard a lot of complaints about the lack of quality in many of the panels so I don't understand why the conference leadership is extending the program.
The conference FAQ says:
If that was the case last year, then something about that process failed.
The biggest flaw in the current process is that panel selection is left to the general public, who have zero investment in forming the best conference possible. The only way to make this work properly is to restrict voting to persons who have paid in full to attend the conference, as they're the only ones who have a vested interest in creating the best experience possible.
So why treat it like a high school popularity contest? If SXSW really has an advisory board then they need to step up and do their job (Hugh if you need help in this area let me know, I've been dying for a good reason to buy a taser gun and/or cattle prod). Anytime you leave a portion of the curation process to the mob, it's going to severely affect quality.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
I agree. The wisdom of crowds. Harrumph.
Last year was the first time they crowdsourced it and it's also the first time in my memory that people said the panel quality was, for the most part, poorer than in previous years. That they didn't make this connection seriously irks me.
It irks me further that the whole system is just broken. Sure, they say they won't rely soley on the votes, but the only sway that the votes will have will be based entirely on this total popularity contest. Nobody's going to look through all these submissions. Whoever drives enough traffic to their panel will "win".
I'd like to see statistics measuring how many of the people who vote actually attend.
Also as the person above me stated, nobody's going to look through all these submissions.
Seems like the SXSW organizers are getting a bit lazy, outsourcing the big job of panel picking to the crowd, and the panel picker itself is heavily influenced by Gmail.
If Apple were to do this, they would be Microsoft.
> Whoever drives enough traffic to their panel will "win".
Precisely. I have a feeling that's the only reason why my panel made it in last year. I would have felt better about the whole experience if a group of my peers would have selected my panel proposal, not a damn HREF tag.
Couldn't agree more!
And also, the ones that get picked will be the ones that get the widest audience hit. Meaning that there could be some real gems that never get voted for, simply because they get lost under the dogpile of submissions. Absolute chaos.
I actually enjoyed the quality of quite a few panels I saw. The better ones, however, were usually the more poorly attended ones. And whoever came up with the idea for a "half session" (or better yet, the shmoe who decided which talks got halved) needs to be drawn and/or quartered.
Ah, pickles. Brian beat me to the punch on my point. =)
I'm wondering if this was a marketing decision, because you know everybody that submitted a panel is going to blog about it, starting off the buzz machine 6 months ahead, with some time left to book a flight and hotel.
> I'm wondering if this was a marketing decision
If it was, it's a poor one. SXSW doesn't necessarily need more hype, it needs to learn how to scale without sacrificing quality.
I think it stems from a larger problem being the conference organizers aren't personally aware of (or perhaps don't care) what the best, most relevant topics are.
It takes people with a passion for the industry to make a great show, as you see with An Event Apart, dConstruct, and other smaller events.
SXSW is a business venture; so they probably think if the masses decide on the content, more of them will likely attend. So from that perspective it's a potentially lucrative, and easy way to organize it.
However, at this point more SXSW attendees are there to network and consume adult beverages than to actually learn something. So as long as the parties are plentiful people will pay for a badge.
Last year was so disappointing even from the ones I thought would be great panels. How can you find out about the effectiveness of the speakers before picking them?
Why does everything have to be digged?
> The only way to make this work properly is to restrict voting to persons who have paid in full to attend the conference, as they're the only ones who have a vested interest in creating the best experience possible.
The only flaw in this is that some attendees might not decide whether or not they are going until after the panels are picked, and would like to vote to make sure the ones that they want are picked so that they can go.
These are some very good points you make here.
The truth of the matter is that we have always relied on the web community to help program panels. This means that people would e-mail me and say "Hugh, I've got this great idea for a panel . ." So, in many ways, the Panel Picker provides a greater degree of transparency (and inclusiveness) to what has been going on for quite a while.
That said . . after last year's event, attendees made it clear that they wanted SXSW to be more involved in vetting the Panel Picker selection process -- and we certainly plan to do this in 2008. How does this vetting come into play? If two ideas have roughly the same voting totals, then various other factors will be examined. For instance, has the person who submitted the idea spoken at SXSW before? If so, what kind of ratings did we get for the the panel he / she participated on? Apart from the SXSW question, what kind of presence does this person have in the online community? Does he / she have experience with public speaking? If not, do we have reason to believe that this person will give a compelling talk? Did most of the voting for this panel come from the general online public -- or from people who have attended SXSW before (and / or who plan to attend again in 2008)? Is this idea already being covered by another session at SXSW?
Also, the goal at SXSW Interactive is to develop a program that covers a wide variety of topics and interests, as presented by a very diverse variety of speakers. Diverse variety of speakers means that we strive to achieve a mix of beliefs, genders, races, nationalities and conference background -- having the same group of panelists involved in the event year after year can get pretty boring. Again, this is where the vetting process from the SXSW staff and from the Advisory Board really comes into play.
Finally, after panel decisions have been made, SXSW tries to work closely with these session organizers (in terms of selecting other speakers and in terms of refining the direction of the session). Over the years, another lesson learned is that the best panels are the ones where speakers for a given session have communicated with each other beforehand. Despite our encouragement, this pre-event communication between speakers sometimes does not occur -- resulting in a less-then-steller experience for all parties concerned.
As always, we very much appreciate your feedback on how to continue to improve SXSW Interactive.
I know I will not be attending SXSW in 2008 (cuz my wife got knocked up), so I refrained from voting. I didn't feel it was right to vote. Also there is no way of letting the process down to those attending because most people are not buying their tickets now. In any regard, all this should be moot.
In the past I have enjoyed curated conferences because the conferences seemed to have had some vision. Last years SXSW seemed way too haphazard and all over the place and it was hard to focus. It seemed like certain sessions on similar topics met at the same time, some met on a floor that had some mystery elevator that got you there 15 minutes late and some presenters presented like 3 times (I love you Santa Maria!).
Also note: I think we need more teledildonics coverage.
South-by- wha?
I'm thinking we should start Ten Miles to Disneyland, a two-to-three day event limited to one-hundred people.
We'll show and tell some of our latest work while talking about our experiences in dealing with clients/co-workers, creative block, development issues, server problems, etc. from the beginning to finish of a project. More of a story than a presentation in effort to help others get ideas for how to navigate problems and find better, smarter solutions. Because if we can all learn how to improve the level and quality of service then we can all make more money.
We'll go through a few of those and then knock off for the day wherein we can network, frolic, and catch an attraction or two.
Agreed.
> I'm thinking we should start...
You had me at "I'm..."
Sign me up, Greg.
You had me at frolic. Greg, I want in on your conference.
I hear conferences smell fresher up north.
Actually Greg, how about we modify your conference idea slightly. Let's all head to Vegas, not talk about the Web whatsoever, go out to all the ridiculous clubs we can, and then get totally shitfaced in the process. South by North South?
Now that I've moved to the OC, I think *I'm* the one who's 10 miles to Disneyland, not thee in Mission Veeayhoh. ; )
This year was my first SXSWi and I was fairly underwhelmed. Some of my favorite talks were heady and abstract, but based on listening in on some side conversations people didn't like that, they wanted more tutorial-style info or recipes for success. Can't please everybody...
The Coudal/Dawes talk was worth the price/trip alone; it was immensely inspiring, covered a lot of ground and found a nice harmony between practical and abstract. Jim and Brendan are witty, funny and diverse dudes.
Having attended a session for almost every time slot available I left feeling like only about 6 to 8 were worthwhile. I'm also not into the networking thing or trying to get freelance gigs, so maybe I'm not the target audience?
I'm also pissed I missed the deadline for submissions; I had an idea last week that I think would have been good, but I didn't even realize the deadline had passed. Rats!! Maybe I'll just turn it into a web site instead.
And the whole digg style thing quickly turns to mud; we need MORE human filters, editorializing and select perspectives, not less. I've recently ditched my digg RSS feed as the static is far too high. Give me a few good expert perspectives over the noisy crowds any time.
> Now that I've moved to the OC, I think *I'm* the one who's 10 miles to Disneyland, not thee in Mission Veeayhoh.
Wait, what? I thought you hated (er, severaly disliked) Orange County. Also, it's Aliso Viejo. Mission Viejo is one cane-assisted step away from being another Seizure World.
> I had an idea last week that I think would have been good, but I didn't even realize the deadline had passed. Rats!! Maybe I'll just turn it into a web site instead.
Do that Dave and you're ahead of six-hundred-and-fifty other people who submitted proposals.
Hugh: Why not extend that idea by having the would-be panelists upload a snippet of their talk. That way you (and us) could rate their speaking abilities (filtering out the monotones) and get an even better idea of the route they're going to take their talk in.
Of course, it needn't be limited to audio...SXTube FTW!
I have only attended SxSW once... as a presenter. The quality of presentations overall was poor... and together with the 'party' emphasis I had pretty much decided this was not an event targeting me as a participant. Maybe it was just an off year.
I get the networking aspect and the cool factor of Austin. But if I am going to put a couple of grand and time away form the job towards a conference, it will be a conference where I leave with better methods, more insight and increased value in the job market.
As you might know/recall, my rocket scientist (err ... mad doctor) works at UCI Med Center -- so while the studio still resides downtown LA, we're the proud owners of a mid-century-modern pad in the foothills of Orange. We should coffee, mate ... OC needs some creative action. You know my addy.
It's like the NBA ALL-STAR game each and every year, very rarely do the players who actually deserve to be in the starting five make it. Instead it is all the guys who have big shoe deals and we see billboards and comercials about them every day. Like Steve Nash, who has won MVP twice and probably should of won it again LAST year, but somehow didn't make the starting 5.
I don't mind them allowing input from the public, but don't let the selection process rely souly on the public voting.
I'm thinking the QBN Session is the design presentation event of the season. Looks like fun. C'mon up redhead!
I'm starting to think SXSW is just getting too big for us little web designers these days. As it gets bigger and more well known in the "interactive" industry, more general technologists are going to come and want something significantly more watered down than what we would prefer...
They're probably getting twice as many people and they're all getting a lot out of it. Sadly, we're just not the target market anymore.
I still really enjoy going to SXSW. It's a fun conference that's pretty reasonably priced. On the years that the panels are great, that's a huge bonus, but I mostly go to hang out with my web design peeps. If there's a better conference for doing that then I'm in.
Flying to Austin to give an officially sanctioned speech about meeting and communicating online seems like a textbook example of being unclear on the concept.
Even if most of us disagree, some people honestly feel that anything popular, no matter how blatantly awful, must have some hidden redeeming quality. Why shouldn't their Emperor's New Music festival expand to websites?
OK,
Being a conference planner and frequent traveler to conferences, i'll say that SXSW is the only conference that gives you a chance to listen to some of most relevant technologists, futurists and social architects at a very affordable price point. Adding the ability to vote on content is a risk, and move forward in conference organization in my opinion.
Additionally, the community aspect is what makes SXSW unique and exceptional. They actually promote niche events happening around the core event! It is extremely unique to promote off-shoot events that are not produced by the core event..ultimately results in a loss of sponsorship funds.
Complain if you must, but SXSW leads the charge as a truely unique and affordable large confernce experieince.
> Even if most of us disagree, some people honestly feel that anything popular, no matter how blatantly awful, must have some hidden redeeming quality.
I went to school with people who think that way. They're still stuck in Alaska, pumping gas and serving fries.
> SXSW is the only conference that gives you a chance to listen to some of most relevant technologists, futurists and social architects at a very affordable price point...
That's IF their panels are selected. And "relevant" is relative.
But But if not for the unwitting masses, we wouldn't have stars like Taylor Hicks and Ruben Studdard!!!
Seriously though, this is just plain lazy. Personally, only a handful of panels were worth the time (I can literally count them on one hand). I don't care how awesome your panel could be, if it misses the vote (based purely on the general public), we get stuck with "Look at these vlogs! YAY!" panels.
And I daresay, none of the after-events worthed at all (I didn't get to partake in the bowling, which I heard was fun). Promoting "off-shoot" events is unique, but that doesn't mean those events are good.
I will be attending again, mostly due to the networking giant the conference has become. Also because it is a pretty good excuse to hit the bars downtown.
It is amazing and a little horrifying to see how large the conference has become over just the past 3 years, that I have been attending. With such a large amount of growth there are bound to be growing pains. I just hope the SXSW folks are able to work them out for 2008. I'm glad Hugh chimed in with the other aspects that are taken into consideration. And I hope that the panel selection committee can bring SXSW back to a conference that balances and mixes great information with great people.
Three years ago, was the best overall experience for me. I'm not sure if it was because SXSW was still sort of smallish and I was able to meet a lot of great people and I left feeling like I knew more about them then what I read on their blogs (if that is possible). Or if it was better because the quality of the sessions were much stronger.
This last year was frustrating for many reasons listed above... similar topics at the same time, half-sessions, mysterious rooms that you could barely get to in time to see the session.
I hope that this year people that are chosen for the sessions work together before the session. Please touch base at least once. It is very noticeable when a group hasn't planned their session. I know everyone is busy but when you take on the commitment to be on a panel it is a commitment. Also, I don't think the panels should be as large as some of them were in '07. I think some of them had 5 of 6 people and it was just too many people without enough time to say anything of real importance.
Greg, last year your panel was the best session that I attended (sorry Shaun, yours was my next favorite). And now I have finally done what you said and just started writing.
I agree as well. This isn't American Idol this is SxSW!
Focus on what you want to see/happen, rather than complaining what your perceived lack of things are. Come on guys. Invest the energy in doing your part to get the most out of YOUR sxsw experiance. Your milegae will increase dramatically. You can vent to cyberspace (can you still use that word) and feel the self gratification of being a nay-sayer.... Or you can try a different approach.
SXSW or anything in life, will be what YOU make it.
Back to you regular scheduled doldrums of mediocrity.
> SXSW or anything in life, will be what YOU make it.
Gee-golly, I feel better already. So do I have to sell poppies at the airport now or can I just make sure to wear something orange?
Poppies for everyone!