Heading to SXSW
A little more than a month and SXSW Interactive will kick off in Austin.
I have just booked my flights and will head to Austin in a few weeks to attend as many interesting sessions as possible.
In the last couple of years, I have attended a few conferences, mainly in Germany. None has really broadened my horizon. 95% of the talks were uninspiring and simply were a repetition of common knowledge (at least for the people who spend a lot of time in the interactive world). Just a few of the presentations really gave an insight that you couldn´t have heard elsewhere or talked about their failures and how they had learnt from them.
This is exactly what I am hoping to take home from Austin: a lot of inspiring stories from people who are much better than I am in what they do. I think you can only really learn from people who know more than you.
I am still trying to get an overview of all the sessions available. There is an almost uncountable amount of sessions across the five days!
It seems like there is a session on every single aspect of “digital.”
I will need a little more time to build my schedule for the five days (and there is plenty of stuff going on at night, too).
However, the sessions are just one thing I am keen on to see. The other major reason to head to SXSW is to meet interesting people from all over the world. I am a strong believer that a good network is key to any success in business. I am curious who I will meet and who I will have a chance to talk to during the week in Austin.
To get prepared, SXSW created a great social network, where you can get in touch with every single attendant in advance. This allows you to get in touch with a few people in advance. It is a real great feature I haven´t seen on any other conference yet.
Seems I won´t get a lot of sleep; there’s so much to see and hear…
I will write as much as I can about my trip to SXSW here on this blog. I am sure there will be a lot to write about…
Are you attending SXSW? Do you have any tips or want to meet in Austin for a beer? Just email me or get in touch via Twitter.
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