Best of SXSW

by Thomas Lewis on March 18th, 2008

I have spent the last 2 weeks at MIX08 and SXSW. I won’t get into the whole Zuckerberg interview thing as it has been played out. I think the crowd was out of line and it tarnishes our community in the long term.

I was really glad I had the opportunity to attend the Interactive portion of SXSW. Having been involved in MIX08 planning and working on other Microsoft events, I was curious as I had heard a lot of great things about SXSW. There are a ton of blog posts and news about SXSW so I won’t go into gory detail and just give you 2 simple things.

One, the keynote with Frank Warren who discussed his website postsecret.com (NSFW sometimes). This is a site where people can send in anonymous postcards with their secrets. Think of it as an online confessional. He posts 20 every Sunday on the site and it is amazing to read. Some are touching, human, and scary at times; but you get brutal honesty. He spoke how it started as an art project and has grown to something bigger. He shared some of his favorites with compassion and sincerity and included ones that were written by attendees who dropped them in boxes outside the keynote room. There was even a marriage proposal during it! Also, folks got up and asked questions and even shared their secrets. It was great to see something like this after seeing the other side of humanity from the previous day’s keynote.

Two, in the expo there was mimobot, who design designer USB flash drives. My favorite was rayd8 (pictured), but the guy before me bought the last 4GB rayd8! I was bummed! So I am asking my significant other to get me one for my upcoming birthday. They have all kinds of series like Halo, Star Wars and the famous Japanese Domo series. Not only did they give a show discount but also gave you a choice of a “Design Your Own” mimobot or a “Surprise” mimobot. I even saw one 20ish year old woman squeal when she saw them. It was great to see a company take the functional USB flash drive and make it something fun.