My SxSW Interactive 2009 Highlights

Posted Mar 19, 2009 // 0 comments

This was my first year at SxSW Interactive and it lived up to my expectations. Here are some of the highlights.

• My favorite: Tuesday's Keynote Interview of Wired's Chris Anderson on the economics of free (new book in June)
• The parties and networking - I met some really cool people and had a fun time.
• Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com, gave a heartwarming presentation on customer service and hiring for culture. You can see the slides here:http://www.slideshare.net/zappos/zappos-sxsw-31409
• Open source is a hot topic. That simple. * Being surrounded by innovation and intense discussion for days was very refreshing.
• I learned some interesting stuff about what is going on in other industries. I hope to explore these in future blog posts.
• OpenCalais gave a terrific presentation at the Austin Semantic Web meetup. There were a lot of SxSW-ers there, so, it unofficially makes the list.
• The Ultimate Showdown of Content Management System Destiny: http://www.cmsshowdown.com/ I am listing this last because it didn't feel like an uber-competitive showdown, but it was interesting.