critique

in my very jaded, not easily impressed, overly analytical opinion, sxswi is trying to be too many things for too many people. instead of focusing on 1 or two areas and doing them well they are doing a little bit of everything, not so well. i realize that the interactive portion is the red headed step child of the sxsw triad, but there is lot's of potential there.

it seems to me that they are spreading themselves too thin, they are trying to appeal to bloggers, vloggers, designers, programmers, gamers, business people, information architects, user experience professionals, the technorati, and all manner of geeks, and as a result, it is a one size fits all kind of conference.

in the end i found myself more disappointed than inspired. perhaps all the shortcomings could be chalked up to growing pains. the conference IS growing and trying to keep up with the ever changing interactive scene is no small feat.

perhaps it really is meant to be more of a social event and not so much an educational experience, i would most definitely give it another chance if the stars were to align again. i would just need to recalibrate my expectations next time.