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Why SxSW Doesn’t Suck

March 17, 2010
Filed Under: in Analysis, Bleeding Edge, Featured Articles, Social Media, Special Events, SxSW
Author: Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins

Welcome back.

image Like many of you, I woke up yesterday to a bitter post on Jolie O’Dell’s personal blog entitled “Why SxSW Sucks,” which has acted as some sort of magnet for many of the non-attendees of SxSW to unload their sour grapes sentiments about being unable to attend the festival. I had initially planned to respond in print yesterday when I read the post originally (and I did address some of her points directly in the closing statements of the SiliconANGLE SxSW live broadcast with Michael Sean Wright), but the more I thought about it, I didn’t get less calm, only more irritated. I woke up this morning fairly well rested after a grueling week of interviews and running around and didn’t feel less irritated, but more so.

Let me preface any comments I make with the statement that I normally respect Jolie O’Dell.  I monitor thousands of feeds daily, and her work has a way of standing out from the crowd. She’s had interesting perspectives and landed very respectable interviews.

Having said that, her statements about SxSW are making me re-think everything I thought I knew about Jolie. How can someone who has technical chops like her have such a myopic view of what’s going on there? I would have expected someone like her to actually, you know, seek out the best of the best and capture their stories. I mean no disrespect to the country of New Zealand, but that country allotting $900 Million to build broadband was not the most interesting nor cutting edge story of the week, and that was her sole actual bit of news submitted to ReadWriteWeb the whole event.

Meanwhile, Michael Sean Wright and I brought two to four hours a day of live programming, literally packed with guests and guest panelists, most of which had startups (both previously unannounced previously known offerings) with incredible and impressive technologies to display.  I could go down the list: Nova Spivack’s new LiveMatrix, or the always impressive WolframAlpha, or the Phonebooth offering from Bandwidth that could change telephony for the enterprise.

image Or I could point to the AI app Siri.  You know, a simple app you download to your mobile phone that can easily answer the question “give me the show times for that Johnny Depp movie tonight,” when asked with your voice.  The app that, you know, won that contest that her boss Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb judged?

For that matter, and I don’t bring up each one individually because I wasn’t present for the whole contest, but weren’t there 24 other startups largely unrecognized by most of the rest of us being judged in that contest? Wasn’t there a trade show floor showing new technology from companies like Rackspace, Microsoft, ThePlanet, AT&T and other giants of the tech space?

Aside from incidents that could happen in any major US city (like a hit-and-run, stolen property, or crowded rooms), her main gripes seem to be the following: she can’t find bloggable content and that all attendees of SxSW are “douchey.”

If she couldn’t find “bloggable” content, she wasn’t looking. I’m not exaggerating in the least here. Everywhere I turned I found interesting stories, and interesting image people to chat with. She clearly spent a great deal of time socializing (in her “[w]alking and skating around the city over the past few nights”), and with all the people she ran into there wasn’t a single one who had something interesting to say? ReadWriteWeb contains stories that don’t necessarily relate to direct company offerings. It’s a platform from which editorial and interviews can be launched.  She couldn’t turn on a camera and interview one person while she was there? Was everyone who interacted with Jolie O’Dell in Austin “too douchey” or something?

Then there’s the fact that a large portion who comes to Austin every year at SxSW come from the San Francisco area. If there’s truly unsafe streets and an overabundance of doucheyness, as she says, where do you think that comes from? Her sector in her city. Perhaps it’s time to rethink her profession?

Come to think of it, maybe this blog post was really all about her wanting to quit the business altogether. I can certainly understand burnout and on top of that being irritated over a couple of unfortunate incidents that take place at a conference, but if I was able to fill up fifteen or twenty hours of video with what I consider to be “bloggable content,” and she couldn’t find any? Then she’s a lot less good at her job than I previously imagined.

More to the point, I’ll be spending the next few days unpacking, editing and uploading that twenty hours or so of content and unveiling it here at SiliconANGLE. Keep your eyes peeled. For those of you who weren’t able to attend with me, you’ll soon agree that Jolie O’Dell was way off base.

[Editor’s Note: Photo credits (cc) Kenneth Yeung - www.thelettertwo.com and (cc) adrants. –mrh]

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19 responses to “Why SxSW Doesn’t Suck”

  1. John Furrier says:
    March 17, 2010 at 2:32 pm

    I found here reference to "do*$%y" very offensive and indicator of how far she is off base. There was plenty of tech going on and relationships being built. I say put her in NYC for a day then she'll see what the real "flow" looks like. Austin is a great town and that parties are part of the scene. It's unfortunate that she had a bad experience, but that could happen in any city with tons of action and "flow".

    Reply
    1. Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins says:
      March 17, 2010 at 3:07 pm

      Exactly - and it wasn't offensive necessarily because of the language (I've heard and said worse) - it was offensive because it was so patently untrue of a lot of the incredible folks I met there.

      Reply
  2. The Braindead Techcast Ep. 26: school’s us on the SXSWi that Jolie O’Dell missed - SeanPAune.com says:
    March 17, 2010 at 10:12 pm

    [...] SXSW Sucks – Jolie O’Dell Why SxSW Doesn’t Suck – [...]

    Reply
  3. have you aheard any news regarding blink 182 will they ever got back 2gether? | Ticket Tips and News says:
    March 18, 2010 at 2:20 pm

    [...] SiliconANGLE — Blog — Why SxSW Doesn't Suck [...]

    Reply
  4. Ben Metcalfe says:
    March 19, 2010 at 12:25 am

    Mark you are right that, technically, there were a lot of startups at SxSW. But frankly most of it was shite and/or not visible.

    When you say that you were able to produce hours of video from it, how much of it was honestly from companies that are doing anything interesting? (That's not a rhetorical question btw... other than the interview with Phonebooth I wasn't able to find any of the other video from you for SxSWi)

    "[why couldn't Jolie write about] Nova Spivack’s new LiveMatrix, or the always impressive WolframAlpha, or the Phonebooth offering from Bandwidth that could change telephony for the enterprise."

    Well, I didn't see LiveMatrix or WolframAlpha at the conference - where were they demoing? I walked around all of the trade show floor and spoke to many people. And what was announced or new? Phonebooth I did visit on the trade show floor, but didn't find anything they are doing interesting beyond the spin and hype of phone in the cloud. Nothing that put Google Voice, Skype, Vonnage or Asterisk in the shade.

    [or] "AI app Siri"

    I didn't see them either - and haven't they been out for a while now? Again, what's newsworthy here?

    "Wasn’t there a trade show floor showing new technology from companies like Rackspace, Microsoft, ThePlanet, AT&T and other giants of the tech space?"

    Yeah but RackSpace, ThePlanet and AT&T didn't appear to be demoing or launching anything new on their booth that I could see (I chatted to people at all three). Microsoft had a new version of the MS Surface - a proof of concept foible that isn't a commercial product. Whoopy-do.

    The issue here is the discerning eye.

    There was stuff to write about, stuff to blog, stuff to podcast/vlog. But 90% of it was crap. It might be "20 hrs of bloggable content” for you but anyone with a quality filter would be hard pushed to make much out of what was on offer.

    Finally, I think the glib comment that the unsafe streets and douchyness must come from SF is childish - based on what evidence, and what does this comment achieve?

    Reply
  5. Decompressing: How I Ran Through SXSW | TheLetterTwo.com says:
    March 20, 2010 at 7:28 pm

    [...] me. And while there have been posts written condemning SXSW as a place full of douchebaggery and others praising it for being a great one, I’d like to think that it was a bit of both. Now, don’t get me wrong…there were [...]

    Reply

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