SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST Interactive (“SXSWi” or simply “South by” to its friends) has somewhat brazenly announced that I will be the first inductee in its new Hall of Fame. The induction will take place during the 2012 Interactive Awards presentation in March of next year. There will be flowers and virgins. Well, flowers.

SXSW Interactive features five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology. Founded in 1995—the same year I started this website—the Austin, TX-based interactive festival attracts tens of thousands annually.

I hope this announcement will not negatively affect attendance.

Filed under: Acclaim, SXSW, Zeldman

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Mandy Brown, Roger Black, Daniel Mall and I discuss the state of web design and publishing at SXSW Interactive, Sunday March 13, 2011.

Photos courtesy Adactio. Audio element courtesy HTML5. Sorry, no transcript is available at this time.

Filed under: Authoring, Best practices, business, conferences, content, Deck, the, Design, Standards, State of the Web, SXSW

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This ad appeared on the back cover of the SXSW Interactive 2011 guide, given to all 20,000 attendees of SXSWi in March, 2011.

An Event Apart SXSW Interactive 2011 ad on Flickr

Filed under: Advertising, An Event Apart, Design, SXSW

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“WE KICKED OFF WITH a discussion on web platforms, perhaps the most widely-changing aspect of the web in the past 18 months. Zeldman began with a story about his efforts to check in to his upcoming flight to SXSW from a taxi cab in New York. He entered his details into his airline’s mobile app and clicked the ‘log in’ button, only to be taken to their desktop website which required Flash to log in, which inevitably, his iPhone didn’t support. How did this kind of user experience failure occur? …

“Moving on, the panel began to discuss publishing. The advent of plugins like Readability and a new product Roger Black is working on called TreeSaver allow readers to specify how they want to see content, and the advent of web standards means that content is generally separated from presentation, to the benefit of the reader. Zeldman made the point that the entire platform is for content, which makes it odd when some products are designed with the content being the last thing in mind.”

“The paywall quickly came up and the overwhelming ethos from the panel was “if you have exclusive great stuff, people will pay for it”. Dan Mall suggested that traditional publishers didn’t understand alternative modes of publishing and were attempting to price them at the same rate as their paper-and-ink versions. Mandy Brown joked that many publishers saw the iPad as their saviour, just like they did with the CD-ROM back in the 90s. She also made the point that despite its web-savvy audience, the A Book Apart project’s sales were 75% print. …

Jeffrey Zeldman’s Awesome Internet Design Panel (13/03 @ 5PM)

Paul MacInnes is the editor of the Guardian Guide and Matt Andrews is a client side web developer at the Guardian. Full coverage of SXSW 2011 at guardian.co.uk/sxsw

Filed under: Acclaim, Appearances, art direction, Design, Publishing, SXSW, zeldman.com

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20110312-NodeXL-Twitter-sxsw by Marc Smith.

From: www.connectedaction.net.

Connections among the Twitter users who recently mentioned sxsw when queried on March 12, 2011 scaled by numbers of followers.

A larger version (zoom for details) is available here: www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/5521097041/sizes/o/.

Filed under: "Found Objects", Community, SXSW, twitter

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SXSW INTERACTIVE is an amazing festival, conference, and annual gathering of the tribes—a place to see, be seen, and find out not only what’s happening on the web, but what will happen in the coming 18 months. The festival’s explosive growth—from minor music festival adjunct to megalopolis attracting over 20,000 interactive attendees this year—mirrors the miraculous growth of the internet itself. And the festival’s challenge echoes the challenge all internet community faces: in a word, scale. Not just the mechanics of scale, but the gauntlet of obstacles that must be overcome if a community is to grow wildly while remaining true to itself.

It is hard for someone who has not attended to imagine the scale of the thing—I flew here from New York on a JetBlue jet whose every passenger seemed to be attending this show; it was like a flying blogroll. For that matter, it’s too big for attendees to completely comprehend. It’s like New York City that way: you can visit, get a taste of it, you can even move there and be part of it, but you can never take it all in. And of course it is impossible for current attendees who missed the early years of SXSW Interactive to picture what the conference was like in the old days, when almost everyone attending knew everyone else personally or by reputation.

Each year I wonder if this will be the year the festival gets too big for its own good (or too big to be good), and each year SXSWi remains great—but great in a different way than before (again, just like the internet). Each year I salute the people behind this show. I could not even dream of putting on an event like this. I am a boutique guy at heart. I know how to make small things good for a select group of people with a certain taste and interest. The people behind SXSW cater to select needs and special tastes, too—but they also do massive. I’m looking forward to this year’s show, which begins today, and to my own panel and the panels and presentations of my friends (including friends I haven’t met yet).

As for the lost intimacy of SXSW that some of us long-time attendees lament, it isn’t really lost. The first trick is to show up on Thursday, before most attendees get here. Register early with short lines, then buy a water and sit anywhere in the vast conference center. Within five minutes, you will meet new people; within ten, you’ll see old friends. You can then go off with these new or old friends and enjoy a luxurious lunch table at a place you won’t even be able to get into after Friday.

Always arrive a day early. You will not regret it. My experiences yesterday and the memories I will take with me have already more than justified this year’s pilgrimage here.

And once the festival begins? Don’t be afraid to occasionally skip a panel and go off with people you bump into (whether that bump takes place in the hallway or on Gowalla and Foursquare).

Coffee drunk, cold pills swallowed, mischief managed. All right, SXSW. Thrill me, baby.

• My SXSW calendar on Lanyrd
• My SXSW calendar on Sched.org

Kristina Halvorson on the porch at Moonshine on the afternoon before SXSW Interactive begins. Part of this complete breakfast.

Filed under: Culture, Design, events, State of the Web, SXSW

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Attending the SXSW Interactive festival in 2011? Be sure to see Jeffrey Zeldman’s Awesome Internet Design Panel.

He brought us The Web Standards Project, A List Apart, Designing With Web Standards, A Book Apart, and so much more. Now legendary blogger, designer, and creative gadfly Jeffrey Zeldman brings us a SXSW panel.

You, the people, have spoken. We will not let you down.

Filed under: Appearances, SXSW, Zeldman

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Voting is underway for next year’s SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, TX, and members of Happy Cog have proposed eighteen panel ideas shown here. Follow the links to vote for your favorites, increasing the likelihood you’ll see them on the schedule in March 2011. Voting ends 11:59 PM CDT on Friday, August 27, 2010.

Project Management

1. Project Management for Humans (No Robots Allowed)

Panelists:

• Brett Harned — Happy Cog Senior Project Manager
• Dave DeRuchie — Happy Cog Project Management Director
• Sam Barnes
• Pamela Villcorta
• Rob Borley
2. Your Meetings Suck and It’s Your Fault

Presenter: Kevin Hoffman — Happy Cog User Experience Director

User Experience

1. Critical Thinking for UX Designers (Or Anyone, Really)

Dual Presenters:

• Russ Unger — Happy Cog User Experience Director
• Stephen Anderson
2. Guerrilla Research Methods — Live!

Dual Presenters:

• Todd Zaki Warfel
• Russ Unger — Happy Cog User Experience Director
3. Inside-Out UX: Clients, Expectations, Politics, Personalities

Dual Presenters:

• Whitney Hess — Happy Cog Senior Experience Designer
• Tom Daly

Design

1. Can Design Save Philadelphia? Happy Cog vs Cliches

Presenter: Christopher Cashdollar — Happy Cog Creative Director

2. My Title Is Web Designer, Now What?

Panelists:

• Christopher Cashdollar — Happy Cog Creative Director
• Samantha Warren
• Jay Fanelli
• Val Head
3. Nontent: Is Smashing Magazine Helping or Hurting Design

Panelists:

• Kevin Sharon — Happy Cog Senior Designer
• Mathew Smith
• Aex Giron

Development

1. Developers: Saving the Web From Your Dick Move

Panelists:

• Jenn Lukas — Happy Cog Interactive Development Director
• Mark Huot — Happy Cog Technology & Development Director
• Kenny Meyers
• Noah Stokes
• Paul Irish
2. Digital Bookmaking for Designers & Developers

Panelists:

• Brian Warren — Happy Cog Senior Designer/Developer
• Scott Boms
• Grant Huchinson

Personal Development

1. Jeffrey Zeldman’s Amazing Panel

Presenter: Jeffrey Zeldman — Happy Cog Founder & Executive Creative Director

2. Company Culture: It’s All Your Fault

Presenter: Greg Hoy — Happy Cog President

3. Panel Title: [ INSERT PANEL TITLE HERE ]

Dual Presenters:

• Greg Storey — Happy Cog President
• Greg Hoy — Happy Cog President
4. GeekFit: How to Embrace Technology and Healthy Lifestyles

Presenter: Robert Jolly — Happy Cog Client Services Director

5. Breaking Taboos: Pros Get Real About Money Matters

Panelists:

• Mark Hemeon
• Daniel Burka
• Joe Stump
• Whitney Hess — Happy Cog Senior Experience Designer
6. Maintaining Your Humility While Enjoying Your Success

Presenter: Whitney Hess — Happy Cog Senior Experience Designer

7. Bridging The Generation Gap: Or Is There One?

Panelists:

• Joey Pfeifer — Happy Cog Developer/Designer
• Yesenia Perez-Cruz — Happy Cog Designer
• Khoi Vinh
• Luke Dorny
8. Making Memories Capturing Your Awkward Social Media Years

Panelists:

• Kenny Meyers
• Luke Dorney
• Greg Storey — Happy Cog President

Filed under: conferences, Happy Cog™, SXSW

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In Should Publishers Attend SXSW?, Lorraine Shanley of Publishing Trends answers her own question this way:

Yes, because sxsw offers a chance to see options for the future—amazing gaming, interactive software, inventive marketing, creative content development and deployment. But as Will Schwalbe … said, “If publishers come to sxsw to create their own sessions track, they’ll learn nothing. If they come to attend panels on subjects about which they know nothing, they’ll learn an enormous amount.”

The PDF version of the April issue includes additional SXSW coverage (with nice things said about our panel and A Book Apart), data on how different generations find books, search engine conversion strategies, and more.

Download PDF.

Filed under: Acclaim, Formats, Publications, Publishing, SXSW

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Left, Mike Monteiro. Right, yours sincerely. Captured at SXSW by Scott Beale.

(My SXSW photos. Scott’s SXSW photos.)

Filed under: better-know-a-speaker, Design, events, State of the Web, SXSW

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