First impressions stepping into the convention centre — where the bulk of SXSWi activity takes place — was of overwhelming excitement. Registration was fast and easy and after getting the event catalogue I realised some tough decisions needed to be made. With so much on offer to see and do I wasn't sure where to start.
I came to SXSWi with a goal to discover new technologies which could help TAK! in the future as well as examine whether graphic / interface design excellence is a lost art. Over the past year or two I've gotten quite bored with the state of the web and how design can appear so cheap in comparission to other creative mediums (ie: print, motion etc.) So at SXSWi I wanted to find out whether the internet today (and tomorrow) is more about content and social networking than unsability and interesting design.
Upfront, my opinion is that the very best sites should do everything. Visually they should stand out from the competition, work well and be feature rich. Not wanting to blow my own trumpet but TAK!'s community site StickerNation covered a lot of bases — where great content sat within a visually inspiring look and feel; still today we get a lot of emails thanking us for doing that project and how it inspired them to get involved in street art or web design.
The first talk I went to was Design is in the Details by Naz Hamid from Weightshift. I caught the 2nd half and although Naz didn't cover any new ground, he did reaffirm the design process and made me feel better that people out there do strive for good design online.
The next panel I checked was the How to Rawk SXSW — a fun primer to the festival with a good bunch of speakers.
After that I decided to get some food and see if I can find a cheap iPhone and small gifts for loved ones. I forgot how big this place is, and an hour was spent walking a couple of blocks and discovering nothing but eateries and roads. I did stroll past the Childrens Museum which looked pretty cool. Nice characters!
On return I proceeded to check out Ellis Labs' presentation of version 2 of Expression Engine. I've not heard of Expression Engine before but a quick check of the internet during the SXSW Rawks panel I realised it was a session worth investigating. Expression Engine is a well priced CMS which seems to be both powerful and desincentric. What they presented literally blew me away. Of all the features on display the sheer innovation in the interface was the thing which impressed me the most. Shit was shown that I didn't even think was possible. From the reaction from the more technically minded, it would seem the CMS itself is very good behind the scenes being fast, scalable and customisable. It's something TAK! will definately look at for certain projects.
After that conference I got stopped by a chap from Utterz who took my photo and interviewed me. Straight after that my good friend Ben Hostler from Beef spotted me — he's at SXSWi representing Bristol on a very similar thing to myself and the West Midlands Massive. At this point we both realised our 3.30pm panels were starting and I quickly rushed to check Great Design Hurts. Unfortunately the room was full and so I ended up missing the talk which I wanted to see most (shit). The talk seemed to tackle the question which I have come here to research. From the pre-talk blurb — great design does hurt and doing something new and different is scary, but worth it. From what I gather all the talks will be available to download afterwards - so all is not lost!
More updates from SXSWM