In the midst of doing some heavy lifting with a .net 2.0 conversion of our apps we found a little time to run down to Austin and immerse ourselves in everything South by Southwest. (Side note: One of the coolest things about working where we do is that everyone is constantly improved by seeking new ideas and perspectives - our organization has always supported that desire).
Though there were some forces against us (a run-in with a major accident on 35S and someone’s mid-road home improvement) we made it to Austin somewhat unscathed.
We started the day with a little Kathy Sierra - she basically rocked, no surprise. She brought up a lot or really solid thoughts on how users interact with the software we write and how we can tune it to not just be useful but also play a more active role in the emotional state of the user - loved it!
We then caught a panel on Ruining the user experience. Nothing revolutionary here, I thought I was going to see more in the realm of best practices with client-side scripting but it was more about accessibility and portability of your apps. Not bad, it just was not what I expected - and as far as I am concerned anyone would be hard pressed to follow Kathy Sierra.
Following that, we split up - I ended up in the Ghost in the Machine: Spirituallity Online panel, Matt in the High Class and Low Class web design.
I am not entirely sure what I was expecting with my panel, but I got: a mix of faith from the panel, and a room full of passionate / direct people. The panel was solid - they discussed how blogging / technology had reinforced and modified their view on their personal faith.
We capped it off with the Fox Interactive Media Pre-Party. MySpace, and IGN provided some swag and Fox provided some tasties. Thanks guys!!!
We have a lot of good stuff lined up for tomorrow.