Digital Mission stand at SXSW 2010
15,000 people have decended on Austin, Texas for SXSW. Before I say anything else Austin’s slogan is “Keeping it weird” and there are more live music venues here than any other city in the world and oh yes it is 75 degrees now. Get the picture? OK that’s the toursity bit over. Neither KMP Digitata or I have been to SXSW before and we will be back there is no doubt. KMP Digitata are here as part of @digitalmission organised by @chinwag. This event is inspiring, wierd, challanging, thought provoking, amazing for networking, highly educational and a good old fashioned work hard/play hard event that is about the future of the multi-channel digital world we work in.
We began with a masterclass organised by Chinwag giving us the low down on setting up businesses in the US. There were great insights from US lawyers and a selection of Brits who have successfully set up out here.
The evenings are filled with sponsored “mixer events” as they are called. OK, that’s one way of describing them. More accurately I would call it beer fuelled speed pitching. But I kid you not, I have been hawking my bag of brushes around events and exhibitions since 1984 and nothing I have been to compares with SXSW for networking and education. It is awesome as they say here. It is an investment of time and money because it is about learning for the future of your business. It is also about mixing, listening to gifted people from all over the world and exchanging ideas. Today I have had my suspicions confirmed about mobile video, met Jason Fried from our friends @37signals and learnt that strategic planning is so last decade, we should now practice strategic guessing. I urge you to buy his new book – Rework. More over the next couple of days if I make it.
