Well, I'm back at home in New Orleans, my mind reeling from five days of informative panels, great conversations with interesting people, delicious TexMex & BBQ and sweet salty Margaritas. It's always nice to visit Austin and even more so when nearly 4,000 of the most intelligent designers, developers, bloggers and general geeks from around the world are there with you.
SXSW has always been one of the most interesting and important tech/design/interactive conferences around but I feel like this year it hit a new plateau, especially in terms of content about web design and development. The addition of so many How To sessions, which I was a little skeptical about at first, was a genius move. Those panels more than anything are the reason that I have more takeaways from this year's SXSW than any other conference I have ever attended. I have new knowledge about so many subjects I don't even know where to begin.
To all the supercool people I met over the last few days I just want to say thanks for being so convivial, interesting and approachable. To all the friends that I wasn't able to meet up with because I was too busy with the conference I just want to say sorry we didn't get to hang but I promise to come see you whenever I am in your town(s) again.
Hot Topics at SXSW Interactive 2005:
- The Wisdom of Crowds
- Thin Slicing
- CSS
- Accessibility
- Semantic Markup (meaningful code, emergent semantics, XFN, etc.)
- Microformats
- Qualitative Data Analysis (ethnographic research & analysis)
- The return of the DOM and Javascript
- Agile Modelling
- The advancement of screen Typography
My Takeaways from SXSW Interactive 2005:
- Work harder on all aspects of my practice (design, development, research, writing)
- Create more meaningful code both on the style side and the markup side
- Supplement quantitative data gathering and analysis with qualitative data gathering techniques
- Make more time to experiment, play and "practice" design
- Pay more attention to type
- Make all of the sites I build more accessible
- Continue my pledge to make all new projects valid & standards compliant
- Build a space for my professional interests (FINISH MY PERSONAL SITE) as well as one for experimentation & play
Some final SXSW Links:
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