Out of the way

Three nights, three parties, one panel, seeing friends and talking to cool people, and booth duty. That's my short summary. But there is more to it than that.

I was on the "browser wars" panel, and this year (I do think it is because we were not on at 10am, and were easier to find) the room was filled at least as far as any safety regulations allow, and then they started turning people away. Once again, Chris, Brendan and I were prodded and challenged by Arun, the audience and each other, and once again I thought it was a pretty good panel (althugh I have to say, I think I went gentle on them for not being able to handle SVG animation - something like half a dozen independent implementations have made it work interoperably, mostly on mobile phones, so it can't be all black magic....). I think that panel is a reasonable balance - not just calling each other names, but being prepared to look at the real issues and differences and discuss them. If people want it to go a bit longer and have a bigger room, that might be useful - although there is definitely an upper limit for this sort of thing. It's also a shame that neither Apple nor any pure mobile browser manufacturer turned up.

I went to the Rock Opera party. Actually, I did booth duty so the folks could prepare it and get it started, and then I went to relax and bask in the glory of having been so very clever on the panel. OK, to tell the truth I was looking forward to having a beer, putting up with some bands, and unwinding. Wrong on almost all counts (I did get a beer). Our original MC had lost his voice, so I got dobbed in as the replacement, as soon as I arrived. The bands (I heard Sabrosa Pure, Oliver Future, Gliss and Taxi Doll) were all really good - I ended up buying CDs. It was pretty busy, so I had a great time although I didn't relax much. Luckily it seemed everyone else did. And I got to meet assorted friends I didn't even know had turned up to SxSW, as well as people from the crowd and the bands. So now I hope to be back next year.

I went to the Media Temple party. Excellent gig. No live music, just drinks and chat, but a good party in a good venue. The Opera party edged it by having food available, live entertainment, and a quiet place you could talk easily, but it edged the Opera party on having a full open bar, where as we did just your standard stuff free. And they were kind enough to invite me to the VIP room - which was really just a little bit quieter and you could get a bottle of wine instead of just a glass at a time. I appreciated it - at least it was a reasonable VIP room.

I went to the Digg party. This one had all the hype - it ran later (after closing time, but you could still get water), Moby, Tantek, and some other famous person were all there, and they had Guitar Hero in the VIP area. Since that was a cage out the back, I guess the idea was that people could look and see you were in there - which to me isn't the attraction. I didn't spend that much time at the party, so there may be stuff I missed, like what it did better than other parties (apart from queues at the door, which is also not my scene).

I hung around on the booth, I saw a bunch of people I like talking to, met a bunch of people doing cool stuff, didn't catch up with various people I know were there from sheer lack of time, and missed the HTML test fest by getting the wrong address and walking halfway across Austin to discover I was going to the wrong place.

It was a blast. There were some really cool things there (not just in the interactive world), and some people who were just on an expense-account and sponsor-fuelled booze-up. Austin is the kind of town that seems to handle that just fine... I was hot most of the time (except when it poured with rain), tired, and it was in the middle of a long and hard trip around the world, but all of that felt like it was put aside because the event really rocks. And there is good food in Austin.