Opera at SXSW 2008

My colleague Erin Robbins wrote her report, as did Charles McCathieNevile, our Chief Standards Officer who spoke on this year's Browser Wars panel (which he discusses in his post). Check out the following articles:

It's a Wrap! by Erin

South by... by Charles

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Here are a few thoughts of my own:

There were so many different events, panels, tradeshow booths, and parties going on, all at the same time, there was no way to see and attend everything. As such, everyone's SXSW experience is different, which I think comes through when you read our various reports.

Once again, I'd like to thank our volunteers who joined us in Austin. Doing Opera-related work every day I was at SXSW meant that I didn't have the opportunity to attend any of the other panels, so I'm glad Phred, Jim, and John were able to blog about them for us. I hope you, the readers, were able to get a sense of SXSW Interactive's general vibe (though the party atmosphere is something that has to be experienced firsthand, I think).

I could write a hugely long post about everything we did at SXSW, but that would be tedious, so here are my personal highlights:

• Giving away free coffee to SXSW Interactive attendees
  
• Having an amazing booth with our logo projected on a wall, really huge for everyone to see
  
• Having great stuff to give away to people visiting our booth (beer koozies, pins, stickers, and three styles of Opera shirts!)
  
• Talking with a ton of people, and seeing them amazed by Opera's innovative, powerful, and time-saving features
  
• Installing Opera Mini on people's phones, giving them full access to the real Web on the go
  
• Meeting die-hard Opera fans (both new users and old timers who've been using Opera for years)
  
• Meeting well-known My Opera members for the first time in person
  
• Watching Charles make the Opera-faithful proud (and winning new users) at the Browser Wars panel
  
• Helping to host the Rock Opera party, which had great bands and a really cool DJ
  
• Hanging out with Opera staff coming to Austin from Mountain View, Los Angeles, Florida, Oslo, and England
  

More pictures can be found on our SXSW photo album here: SXSW 2008

Also, we've updated http://www.opera.com/rock/ with a summary of the Rock Opera party and more photos for your enjoyment.

Other links of interest:

SXSW: Browser Wars Become Browser Peace? Not Quite Rough transcript of the Browser Wars panel on AppScout

SxSW '08 Redux via Epistolary Rumination The post-panel blog post by Arun Ranganathan, who moderated the Browser Wars discussion

SXSW Podcasts The Browser Wars panel recording will most likely appear on that page eventually. The 2007 panel recording can be found here: Browser Wars Retrospective: Past, Present and Future Battlefields