MeeVee Goes Geek: SXSWi Winners and Losers

What conference blog would be complete without an all-too snarky recap filled to the brim with overreaching observations and generalizations? Certainly not ours.
Here are my picks for the Winners and Losers at SXSWi 2007:

The Winners
Twitter
Without a doubt, the Web 2.0/mobile app gets the prize for being the most name dropped at SXSWi.

The Parties
They don’t call it Spring Break for the 2.0 crowd for nothing. Among the standouts:

• 8-bit’s Red Scoot’s Inn shindig. DJs who got it, a massive beer garden, and free undies made this one my all-time favorite.
• Consumating/Webshots/Chow at the Mohawk. Despite the rain and weak drinks, the party was fun. Plus, loads of free shirts!
• RCS soirée at the Fox and the Hound. Even their lead Web Developer was shut out.
• PocketFuzz/ID345’s after-afterparty. A wii station, fruity cocktails, beautiful people with foreign accents, local hipsters, convention nerds, and porta-potties. Rolling in at 6 a.m. never seemed so right.

  

Ze Frank
The scene: Red Bull's ubiquitous after party. In one corner: Luke Wilson quietly chilling with a single gal, presumably his girlfriend. At the bar: The Show Man chatting up geek girls and a bevy of buxom blondes. He had his own special SXSW handler. The man is a pimp.

Dan Rather
His keynote was packed, and despite the inane moderator and terrible sound, Rather was informative and entertaining. Sporting black cowboy boots, the East Texan broke it down for us -- why news blogging can be both democratizing and dangerous.

Café Press, American Apparel, Hanes
Screw stress balls. This year it was all about free T-shirts, handed out like water. Never before have I seen so many cooler-than-thou 2.0ers obsessing over for free shirts. (Myself included.)

Moo Cards
If you didn’t have 'em, by now your order is surely on its way. No more forgetting names with faces. Networking never seemed so easy.

Me
Thanks to a little site called, lastminute.com, I booked a flight and rental car on 3/7 for only $321.

The Losers
Dodgeball
Although the get-a-lifesaving MMS app served up more functionality than Twitter, slow response time and complicated registration hindered its status as a winner.

Panel Audiences/Those who hauled ass across the country in hopes of learning something
Overwhelming consensus: the panels blew. They lacked structure, continuity, and diversity. Too much boozing. Too little time for Q and A. Too much blogebrity. A lot of stating the obvious. (At one point, a panelist asked the audience how many of them were familiar with Boing Boing.) Sitting through 'em without checking our Twitter/e-mails was damn near impossible. More than once did my fellow 2.0 comrades and I declare, “We are so putting together our own panel next year.”

Day Stage Panelists
You had to feel bad for the Day Stage panelists. The bizarre layout, low lighting, and noise from the cafe made the venue seem like a low-rent comedy club. It was nearly impossible for panelists and attendees to focus on the topic at hand.

West Coasters
The difference between two and three hours of jetlag was the difference between rolling into the Con center for an 11 a.m. or a 2 p.m. DLS did us no favors.

Wiki the Wabbit
Not a loser per se. I just felt really sorry for him.