{"id":417,"date":"2008-03-13T14:27:39","date_gmt":"2008-03-13T18:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sarahdopp.com\/blog\/?p=417"},"modified":"2008-03-13T14:33:21","modified_gmt":"2008-03-13T18:33:21","slug":"sxsw-2008-aka-geek-spring-break-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/2008\/sxsw-2008-aka-geek-spring-break-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"SXSW 2008 (aka “Geek Spring Break”) Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"
Heads up, this content is 18 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.<\/div>

Unless you’ve been following my twitter feed<\/a> or partying in Austin, TX, you haven’t heard much from me in the last week. That’s because my laptop died a horrific logic board death<\/strong> in Oakland Airport, just before I boarded my flight to SXSW. Emails and blogging quickly became a thing of the past, and I resigned myself to in-person interactions and text message documentation. Now I’m back online with a cheap desktop PC while the Apple store continues to try to fix my baby, and I’ve got a week’s worth of epiphanies and adventures to blog about. So here’s the abridged version.<\/p>\n

What’s SXSW?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SXSW<\/a> (pronounced “South By Southwest”) is actually three different festivals that happen all at once in Austin every March. Most famous is the Music festival, where every band who’s any<\/em> band comes to town and plays a show. Then there’s the Film festival, where all the top independent films of the year screen their glories. And there’s also the Interactive festival, which no one except us geeks actually knows about, because Music and Film are far more glamorous. It’s all one big 5-day party of brilliance with exceptional speakers and wild nightlife and the most fun many geeks get to have all year long.<\/p>\n

What did I learn?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here were some of my major “Aha!” moments from the panels and conversations.<\/p>\n

From Kathy Sierra<\/a> on wooing users…<\/p>\n