2007 / August 31^st/ Absurdity of SXSW 2008 Panels

Today, I spent a while looking through the SXSW panel picker. First, I skimmed through the panels and pick out names I know. After that, I searched for specific technologies/techniques I wanted to hear more on. With something like six hundred and eighty topics, it’s neigh impossible to give a fair representation of all the panels. The end result of my searching was ultimately disappointment. Of course there’s no one to blame but us in all of this — but I kind of wish there was a qualifying round before the panels made it to the picker.

Topics are a year behind

After searching for the technologies I was interested in, I realized that more than ever panel speakers are talking about old topics. Who the hell cares about how to create a CSS-based layout? Who cares about how embed a Flash file semantically into XHTML? This has been done a million times. It’s old news.

I want to hear about what’s coming up. I want to hear about Javascript 1.6. I want to hear about Flex 3. I want to hear about Silverlight. I want to hear about H.264 video on the web. I mean fuck people! There’s not even a panel on AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime). That’s one of the most exciting things happening in the interactive space since Flash!

I do not want to learn techniques that are currently in place as standard practice.

This is a professional space

This is a professional space. A place for professionals to present quality presentations. Not for people to beat dead horses. I read a large amount of panel ideas that were just crap honestly. I wonder if these people realize they’ll be presenting these in front of live human beings?

I guess I might be alone in the fact that I don’t want to debate Fuji Apples or Granny Smith’s any more. There’s professional topics to be discussed out there: let’s hear it.

The popular kids are going to win

The other unfortunate result I see out of all these ideas is that the ones with the most comments are not the ones with the most interesting ideas. They’re the “A-listers” and the “famous” people in the interwebs. Most of the ideas presented by them were mediocre (compared to the rest of the panel ideas). A lot of them are presenting ideas that they do not work with every day. I think it’s a shame we’ve regressed back to high school again.

Ideas I like, and ideas I want to hear

Here’s a few picks from the few panels I’m genuinely excited about, and a few suggestions as well:

• The Future of Javascript, Today
• Scalability Boot Camp
• Design Contests vs. NO!SPEC
• Photoshop, Flash, Acrobat and Flex: How Adobe is changing the face of online interactive
• Flash Player 9: A journey from tweening to HD video delivery
• Stateful interface: How RIAs are changing the face of web design
• Web design as a profession: where we are, and what needs to be done

Why don’t you do it?

I was kind of surprised to hear a few of my friends suggest that I should present a topic. Why shouldn’t I? I could I list a million reasons, but I guess it comes down to the fact that I don’t have experience doing presentations. I don’t want to present a shitty panel, and I kind of hope more people would think about this when presenting their ideas. Just because you can submit a panel doesn’t mean you should.

Oh well, I guess the quality of the panels will help me not worry so much about sleeping in. Maybe I should just shut the hell up and pay my registration fee already.

1. 

   Matthew Oliphant

   August 31^st | #

   Kyle,

   I don’t know what your problem is. Were you looking at the same list of panels I was? I sure don’t think so. I mean just knowing that [go-to-guy] is going to present again on [rehashed-topic] was enough to make me want to pay just for that.

   And did you see that [go-to-girl] is continuing her streak of [retuning] that presentation on [topic-that-will-be-turned-into-a-new-riders-book].

   If you stoop to coming just look for me in the halls while I rub elbows with [tall-thin-thick-rimmed-glasses], [oh-are-those-my-nipples], and Scrivs. If you ask nice I might ask if it’s okay for you to join the clique.

   (Did I just spend a fun filled day in training? wow. that dripping sarcasm above sure makes it seem like I was.)

2. 

   Dan Shields

   August 31^st | #

   Great post,
   I agree with you 100%. Its always the same old topics and people that don’t actually use what they preach in the real world setting. Of course thats not all of them but who really has the money to spend on these conferences to hear what they can learn on the blogs or books we read already. I guess if your company has the money to blow and send you to these conferences why not go for a good time and act like you learned something new, when you probably already read about most of the topics from the panel presenters blog.

   I would think the biggest reason I can’t get my company to put up the cash for these conferences is the fact that I can’t really show them facts that I will bring back knowledge that is going make me better at what I already do and enough to not have me doing my job for a week.

   Great comment Matthew!.

3. 

   Kyle

   August 31^st | #

   Matthew makes my life 110% better, every day.

4. 

   eric johnson

   September 1^st | #

   Kyle, I don’t think anyone could have done a better job expressing the frustration I’m seeing with the current panel picker. Its gotten to the point that I think 3hours in a borders bookstore will teach me more. So I’m still going to SXSW but not for interactive, I’ll spend that money to drink and listen to great music for a couple days.

5. 

   Garrett Dimon

   September 1^st | #

   Yes, many of the topics are dry and rehashed, but keep in mind only about 100 of the 800 proposals will actually make it, so it’s a bit premature to be prognosticating about the quality of SXSW. If October rolls around, and those panels are on the schedule, then we’ll have something to worry about. Personally, I believe there’s going to be at least enough panels that there’s a good option in every time slot.

   Secondly, while I do agree with much of what you say, it’s hard to listen to someone openly criticize something without making an effort to change it. I understand that sometimes it’s difficult to actually do something, and that bringing attention to the problem can be a valid solution. However, this is not one of those situations.

   I have to sincerely disagree with what seems to be your primary reason for not proposing a panel. Pulling off a good presentation has nothing to do with experience and everything to do with preparation. Guy Kawasaki has written a couple of the more relevant posts off the top of my head. In fact some of the worst presentations I’ve ever attended were given by some pretty well known individuals who clearly didn’t invest enough time in preparation.

   A lack of experience just isn’t a reasonable excuse for not doing something. The only way to get better at something is by doing it. The first time will never go off without a hitch, and that’s just the way it works. For that matter, the second, third, and fourth times can be pretty rough as well. However, with a significant amount of preparation and effort, it’s entirely possible to pull off a great presentation.

   So, if you’re passionate about something, which you clearly are, then you’ve already got everything you need to create a great presentation. I’d encourage you to do so, and I think you’d be pleasantly surprised.

6. 

   beth

   September 1^st | #

   Out of curiousity, why only search for names you know? I understand wanting to make sure a speaker has some authority on the subject, but let’s face it, most speakers are a one trick pony, and I mean that in the best sense of the phrase. Certain people stick to certain subjects for every panel, because that’s what they know better than anyone else. This is great, but if you’ve seen them once that’s really all you need. I find that the panels that surprise (and frequently delight) me the most are from the people I didn’t know, because I’ve never heard what they had to say before.

   I do agree, it’s frustrating to see the same topics rehashed again and again, (or topics that have already been made into a book I can buy for much less than the price of a conference ticket), because for the most part only people serious about their profession are coming to these things which makes it preaching to the choir.

7. 

   Ryan Irelan

   September 1^st | #

   I agree, but I think your idea of what SXSWi should be (a conference for web professionals) and what it really is (a conference for web enthusiasts) is probably why you’re so disappointed.

   There are many more conferences out there for web professionals. Sure, they cost more to attend, but I’d bet that the quality of the sessions is also much higher.

8. 

   Kyle

   September 1^st | #

   beth: I’m curious, did you read the third sentence in my post? Please do :)

   Ryan: See, I guess that’s the thing. Even those more “professional” conferences have the same sort of topics. I’ve been finding myself following different crowds lately, and watching the quality of the panels at places like 360Flex is absolutely astonishing. It makes us “HTML Jockeys” seem just like that when you look at our lineup of conferences.

   There’s just so much awesome stuff going on in the web right now, and I hate to see us still stuck reading DWWS (1.0) and preaching how Web 2.0 doesn’t exist. Enthusiasts or professionals, we shouldn’t be stuck so far behind.

9. 

   Kyle

   September 1^st | #

   Garrett Dimon: I do have to agree with you, and in fact you did touch exactly upon my main hesitation for posting this. But I still feel there’s value in sharing this opinion. I think there’s a few pretty big problems with the method for selecting panels, and the ideas behind the panels. One thing to keep in mind, is that this will be my first year coming to SXSW. I was getting all excited about it, until I sat down to read through the panel propositions. I guess I just had too high of expectations.

10. 

    Walker Hamilton

    September 2^nd | #

    Kyle, I feel that Ryan’s statement was straight on. Those more “professional” conferences are more focused and forward thinking.

    Here, I’m talking about incredibly specialized areas like IA Summit (http://www.iasummit.org/) or the International Unicode conference (http://www.unicode.org/).

    When it gets to such generalized conferences, the bar is generally lowered a bit. So, whatever your particular specialty, perhaps there’s a more professional conference out there to suit it.

11. 

    Jeff Croft

    September 2^nd | #

    I came here to say basically what Ryan Irelan already said: your impression of SXSWi as a “professional” conference just doens’t match up with reality. It never has been that.

    For web professionals at your level, SXSWi is a great place to meet peple, network, build BizDev relationships, and have a lot of fun. For web professionals (or enthusiasts) at a lower level, they may well learn quite a bit along the way.

    All that having been said, I do generally agree with you about the focus of the panels. I’d love to see more presentations on new tecnology (AIR, Flex, etc.) and on design (rather than HTML, CSS, and the like).

    But, I’m telling you now: if your expectations are at that level, you will be sorely dissapointed when you go to SXSW. If you really, really want to learn about AIR and Flex, go to one of the many great Flash-orientied conferences instead of SXSW. If you are already committed to SXSW, relax a bit, lower your expectations, open yourself up socially, and go have a ton of fun in Austin. I assure you: SXSWi will live up to expectations on that front.

12. 

    Kyle

    September 2^nd | #

    Jeff: By no means am I going to SXSW for the panels. I’d just love to see the panels get up to the point that people do want to go to SXSW for the panels. Isn’t that what admission is supposed to cover, anyway? :)

    Also, on a note regarding the “non-professional-ness” of the panels, does that mean we should completely give up any hope of any quality in them at all? To me that seems a little ludicrous. It’s like if it’s not 100% professional, we can sit and talk about 5 year old topics without worry.

13. 

    Jeff Croft

    September 2^nd | #

    Re: Quality.

    I didn’t say they were poor quality. I don’t really beleive they are poor quality, in general (obviously, it’s hiss or miss, but overall, I think thequality is good). What I did say is that someone on your level probably won’t learn alot. When you’re to the level that you could easily be speaking at the event, and the events are so one-track-minded (that is to say, there’s very little outside the realm of web standards and the blogosphere), chances are good that you’ll already know most everthing you’ll hear said.

    That doesn’t mean the quality is poor — it just means you already knew it. Others might not, though.

14. 

    tyler rooney

    September 4^th | #

    I was contemplating attending sxsw this year but reading this was kind of disheartening.

    I’d totally want to check out a panel done by John Resig. jQuery is the cat’s pajamas of javascript and he’s literally writing the future of javascript in the Fuel library for Firefox3. There’s a pretty good google tech talk with Resig where he talks about designing javascript libraries.

15. 

    Mike Rundle

    September 20 | #

    This coming SXSW will be my fourth, and each year I visit fewer and fewer panels, fewer keynotes, and fewer overall conference-organized activities. I feel your frustration and am completely sick of the dead-horse panels, but what Ryan said up above is really true — there are far fewer professionals present than enthusiasts, and I haven’t seen anything presented in the past couple of years that was truly on the cutting edge.

    Basically the most well-visited SXSW panels are the ones that take a topic the masses (not the professionals) have read or heard a little about — Ajax, accessibility, Web 2.0, small businesses making money on the web — but instead of diving in head first they take a very superficial look and go through case studies and examples rather than getting into the nitty gritty, geeky, interesting parts. Unfortunately for the hardcore web people in the audience, this is far from sufficient, so we come away wanting more. Unfortunately again is that the hardcore web people in the audience make up a small minority, so the non-hardcore web people at the panel come away thinking it was brilliant and “OMFG did you see Zeldman and Eric Meyer up there, WOW!!!” and rate the panels extraordinarily high.

    SXSW is not the conference to go to if you’re a hardcore web person looking to get even more hardcore, this is what it absolutely is not good at. If you’re a hardcore web person looking to hang out with fellow disgruntled hardcore web people in the hallways, bars, hotels, and clubs, then it’s great for that. Every year I want to skip out on buying a pass but every year I succumb and get one. Maybe this is the year I finally bite the bullet and skip out on the conference pass but simply go to Austin to hang out with my once-yearly friends in the industry.

16. 

    Heidi Voltmer

    February 25^th | #

    There actually is a panel on AIR at SXSW - “Taking it to the Desktop”. It is being presented by Lee Brimelow
    an AIR evangelist at Adobe.

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