SXSW

Late late, I know. But taking a week off to go to SXSW, then there’s recovery time and then catching up with work. So I am now just getting to my SX overview. Where do I start, so many things happened, sessions, parties, networking…lot’s of bull heads mounted on walls.

Okay, I’ll start with Michel Gondry, I didn’t even realize he was going to be interviewed until the day of, luckily I got in line early enough and found myself in the third row of the audience. I’ve loved Gondry’s work since I saw my first Bjork video in high school. After attending his interview I love him even more, in addition to being immensely creative, he just seems like a really cool person. (Photos from the interview)

I also went to a whole slew of user experience sessions which were pretty cool and reinforce what I do day-to-day. Jared Spool’s “Design Treasures from the Amazon” presentation was hilarious and informative. He gave us (some of) the secrets to Amazon’s design success, trial and error is a big one. Checked out Facebook and DIGG’s web designers (Rob Goodlatte, Daniel Burka) session, their message: give people a reason to want to hang out at your site before asking them for all their personal info.

I attended quite a few creative inspirational sessions, a conversation with Alissa Walker (Fast Company), Casey Caplowe (CD at GOOD.us), Valerie Casey (Designers Accord), I also checked out Nick Campbell at Greyscalegorilla too. One of the more inspiring panels I went to was “The Art of Main Title Design” with Susan Bradley (Pixar) and Karin Fong (Imaginary Forces), they talked through and showed us the process of creating title sequences.

There was also a lot of riff-raff and goings-ons. First night was the big USTREAM party, free drinks, live band and live shirt screen printing. After leaving there we checked out the Mowhawk, where there was also live music, more free drinks and women dressed in elaborate costumes with artists sketching them live. Next night, was the —>>!!!LAPTOP BATTLES!!!<<— Power-punch packed evening, video, animation and motion graphics along with 8bit musician Random, he plays on old Gameboys. And finally the night that I was looking forward to Saturday? SUnday? I can’t remember now- MAN OR ASTROMAN!! Pretty awesome crazy show, moshing, stage diving, dueling flaming theramins, on-stage for-reals girl fight, Flosstradamus, and I discovered The Octopus Project, who I’d never heard before, but am now in love with!

YEAH, it was a blast.

Check out my flickr stream for more of my pics.