This year South by Southwest (SXSW) took place for the 25th time in Austin, TX. I had never been there but when I was invited to be a panelist I decided to visit the festival. Even though it’s quite a trip from Shanghai (and especially from Phuket…) I recommend it to everybody. The panels and speakers are world-class and there are tons of networking opportunities. Not only are most US Internet start-ups there to promote their products, but also the VCs are all in town plus of course journalists, bloggers and the biz dev people of more established companies.
I went to SXSW with my colleague Floris-Jan Cuypers of Spil Games who flew in from Holland. I had reserved the hotel, which had been a bit of a hassle because all hotels downtown were of course fully booked already
I was curious what was going on — the tweeting action from there was so brisk — good to catch some of the photos from the event. Sorry to hear about the hotel trouble — and if you really want to hear what happened with me in Utah when I was there for Sundance, you’d realize that version of “service with a sneer” from that Austin hotel is more common than you think…