Simon Willison’s Weblog

Why would or wouldn’t SXSWi be worth attending in 2011?

My answer to Why would or wouldn’t SXSWi be worth attending in 2011? on Quora

Yes, it’s worth attending every year.

I finally came round to this last time I went in 2009, when I realised I had been every time for the past 7 years and had complained about the quality of the panels every single time.

I was talking to Kellan-Elliott-McCrea about this, and he explained that SxSW’s panels are basically a brilliant hack. The more panels there are, the more smart people get to convince their boss to send them to SxSWi—and hence the more smart people there will be to talk to in the bars in the evening. The actual panel content isn’t important, it’s all about getting the largest number of interesting people together in one place for the social side.