As far as wired conferences go, South By Southwest seems to really be getting it right. You can see all of their oferrings in the SXSW Toolbox. Here’s a list of the resources I have used or checked out so far, and of course the event hasn’t even started yet:
- Bits + Bytes blog
They write about things coming up at SXSW and also note when their speakers do something interesting. They even blogged about me a few weeks ago! - At the Online Registrant Directory I can customize my badge, edit my bio, find others who are coming, make a list of my friends, and send messages to them.
- I can get updates during the event on my phone via SMS text messaging, and I can also use SMS to request info while I’m out and about like when the keynote is or where to find vegetarian food.
- As I browse the schedule, I can add events to my personal calendar and it generates a file that I can subscribe to via iCal. This puts it on my desktop calendar which then gets sync’ed to my Palm device so I will have the info with me on the go.
- There’s also a community blog that any speaker can post to and a forum for anyone registered for SXSW.
- Jambo uses wifi to detect proximity between network members so you can find out who is near you with common interests. I’m still a little scared of this one.
- And of course they also handled my registration online which worked very well, even though I had the added complication of being a speaker. (I wish some other conferences would offer free or reduced registration for speakers…)
And there are much more doodads for the Music and Film festivals as well as some Interactive things I haven’t messed with yet. Whew!
greetings. paul jones has instructed me to contact you and tell you i will be at sxsw as well.