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Why people walking out of the Twitter SXSW keynote is a good thing
I’m about to go to a SXSW Interactive Town Hall panel where next year’s festival will be discussed, but what’s foremost on my mind is what happened yesterday at the bland (but probably not disastrous) keynote featuring Twitter CEO Evan Williams.
As we discussed in today’s A1 Statesman story and yesterday’s blog post (video here), many people left the keynote early and many people I talked to after the keynote and at parties last night said they couldn’t follow the point of the keynote and weren’t getting anything useful out of the conversation. They also said they wanted more details about @Anywhere and that Williams and interviewer Umair Haque glossed over details.
But what I didn’t hear is how this might be a very good thing for South by Southwest Interactive. While organizers might be scratching their head wondering how a can’t-miss keynote misfired so badly, they should take heart in the fact that the mass walkout was a positive sign for this year’s fest.
What the walk-out means to me:
- Attendees value their time and weren’t going to tolerate having it wasted.
- Attendees know there’s much more going on at the fest, whether it was the trade show, side parties, blogging lounges or quick coffee meetings at the Hilton. There weren’t panels going on during the keynote, but if there had been, they would have filled up quickly.
- Attendees didn’t feel obligated to sit in their chair and suffer through a boring interview just because it was conducted with a huge tech celebrity.
- They knew they could read Tweets and blog posts, and see video later if something interesting happened after they left. Being physically present, especially when the room has gone stale, is not really necessary at a fest like SXSW Interactive.
Not to spin it too positively, but these signs give me hope for the state of SXSW Interactive. Yes, the choice of interviewer was a huge mistake, but we inadvertently got a sign that the people who attend the fest are getting savvier and finding much more to do at this rapidly expanding festival.
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By Marla
March 16, 2010 1:23 PM | Link to this
Agree with all your points. Interviews are a notoriously combustible format because they require not one but two skilled speakers, and I hope SXSW returns to single-speaker format both in the sessions (which require up to FIVE good speakers to succeed) and in keynotes.
One small correction: SXSW introduced a naming distinction this year (panels vs workshops vs conversations), so technically there were no other "panels" at the same time as they keynote, but there were "workshops" on iPhone interface design and on selling digital film projects.