I hope you are well rested and back on a normal schedule if you participated in SXSW this year. This is the 1st time I went as an official participant. My husband gave me an Interactive badge to see if I could gain some more knowledge and inspiration from all the technology pundits who came into town. And also to have a little bit of fun!
When I first looked at the schedule, I tried to find all of the food + tech sessions. There were a handful. Then I thought I would broaden my knowledge base and I included a couple sessions on social media, handmade business, health, poverty in America, and of course memes of kitties and Internet cat videos (If you don’t like cat videos, you might be heartless 🙂
Friday
I started off by hearing Mando Rayo talk about Austin’s love affair with breakfast tacos. I think that was a great way to begin the conference and get people to head over to South Bites, the food trailer park that was set up by Rainey St. We didn’t want to walk there yet and miss another session so we had a tasty snack at Chilantro, right outside the Austin Convention Center.
I got to meet with Lizzy of Toy Joy at a toy meet up. Sadly, Toy Joy is no longer open. I brought along a little friend of mine (Breezy Babblebrook).
She got to meet a Makie doll which is the 1st playable 3D printed doll. Founder of the Makie dolls, Alice Taylor, was wearing a red randoseru backpack like me!
You can customize one online at Makie.me . Later on we went to South Bites and I ate at Be More Pacific. This filipino food trailer is awesome and would make my mom proud. I got a good sized portion of tofu adobo which I loved and some veggie lumpia.
No more sessions for the day but we did go to the OK Interactive party at the Palmer Events Center.
Saturday & Sunday was a lot more fun!
I went to Sophia Amoruso’s talk about how she started a vintage clothing business online and turned it into a million dollar business. The artists from ImageThink were talented graphic recorders of many sessions and created these large note boards live.
A Future 15 session called “Humanity 2.0: What are we becoming?” by Byron Reese explained that technology is doubling and that will solve our problems. I don’t believe that is true but I could appreciate his enthusiasm and I always like the Indian story about the king, chessboard, rice and the explanation of exponential growth. The next session was about “How Photoshop Affects Your Memory”. Rose Eveleth showed us that fake photos of people as children (like putting your likeness in a hot air balloon ride) would make people swear they went on a ride as a child.
My favorite session of the weekend was “Cat Cash: The Economy of Internet Cat Videos” They discussed how cat videos have made the jump from You Tube to the big screen at Internet Cat Video festivals and cat-lebrities who advocate for their feline friends. I got to meet Will Braden, Henri Le Chat Noir’s owner. I also got to see Grumpy. She is tiny and very mellow in front of a crowd of her admirers.
There was also a party hosted by Animal Planet at Cedar Street Courtyard featuring the 80’s cover lip-synch (you knew that right?) band, the Spazzmatics. I found my cat twin.
Can you tell I like cats? #meow
We also ate at G’raj Mahal Cafe’s new brick & mortar location on Rainey Street. The disposable plates have switched to real ones and they even gave me a blanket as it was a bit cold. That was so nice of them! Pakoras are always nice too!
See Part 2!
[…] customers and fans for being a part of it. So hopefully Part 2 of my fun is still timely. (Here is Part 1 if you missed […]