Flew into Austin on Wednesday, the 7th of March, after 22 hours travel from Dublin. 6.5 hour stopover in Atlanta created a new 'most boring' experience for us! Ate TGIF stuff not realizing how many times we would eat at a TGIF while in Austin! Still we were 'lucky' compared to others who took nearly 2 days to arrive.
Registering Thursday for SXSW took half an hour which taxed out usual impatience levels until we saw the queues on Friday. It triple wrapped around the whole convention centre (see here!) in fact half hour queues would be considered short as we would learn later.
Anyway there was a massive buzz around the city as it opens its doors to over 200,000 people over the next 10 days. Great bands, street music, mini villages were everywhere!
They say that more business is done at the parties than at official meetings. Of course we had to see if that was true! And so, that Thursday night, we were off to the FreshBooks party, somewhat both a competitor and potential partner to us. The “party” was outside in a ranch about 30 miles away from the convention centre. There was the longest queue for food and drinks - the cold weather forced us to the first bus back to Austin, with no food or drink L
Thursday’s SxSW summarized:
- tunein is a great app for streaming music!
- FaceTime meet iMeet - exactly what we need to liaise with our Dublin office.
- Super impressed with @startupamerica at SXSW - very organised & hosting some great events for startups! Attended 2 super ones at Hilton.
- We saw Faster Design Decisions with Style Tiles presented by @samanthaToy at FastDesign http://www.styletil.es - Saves heaps of development time!!
- 'words can mean very different things to different people' from @samanthaToy at FastDesign
- Recommended @abookapart for responsive design FastDesign
Thursday evening we had decided that it might be a good idea to have billfaster tee shirts, so we called a few local places, to find they were all booked up. Obviously we weren't the only ones to leave it so late...
Chantel then found an online service: buildurshirt.com which could deliver within 2 days. It was super easy to design and upload logos, and prices were good. Unfortunately we had a problem on the checkout page so we called and left a message for some help. The following morning we received a call from Brandon who surprised us by offering to print 4 tee shirts free of charge.
Chantel then found an online service: buildurshirt.com which could deliver within 2 days. It was super easy to design and upload logos, and prices were good. Unfortunately we had a problem on the checkout page so we called and left a message for some help. The following morning we received a call from Brandon who surprised us by offering to print 4 tee shirts free of charge.
Austin which normally has 300 days of sunshine, had more rain fall that Friday and Saturday than the previous 6 months! And Brandon from buildurshirt.com walked to our hotel to hand delivered the tee shirts! We had a coffee and a great chat and are really grateful to Brandon and buildurshirt.com for going the extra mile, literally!
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Brandon from buildurshirt.com |
Chantel, (not me ;)) must have brought the Irish weather with her since it pissed out of the heavens for that Friday and Saturday.
Friday, was the official first day, and we went to many amazing conferences and meet ups. Like many things in the USA the sheer size of it all was mind blowing! Evenings we're magic with Austin’s famous 6th Street music and buzz.
Friday evening we went to the Startup America live party which was a much better experience. It included live music from a great local band: Green River Ordinance. Scott Case CEO introduced Steve Case, Reed Hoffman, Steve Blank and even a telecast address from President Obama. Startup America is a great support for startups!
Friday evening we went to the Startup America live party which was a much better experience. It included live music from a great local band: Green River Ordinance. Scott Case CEO introduced Steve Case, Reed Hoffman, Steve Blank and even a telecast address from President Obama. Startup America is a great support for startups!
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Telecast from President Barack Obama @ Startup America Celebration |
Friday's SxSW summarized:
Saturday morning, 10 March, we are due to attend the Austin International Tech Summit at 9:00am.
- We were at the ‘A Celebration of American Startups’ event.
- 'Who needs sleep when you’ve got the startuplife'
- All those in favor of crowd funding for businesses raise a hand - Steve Case
- 'Make every book a platform' says @ReThinkBooks
- @nowaitapp keeps you from standing in line
- Reid Hoffman says "we're moving from information age to network age" so assemble the best team around you
- PayPal’s New Digital Wallet Will Offer Personalized Deals, Flexible Payments, And More http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/09/paypals-new-digital-wallet-will-offer-personalized-deals-flexible-payment-spending-and-more/
- 'iWallet' Is Headed To the iPhone - http://mashable.com/2012/03/09/iwallet-apple-patent-iphone/
- Magician Turns Isis Mobile Payment System Into Magic - http://mashable.com/2012/03/09/isis-mobile-payment-magic/
Saturday morning, 10 March, we are due to attend the Austin International Tech Summit at 9:00am.
We had bought a tiny umbrella the day before and dressed in our new billfaster tee shirts, set off on the 10 min walk to the convention centre. The umbrella was like holding a stamp over us to keep the rain off! We arrived like drowned rats!
Anyway, Ireland was up fourth on the itinerary with Minister Sean Sherlock and Simone Boswell, from Enterprise Ireland, and a few Irish companies presented 1 min overviews of their business.
Then we were off to an Irish pub :), Fado, to watch the rugby match: Ireland vs. Scotland, which we won of course :)
On Sunday, we were at the Google village - very impressed, especially by Discovery house. We also went to the foursquare party that night courtesy of our IDA friends :)
Monday morning, 12 March, was an early start for us at Startup America stand and we join the Enterprise Ireland stand later that morning, where we met Renee Blodgett.
While we were at SxSW, we met with Renee Blodgett, founder and editor of We Blog The World - a community blog network that shares story of various topics. She is also the founder of down the avenue - ‘bringing passion to technology, business and life’. These websites are great to read stories about cultures, technology, travel, politics and many more. We showed Renee the simplicity of billfaster and were delighted to hear that she would blog about us on We Blog The World. Here’s the link for the full article: http://bit.ly/IsCG2r - Thanks Renee!! :)
Our favorites at SxSW :
Startup America, Catch A Chevy, buildurshirt.com, IDA, We Blog The World, Enterprise Ireland
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