Alexander Rea

Originally posted on Fresh Ideas 365

Alexander here.  Interactive Director for The Concept Farm.  Before I post any official reviews of Griffin Stenger (Partner) and my time here in Austin at SXSW Interactive, I wanted to post a quick little pre-review. I like to watch people.  Living in New York City it’s really easy.  Riding the subway you are forced to.  It’s a way of life.  Here in Austin I’ve been doing much of the same.  Since Friday I have been observing how many of the thousands of the attendants have iPhones and then how many have Apple laptops and any combination there of.  I would say at least 60% of the attendants have both.  And on these iPhones we have all been loading up all of the schedules and tweeting about this that and the other.  The only downside, AT&T’s infrastructure simply can not handle all of the iPhone data concentrated in one area.  So at one of the most important Interactive conferences in this country, the users of a device (argumentatively the most popular device) can not fully benefit from the very services being championed.  You have to wait until late at night before you can expect any true activity or be in the convention center on the free WiFi.  And even that shows signs of heavy load.

These above images are from today’s keynote in one of the three larger rooms.  Virginia Herrfernan of the New York Times interviews James Powderly of FATlab and Graffiti Research Lab (GRL).  Click to enlarge.

Regardless of the individual attendant’s gear of choice, that gear runs on good old American electricity.  One of greatest faults of this convention (and really there are not many) is that there is no convenient source of power.  All of the outlets run along the floor.  Every panel room regardless of size is surprisingly short on outlets.  Don’t you think that the organizers of the event would have coordinated with the Freeman union controlled convention center to install power strips?  The results are obvious.  You enter each panel room and everyone is huddled along the walls.  Death traps by laptop cords.  Between events you find people by the droves forced to camp out on the floor as if their flights were delayed at a crowded airport.

Surprisingly Apple does not participate in conventions like this.  Despite the large percentage of people that would enlist immediately in an Apple army if one existed.  Those companies, authors and aritsts that have been conducting panels or signings have really been inspiration to many.   When my tour of duty expires on Wednesday, I’ll have the chance to go through the pages of notes, business cards, tweets, scratches, scribblings and memories and post something slightly more helpful here on 365.

Tomorow afternoons final keynote of SXSW Interactive will be the long-awaited Guy Kawasaki (Alltop) interview of Chris Anderson (Wired) on the power of free.