SXSW Day 2 - No Notable Mentions - A few lackluster panels.

The panels I attended during the day left something to be desired.

• Why XSLT is Sexy
• Web App Autopsy
• Unleashing CSS:How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Internet Explorer 7
• Ruining The User Experience

So because of this I am not dedicating an entire post to them. The first started out good, but jumped around so fast and quick that it felt a bit confusing. I think in the future it would help if besides grouping the panel into a particular topic, that it was grouped categorically by beginner, intermediate, and advanced tags. That way you kind of knew a bit more about what you were getting into.

On this same note if the Panel Topic Titles were a bit more reflective of what they actually were. This brings me to "Web App Autopsy" It turned out to be nothing more then an expose on 4 companies. There was one interesting part though when they spoke about the lines of code and the platform/technology used build the different applications (blinkspace, regonline, wufoo, feedburner).

Web App Autopsy
I was really hoping the topic would focus on which web parts worked and which didn't and how they were dissected, analysed, scrutinized, and redesigned into functionally working parts of a massive web application. A true autopsy of the app and not a statistical break down / expose of the aforementioned companies.


The unleashing CSS class was similar, it had a few good tips in it, but had way too much of a history lesson. I would have liked to seen more tips and less history .

Ruining The User Experience was really short 30 minutes and was really general, mostly commonsense. Going back to my labeling this would be considered a beginner topic.

Let's see what the panels today are aboutt o revewal.

The First Day - Conference Warmup.

Well, here I am Austin. Hotel problems had me checking in later then expect, but beyond that everything is going well. The warmup and pre-conference panel sessions were great and primarily geared towards meeting people, and finding out what the conference is all about.

Afterwards there were several company hosted events that let you get up close with all the attendees. I met so many people in the same field from all over the place. I met this guy Jeff who works at SEO optimzation company. We've been chatting and sharing tips and techniques.

The first panel session is about to begin in 20 minutes and it's titled "Why Is XSLT Sexy" It should be extremely informative. As I just started messing with XSLT a little bit ago so I hope to gain some good knowledge from this panel discussion.

Aftewards there are 4 to 5 other panels I want to attend in addition to the Fox Media Interactive Event, and Frog Meida Event this evening. I went to the Porto Novelli and Break Bread with Brad last evening and it was nice, though hard to speak to people due to all the music and noise. I really want to find a place tonight that allows for better communication.