SXSW 2011, Day 1: Hunting genius and finding idiots

by Nic Haralambous on 12/03/2011

I have mixed feeling about my first day at my very first SXSW event.

If you have no idea why I keep typing the same four letters that seem to have no relevance let me explain quickly: I am in Austin, Texas at a Music, Film and Interactive (Geek) conference called South By South West (SXSW). It’s my first time in Austin and I’ve just come from New York from a work trip. Things are crazy busy right now but that’s beside the point.

I am having a confusing experience at SXSW. I’m seeing some heroes of the web (Tim O’Reilly) and hearing some of the “hottest” startups in the world talk amongst themselves, or commonly known as panels at a conference.

I’ve had mixed feelings and at the moment my mental state is as follows: I need to listen and realise what NOT to do from these speakers.

The bubble that the world speaks of, it exists. It is real and it encases almost every startup entrepreneur I have met, speaker I’ve heard and evangelist who is trying to evangelize.

There is a fundemental disregard for tech that exists outside of the US (even outside of Silicon Valley), there is a fundemental disregard for tech that previously existed.

Let me give an example of the disregard that I’m talking about:

Yesterday I waited patiently for what I hoped would be the talk of the day: Group Chat, Who Will Rise?
This should have been an explosive and dynamic panel considering the four “hottest” startup CEOs of the four “hottest” group chat apps were all in attendance. Beluga, Yobongo, Convore and GroupMe were present but sadly their brains apparently were not.

At one point the Beluga lady stated that Beluga allows you to receive a vibrating notification when someone messages you, “This has never been possible before” was her claim. WHAT? Are you telling me that you are so ignorant that you think that you invented the push notification on a cellular phone? Idiot. Beluga was recently bought out by Facebook. There’s a service that’s thankfully going to be put to rest. It’s sad because I actually like what they are doing.

The GroupMe guy was maybe the best of a bad bunch because his app at least isn’t an app and can be used with existing tech, SMS.

What’s worse is the entire panel kept pitching the audience as to how different their four services are and that they aren’t competitors. I wanted to ask them: “Who is winning? Which of you has more users? Who has more revenue/profit?” but I didn’t because at the end of their sad panel I realised what I can learn from them all: What not to do.

I also managed to hear the very boring and obvious talk by the Chief Game Designer at Zynga. This sounded like a talk with amazing potential. Alas, another non-starter. The guy (I can’t even remember his name) proceeded to tell the audience that Zynga uses Facebooks social graph to connect their users. REALLY? DO YOU? I’m gobsmacked by Captain Obvious up front but wait it out. He then says that Zynga builds pretty games. Again, really? Thanks. Idiot.

Now I’m actually more frustrated because I know that none of these people are idiots, or can’t be or shouldn’t be because they are being covered by the biggest media in the world as the smartest people in the world. But then I have to ponder: Maybe the media are in on it too? Maybe they are as half-witted as the people they write about? I don’t know. But I’m seeking genius today and hunting innovation. Bring it on.

nharalambous@gmail.com

There are 8 comments in this article:

  1. 12/03/2011Kostis Mamassis says:

    This is simply a great post. All these ‘new’ features that you mention above look so much similar to the marketing frenzy of web-sites back in the late 90s just before the bubble burst.

  2. 12/03/2011Allan says:

    Don’t worry Nic, you’ll come across the real gems. Panels tend be be fairly self-congratulatory or out of touch. My most dissapointing session last year was around “the future of mobile”. Apparently the panelists all believed that they (and the products they represented) were it. I found that I got best value by going to sessions that I had little in common with. At least there if they’re saying the obvious, you don’t realise it :)

  3. 12/03/2011Justin Stanford says:

    Nice reality check, Nic!

  4. 12/03/2011Hunting genius and finding idiots | sxswsa says:

    [...] Read more at Nic’s blog. [...]

  5. 12/03/2011Rich...! says:

    I think it’s why I like the effort of curation to fal on the conference thrower, not the conference go-er.

  6. 12/03/2011Darren says:

    or maybe, just maybe, these tech superstars actually are just regular people who happened to be in the right place at the right time with admittedly better than average skills.

    so maybe the reality of a global tech superstar rising out of SA isn’t so far off. particularly when it’s not rocket science. it takes brains, opportunity and a bit of damn luck. but it’s there and it’s real.

    maybe one of the lessons then is that you’re not as far from it as you think :) I sure hope it is.

  7. 15/03/2011Laurie says:

    Welcome in the US, Nic. I am looking forward to the post mortem meeting for your trip! The issue for unusually talented people like you is to deal with the general higher style to substance ratio in the US. At first when arriving in the US, that was also a major questionmark to me. But then I started to note that in the startup world, the best substance will not necessarily win against less-than-the-best substance combined with a strong dose of “style”. OK OK I know that you don’t regard what you saw yesterday as good “style”. But believe me the Americans are smart in selling themselves and their concepts, even if they technically would be inferior to your company/product/ability. As the previous writer above mentioned: the secret is to be above average, and then to be at the right place at the right time. Let’s work on the latter two items, and believe me you are going to hit the ball out of the park. Fortunately you have a strong and real enough personality to learn and adapt fast – and I have no doubt that given the right exposure with a little bit of help from a few friends that have been around the American block a couple of times, you are going to end up with an exceptional outcome! Keep the blogs rolling ….

  8. 18/03/2011Jason Adriaan says:

    1.) Build a product/Add a feature
    2.) Get someone like @aplusk or @kevinrose to tweet about it
    3.) Get a TechCrunch/Mashable/TNW post up
    4.) Repeat steps 1-3
    5.) Get VC*
    6) Repeat 4-5
    7.) Hopefully make some money, but don’t worry it’s not important as long as you repeat 6 regularly.
    8.) Get Aquired/Go Bust

    *some lucky bastards jump straight to step 5 :)

    Americans have that process waxed, in SA we are good at 1 but step 2 and 3 is where we struggle.

    My 2c :)

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