Wow, South by Southwest, you never fail to amaze. I’m back from a week of high-octane geekery, inspiration, and festive mingling at our industry’s best annual retreat. (Jeffrey Zeldman describes SXSW as “our industry’s version of the TED Conference plus Spring Break.” Well put, as usual.)
SXSW is always exhilarating (not a word that usually goes with conferences), but it was especially so for me this year. It’s a big, big rush to speak at SXSW, sharing ideas with such a creative, ultra-bright audience. On Monday afternoon, I gave my talk to a packed room of 400 designers and developers about elements of tapworthy iPhone app design. The crowd was generous, the running commentary on Twitter’s [#tapworthy]twitter hashtag was kind, and so were comments afterward. Thanks to everyone for coming. It was great to meet you, and you looked sensational.
(You can grab my presentation slides at Slideshare. SXSW staff were recording both audio and video, so I expect the talk will make its way online in some form soon. I’ll keep you posted.)
Speaking of sensational, I had the pleasure of sharing the afternoon’s iPhone workshop with Joris Verbogt (Objective C Crash Course for Web Developers) and Jonathan Stark (Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). Both gave terrific talks—you don’t often see live coding demos accompanied by cheers, oohs, and ahs. Keep an eye on these guys (and buy Jonathan’s book). J and J are rockstars in the making.
So now, after days of discussing the finer points of app design and Texas brisket, I’m back home, dizzy but energized, ready to get back at it. Let’s make some cool stuff.
