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One of my most bitter disappointments about SXSW2008 this year was the lack of tangible take-aways from the sessions. A quote that really inspired me before last year’s festival was this by John Gruber of Daring Fireball:

SXSW is the only conference I know where designers and developers hang out. Designers have design conferences. Developers have nerd conferences. http://daringfireball.net/2007/02/sxsw_2007_rands

True to this statement, I attended as a guy who knew a good bit of Ruby, knows a lot about Perl, and lives in a Unix-y environment. I left with:

1. “XSLT is Sexy” and this nugget “XSLT is a functional programming language” — this completely revolutionized my thoughts about XSLT.

2. Grids are Good and how to design with them (Vinh/Boulton): A stunningly beautiful display of how to apportion space on a grid. I referenced Vinh’s Yeaaaah! site several times and Boulton’s explanation of the Golden Section as a principle for gridding was masterful. I ate it up and bought Bringhrust, Grid Systems…, and Meggs’ History of Graphical Design as a result.

3. Web Typography Sucks: Mea Culpa, so often. Thank you Mr. Rutter and Boulton for explaining proper punctuation glyphs and the informative re-layout of part of System of the World.

4. Jeremy Keith w/ unobtrusive Javascript
5. Design æsthetic of the indie developer: introduced me to Mint, talked about ISV challenges, made me think about “how to go solo”. One of the best panels that were run last year

These examples show that I learned more about my interest (graphic design) at a beginner-ish level and gained some traction in my field of expertise: software / systems design.

In short, I proved Mr. Gruber’s summation above. I had take-aways and PDFs. I went straight home and started hacking Javascript and CSS. I was happy and inspired.

Disappointment

To my disappointment this year’s programming featured a major lack of technical discussions. The three technical topics that I’m interested in this year are I18N or Unicode topics, meta-programming (DSL’s), and, as ever, JavaScript. There was some programming in the I18n space, notably Jon Wiley’s excellent presentation, but the latter two topics were barely broached.

Attending one of the few technical sessions that occurred this year, the panel moderator Johnathan Resig noted that he was going to encourage SXSW organizers to bring more technical panels to which the packed room applauded.

SXSW, the nerds are about to leave the building

But even as the nerds were silently slipping their power cables into their crumple bags to head to BarCamp or to the other conference that will mark the death knell of SXSWi, a new breed of attendee’s ranks swelled as did SXSWi’s content to interest them: the acquaintance broker, the derivatives trader of the e-economy.

I’m stealing my terminology from the commodities market. A farmer has hogs. He wants to sell pork bellies to butchers. This is a classic commodity exchange. Similarly, I go to SXSW for the same experience: I either have pork bellies or want pork bellies and I want to meet with expert butchers or pig farmers to learn more about my core interest.

Much like commodity trading, there are people who trade in derivatives: how much will pork bellies be in 6 months or what is the fate of pork bellies 2.0, etc. They’re not muddying their hands with the material work of eviscerating the bellies or writing JavaScript closures; instead they’re attending to curry and generate buzz and parlay that into personal wealth. This is no different than the derivatives market.

Hurt feelings

To save me several “but I’m beautiful and unique snowflake” comments…

He called me an e-derivatives trader!

Now here’s where the feelings are getting hurt, but note, it’s all asymmetrical. The nerds are used to being called nerds and those nerds at SXSWi made peace with the fact that, in this life, they will love understanding why games involving 20-sided dice are more representative of random events than cubic dice. The person insulted is this derivatives trader. He surely doesn’t like that my characterization makes him sound “fluffy” or “trivial”. Well my be-fauxhawked friends, let’s just be honest.

• Would you skip a panel on metaprogramming because you think you can catch Zuckerberg on the way out of the men’s room?
• Do you have an elevator pitch?
• Do you want to get this guy you know to talk to some dude you met at Cadillac bar to help create this company where you can be the director of “concept visualization”?

Just as some fish want to swim in the deep, some attendees want to learn stuff at the panels and make friends with people they can Skype about a weird render error in Safari. But other fish swim in more sunny waters and want to school with other sunny-water fish, scheming and plotting on how to scare that big ol’ barracuda over there.

If your knickers are really in a twist over it, go get a non-fat soy frip frap frop at your local cafféterie and order the seminal management textbook on the matter: Swimmy.

It’s not an insult, it’s just what people like to do with their time, no judgment, just everyone’s inalienable right to pursue their own version of happiness. Like my momma says: “That’s why God made apples and oranges

In fact, my recently-aggrieved friends, let me give you a new name: information and acquaintance brokers. You are experts at making social enginers bring ideas to reality, and I am thankful for your role. You bring liquidity to the market of the possible. Are we still friends? OK, now hear me out a moment.

To answer the question from the reverse perspective the answers would be:

• Miss metaprogramming are you nuts? Besides, when Zuckerberg is smart enough he’ll come to me.
• I am awkward when talking, especially on elevators. I remember basic kanji during that time.
• Hey as long as the VC is buying I’m sitting at this table and buying the Anchor Steam. Wonder if there are any LISP people here…?

And make no mistake, a great product requires a symbiosis of both: the sunny social fish will bring the money, the VC, and their buddy friend in Studio City who knows Tila Tequila and will get here there and thus will make the launch a press-coverage buzz worthy event; while the benthos-fish flexibly re-scale the service to take a thousand iPhones at said party banging away at the server as dreams of a rich buy-out flash into reality. Jobs and Woz, to wit.

Did I mention I’d resolved p=np, so our database will use ternary logic?

Shafting the nerds

SXSW2008 failed to provide balance in terms of the content programming with respect to the technici (we get a new title too) and the brokers. The taste of the new, of innovation, of designing the not-yet-dreamed was not given.

Yet this festival will only be successful, profitable, and all it can be if and only if both parties can be accommodated. The golden goose in this entire description is that “it’s where nerds and designers can get together and, you know, hang out” magic. We must accommodate the two fish-types and the golden goose ( man, my metaphors have gotten way wacky in this ). Here is my suggestion.

Tracks

While tracks may seem to kill the goose, let me suggest how it wouldn’t.

This is goose-friendly as I may know a lot about I18N, but not a lot about Typography so I might hit Typo 1, Design 2 and then do I18N 3 and 4 in the afternoon. So here I am, a hacker, learning about things I don’t traditionally work in. Designers and managers can learn about “Blub”, because the geeks at the next desk won’t stop talking about it. After noon, when those who networked all night at the parties wake up, then information targeted to the acquaintance-and-association brokers can fire up perhaps running to slightly later in the evening.

This would give the nerds some “free time” to hack with their new Birds of a Feather.

My interlocutor in this so far has been David whom I met during “The Secrets of JavaScript Libraries” ( I could have used about 3 more hours of that session ). He worries that tracks will kill the goose and ruin what’s special about SXSW. I think his concern is right, but I don’t want to cover the same 2-inches of depth again next year, else I simply shall not attend.

What’s the way forward, how can we keep the goose alive? Comment

Updates

1. Jon W. corrected my schmooze-ese s/speech/pitch