SXSW Interactive

I've worked in the service industry in Austin for 11 years and SXSW is one of those weeks where you will make a lot of money, hate a lot of people and make more money. I've never really "attended" even though I've worked at a dozen venues and met several participants. At one of the bars I worked at we had this annual party for a group from SXSW Interactive. The party was called the "Red versus Blue" and for four hours one hundred tech junkies filled our bar the Tuesday of SXSW. Overheard in almost every conversation were words like platform, interface, venture capital and so on. I enjoyed it, even if it was from afar. This year will be different, I hope as I plan to enroll in the advanced new media class.
One of the speakers for 2009 was Raven Zachary. Mr. Zachary is an "iPhone strategist" who helps people develop iPhone apps. On many occasions, while I am playing with some cool new app, I've wondered how these nifty little operations come about. I have the feeling that the sophistication, usefulness and profitability of the iPhone apps will continue to rise and evolve in the coming years and Mr. Zachary figures to be in the middle of it all.
Jamie Voris was a speaker in 2008. Mr. Voris is chief technology officer for the National Football League. A few years ago, while working at the aforementioned bar, I met several members of the NFL's new media group. I made such good friends with all of them that they invited me to join them the three next nights as we went bar hopping and such. The funny thing was I hoped to pick their brains about the NFL environment yet they also wanted to pick my brain on several football related topics. They asked me which team website I liked/hated most and even left me with some homework every night. I remember thinking to myself "I want their job." One HUGE limitation I had at that time was I knew as much about HTML as I did the laws of relativity. This year will be different.