SxSW – an Emerging Place for Tech and IT

As you’ve probably seen in your news feed, SxSW (South by Southwest) 2015 is in full swing in Austin, Texas. While most people know it simply as another hipster music festival featuring upcoming indie bands, SxSW has actually grown into a much broader multi-focus festival covering music, film, startups AND technology.

Focused on emerging tech, The SxSW Interactive Festival is fast becoming a breeding ground for new IT ideas and creative innovation, with five whole days of in-depth presentations, panels, networking events and showcases. While this year’s proceedings feature Spiceworks’ CSO and co-founder Scott Abel, some noteworthy keynotes from previous conferences include Elon Musk, Ray Kurzweil and Mark Zuckerberg.

Maybe you’re still thinking: “Why would I bother checking out SxSW?” My answer is: why wouldn’t you?

I think it’s safe to say that most of us in IT have caught the train by now of realizing the importance of being exposed to new technical ideas and ways of thinking. Instead of minions in lab coasts plugging boxes together, Sysadmins are now expected to be problem solvers with a global understanding of market places and social currents. In other words, the better we understand the culture involved in and around our business, the better we can serve users in that culture with IT.

This is EXACTLY the kind of knowledge you’ll pickup at SxSW; just take a look at a few of the topics that I’m checking out this year:

• Battle Cry of the Sensible Startup: Are stress, hype and ego mandatory for startups? In this panel featuring Spiceworks’ co-founder and CSO Scott Abel, three CEOs discuss whether it’s possible for sensible startups to still be successful. Silicon Valley icons and investors have famously scoffed at work/life balance. What are the real risks and rewards for young companies taking a more sane approach to culture? If anyone can resonate with high stress and workload, it’s IT…
  

• Are You Smarter Than Your Brain: Find the unexpected and sometimes surprising realities in both the world at large and your own backyard, revealed by crunching the numbers and finding new ways to visualize data. Learn about data and the people around you on topics that will range from how people spend their free time to sex to personality and character. The better we know our users, the better we can help them.
  

• Coding Culture: Programming a Best Place to Work: So many companies claim to have great “culture,” but culture is not made merely by the presence of a ping pong table or a kegerator. Culture is more than just a perk for employees, it’s what attracts the very best talent, and keeps them for years. This culture definitely includes IT interaction in the workplace. Learn what YOU can to do foster a creative and pleasant work environment from the sysadmin chair.
  

The best news is that you don’t necessarily have to shovel over half of your paycheck to “attend.” On the SxSW site, you can watch live interactive webcasts of the majority of keynotes and presentations as well as tune into SxSW streams on Twitter and more.

If you are going to attend next year’s festival, be sure to get your badge far in advance, as pre-sale vs. at the door pricing differs in the hundreds!

Start Learning!