In all fairness, and in hindsight, I should have made it clear that your tweet was probably meant in “jest”, as I look to you as one of the less self-indulgent and always informative.

And that’s probably the answer to your question. It’s not that there’s a lot of expertise at the event – it’s that there’s a lot of “aren’t we cool to hang with Blogger X or Book Author Y” kind of stuff going on.

The really cool stuff – the lessons, the new viewpoints, the uniqueness, etc – was most definitely there. But too many people seemed to ignore that and go for the “check me out, I’m linkbaiting to Personality X.”

Good for them – but my clients want reasons for social media, not reasons for visiting a certain bar. To that extent, SxSW still needs to grow. At least from this viewpoint.

The same “too good for you ” indie types that you mention are exactly the same as the ones I’ve seen folks complaining from a social media point if view.

I won’t name names, but I heard of one big A-lister telling someone he couldn’t chat with them as he had to meet a potential blog sponsor.

Really? Don’t forget who helped you get these sponsors interested in you in the first place – the same person you just pissed on.

So, yes, agreed – it’s what you get out of it that makes any event. Shame SxSW seems to be going down the route of “used to be so good.”

One of the biggest pet peeves of mine is ignorance. And I find that often gets amplified by social media, despite being a “connecting medium”.

I went to PodCamp Toronto last year, and watched some of the “names” in social media meet folk that really wanted to connect. And what were they doing?

Tapping away on their iPhone or BlackBerry about where they were going to hang out for the after-party.

Thanks, but I’ll hang with the decent folks that are actually interested as opposed to the ones that are self-interested.

SxSW used to be a great resource for new movies and music. Then they added the Interactive section, hence the SxSWi tag.

The “education” part is subjective – will you learn more there at a keynote than you would dissecting online resources? Possibly – ut then do you want to be squashed between 500 people while doing so, and paying a couple of thousand dollars for the privilege?

I think you raise a key point. From a learning point of view, you can find the key talks and presentations online. So, apart from the face-to-face connection, is there anything that SxSW offers that you’d really miss?

After all, there are already a ton of social media get-togethers all through the year…

The problem with SxSW (and pretty much any social media event) is that it’s usually the same names talking about the same stuff. So do we really make any cool new connections? Debatable.

There’s sewage and then there’s repetitive sewage – how much do you really want to wade through?