On our final day at SXSW, we ran into a good problem, there were more panels I wanted to see than time allowed.  At 11a I saw probably the most informative panel of the week.  Steve Zehngut moderated a discussion on “How to Hire and Manage a Software Developer.”  It was funny to learn that everyone deals with missed deadlines, changing scope and costs overruns.  Steve offered some great tips to minimize the chances of this occuring on your project.  This day got broken up a little by a conference call, but I was able to catch the Net Neutrality Debate moderated by Maggie Reardon.  While I am very interested in the topic I don’t believe it is a real issue at the moment.  The limited competition between broadband providers does concern me, but I am not sure if any are real restrictions we need to be concerned about.

In the afternoon there were a handful of panels that looked interesting.  I decided to listen to Josh Williams, the CEO of Gowalla speak about the future of Location Based Advertising.  I really went to see if Gowalla had any staying power in competing with Foursquare.  I left feeling that Gowalla is in a very similar position Apple was in a few years ago when battling with Microsoft.  They have a superior product and are clearly focused on improving the user experience, but are a distant second.  The main goals for Gowalla is to make an online “scrapbook” for people to save and share their adventures.  The final panel I attended at SXSW was about project management.  With a few major projects happening internally it was interesting to learn about new tools we could utilize including Omniplan.  The presenter was surprised no one wanted to talk about the pros and cons of agile vs. waterfall methods, but maybe that is a separate panel for next year.  The last meal in Austin was at Gueros which is a hike from downtown, but well worth the trip.  The trip was capped by attending the Google party on the rooftop deck at Six Lounge.  All and all the conference was a success, learned a good deal and met very interesting people.

Daylight savings hurt attendance at the early panels, I guess everyone forgot to turn their clocks forward.  A hazy morning in Austin in many ways.  Attended an interesting panel on using technology to open government.  It is great to see the House GOP pushing this initiative.  There was a cool example of identifying useless government programs that seems well worth the time and effort.  Speaker of the day was Tim Ferriss, promoting his new book “4-Hour Body.”  Having read his first book “4-Hour Workweek,” I was very interested to hear him speak in person.  The tips in his first book were very practical and he mentioned today that exercise and productivity are directly linked.  He also had some very interesting ideas for improving your language abilities.  I unfortunately missed a session on location based advertising. I am hoping to catch a recap somewhere.

Slow start to day 2, apparently everyone enjoyed day 1 a little too much.  The first session I planned to attend on digital commerce was cancelled.  Checked the line at the pop up Apple store next, and it was still around the corner.  I guess we can consider that a big success for Apple.  They were able to build hype for their new product and get it into the hands of early adopters at a time when they are all looking for the next best thing.  I enjoyed the beautiful Austin morning with a fellow Washingtonian and then decided to head to the convention center.  Saw a very cool series on Gov 2.0 and the outreach to various niche communities.  Government gets a bad rep (mostly well deserved) for being slow to adapt, it was nice to see agencies like NASA leveraging new media to achieve their goals.  Panel  of the day was Joshua Baer’s “Five Secrets to a Killer Elevator Pitch.”  It was great to hear some entrepreneurs get up and sell.  Standing room only for this panel and with good reason, the insight was well worth it.  Met some interesting people from Washington (ironically in Austin) at a Happy Hour at the Moonshiner.  Food of the day, Chili at the Texas Chili Parlor.

18k people… no suits.  Now that the first day of the 2011 SXSW conference is in the books, I identified the three words that will be heard most often over the next few days: BUILD, CODE & STARTUP.  It is great to be in an environment where there are no rules, the sky is the limit and people are still dreaming.  Apple pulled a great move today setting up a special store blocks aways from the conference for the launch of the iPad 2.  I went by at 3:30p (the store opened at 5p) and the line that was 1 city block long.  Definitely more than I wanted to wait,  let’s see what the line looks like on day 2.  Met some interesting developers building great sites, software and apps.  The session of the day was UT Professor Clay Spinuzzi’s discussion on managing loose organizations.  With technology progressing so rapidly, it was very interesting to hear the successes and challenges of companies that either do not have an office or a large percentage of the staff work remotely.  The food of the day, BBQ, both lunch and dinner, when in Rome.