What is South by Southwest Interactive? - Uwe Hook

What is South by Southwest Interactive?

Think Geek Woodstock: Replace hippies with geeks, drugs with beer, music with apps and sit-ins with geek-outs.

Think variety: You can attend a session called "Avoiding the 11^th Hour Sh*tstorm", "The Future of Innovation in Banking", "Sausagefest: Getting more women into New Media & Tech" or "Can government teams make government services more user friendly?" And that's just Saturday morning.

Think outside the box: While SXSW can be a massive Social Media echo chamber, one gets rarely the chance to engage with brilliant people outside of the media/advertising/marketing world. SXSW provides the opportunity to chat with scientists, entrepreneurs, sociologists, non-profits and thousands of other amazing minds that don't fit the one-word description norm.

Why you should go

1. Does your brain need stimulation?

2. Want to build stronger and weaker ties?

3. Looking for talent?

4. Ready to learn new things?

5. Want to change the world?

If you answered just one question with 'Yes', make plans for next year and come. If you answered all questions with 'Yes', forget about oversold hotel rooms and come out this year. You won't regret it.

My one advice

There are lot of guides "How to survive SXSW" or "SXSW for beginners" floating around. No need for me to regurgitate that.

My advice is to choose each day one or two sessions that have nothing to do with your expertise. No media, no advertising, no marketing. "Non-visual Augmented Reality and the evaporation of the interface" and "Matchmaking comes to Health Care for doctors & patients" are my choices.

Oh, and when you're in town, contact me via Twitter @uwehook

There's always time for a coffee. See you there.

Uwe Hook is the CEO and Co-Founder of BatesHook, Inc. (www.bateshook.com) and a veteran of the advertising and marketing industry with the goal of building connections between people and brands. Uwe can be reached at uwe@bateshook.com.

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