Every year, there are a few professional events and conferences that come along that I need to go to; others that I should go to; and then there are the events that I simply want to go to. The SXSW Interactive ‘09 event was one that I wanted to go to this year, but just couldn’t fit it in.
However, thanks to blogs posts like this one: Best of Show at SXSW Web Awards Revealed from Mashable.com, I can see what I missed… which evidently, wasn’t much! Thanks Mashable!
By looking at the sites that won awards, I can learn several things:
- The judges were clearly out of synch with the “real” emerging trends.
- The judges think their target market would find their “beer company” sponsor appealing.
- And finally, the judges unofficial “theme” of this year: Disengagment.
At least, that’s what I felt time after time by simply doing my duty to keep abreast of the latest goings ons in my industry, viewing the sites that were chosen as winners:
Activism: Tweet Congress
Amusement: Addictionary
Art: Things I have learned in My Life, So Far
Blog: The Bygone Bureau
Business: JasMax
CSS: Project Miso
Classic: FlickrFlickr reviews
Community: Lost Zombies
Educational Resource: The Cycle
Experimental: We Tell Stories
Film/TV: HuluHulu reviews
Games: Why So Serious
Mobile: Gigotron
Motion Graphics: NVIDIA Speak Visual
Music: James Zabiela
Personal Portfolio: Ali Felski
Student: Modernity Spirit of Experimentation
Technical Achievement: Aviary
People’s Choice: Lost Zombies
Best of Show: We Tell Stories
Of particular interest was the Best of Show: We Tell Stories. After staring at the site for this year’s winner, for triple the time a normal user would have allowed, I found myself, well, disengaged, disinterested, and without even the slightest inclination of where I wanted to click.
So, as expected, I simply “X’d” out, contributing to what must be an astronomical bounce rate.
Last year’s winner was Hulu.com, for comparison, and I’m not sure what happened this year, but one thing is clear: They completely missed the mark.
