Fresh

SXSW Interactive is almost here, so those months of giddy nerd anticipation are almost over! Hooray! But wait, have you studied the schedule yet? Picked your top panels? Perused the party lists? Researched the must-try restaurants and food carts? No?  Well don’t panic yet, you still have a little time. And to help sort through all the madness I’ve compiled a list of tools and sites that are helping me do some pre-planning this year. As a mere SXSW Sophomore I’m far from an expert on the conference or on Austin, but hopefully this post will help you get organized a little bit.

Finding Promising Panels

Sometimes a panel or session that looks amazing based on its short description in the official SXSW handbook turns out to be, ehhhh, not so great.  And of course the one you decided NOT to go to was the must-see panel of the day.  Although you’re not going to pick winners every time, you can help yourself by doing a little research beforehand.

my.SXSW and Sched.org

The official SXSW site offers up my.SXSW to help you browse the scheduled panels and save the ones that look interesting to you (you have to be registered for the conference and have an account in order to use it).  You can view events and panels in the traditional “list view” or “grid view“, which is nice for quickly checking which panels are happening at a specific date & time.  Once you’ve saved the events that you like, you can view your own personal schedule, and save your schedule to Outlook, Google Calendar or iCal.

An alternative to using the official SXSW scheduling app is to create an account at Sched.org (You can use Facebook Connect or sign in using Twitter). Sched.org presents the panels by day and time, in a format that is a bit easier to take in and browse than the straight list format of my.SXSW — but unlike the official site’s “grid view”, the listing format doesn’t require horizontal scrolling.

my.SXSW and sched.org work well enough for saving the panels and events you want to go to, but they don’t provide many tools if you want to dig a little deeper and find out more about the panel and/or speaker before you save it to your schedule.  Here are a couple of other tools that I’ve been using to help me sort through the sea of panels.

SXSW Panel Picker

Even though it was meant for panel proposals and voting, I’ve found the SXSW Panel Picker to be a good tool for researching accepted/scheduled panels as well.  Do a search for the title of the panel you want more info on — for example, I wanted to learn more about “The History of the Button”, taking place on Friday at 2:00 PM. You should find the proposal page for the panel which contains more information, including the “level” of the panel (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and categories as determined by the speaker/presenter. But even better, you can read comments about the panel written by those who voted during the proposal stage. Sometimes you can determine if the presenter has a reputation for being a good speaker, and/or if the topic has been presented before and if so, how it was received.  Sometimes you may find someone you recognize and respect has voiced support, even more reason to add it to your list.

Sitby.us and Plancast

So you’ve picked out some panels based on their descriptions, and maybe a few comments from panel voters. But which ones are your friends and peers going to go see?  One really awesome tool that’s new this year is Sitby.us, created by WeightShift. Unlike my.SXSW and Sched.org which show you the total number of people  interested in a panel, Sitby.us primarily shows you which of your Twitter friends are interested in a specific panel (though it also mentions the total number).  So I can see which of my ACTUAL friends are interested in a panel, plus anyone whom I follow on Twitter, including web design gurus such as Jared Spool and Jason Santa Maria.  Theoretically, in my mind, they have a better idea of which panels look promising, though realistically they could be taking a chance, just like I would be!

Another big draw for Sitby.us is its beautiful, simple design.  It looks as though it was designed to be viewed on an iPhone, but the design works well in a full-sized browser as well. It’s incredibly easy to navigate with just a few navigational elements at the top, and the color-coded time slots make the schedule listings both pretty and practical.

It also provides one feature that none of the other scheduling apps have: the ability to “check in” at a panel and indicate where in the room you’re sitting, which helps you either find your friends easier, or stalk your favorite rock star web designer. You can add an extra note (“back row, next to the water cooler”) and check a box to broadcast your location via Twitter (though if you do so, I’d recommend setting up a Twitter “barf” account like Stephen suggests or you might end up annoying your followers who AREN’T at SXSW ).

If you’ve already created a schedule on my.SXSW or Sched.org, you can import it into Sitby.us (I tried it with my my.SXSW schedule and it worked perfectly).  You can export your schedule into iCal format, but there is no way to print your schedule directly from the site unfortunately (why would you want to print it? See the next section).  All the same, I will be using Sitby.us as my primary online scheduling tool for SXSW 2010, just because I enjoy using it so much!

Plancast is another tool that’s new this year — although it’s not SXSW-specific, you could use it to keep track of which panels, parties or other events you plan on attending, plus see which events your friends are interested in.  I don’t have many friends with accounts on Plancast yet, so it has not been very useful for me this year. But from what I’ve seen so far, it seems like most people are using Plancast to announce which parties they are going to, so it could be very helpful for hooking up with your friends out on the town after the panels are done for the day.

Print it out or Write it down

With all of our fancy technology, in this day and age, at an interactive conference, WHY would you need to have anything on paper?  Why?  Because most of our fancy technology relies on internet connections, and internet connections can’t really be relied upon at SXSW.  I can almost guarantee that you will have moments of disconnectivity while you are there. There are a LOT of people hammering the free wireless and smart phone networks, so downtime and slow connections are bound to happen.  Don’t miss your next must-see panel because you couldn’t pull up sitby.us, sched.org or my.SXSW on your phone or laptop.

Whether you circle or highlight panels in the official guidebook, print your schedule from one of the scheduling sites, or scribble some notes in a notebook, get it all down on paper and avoid the stress of being disconnected at an inopportune moment.  I’m personally trying to fit all the information I need into a Moleskine, including print outs of maps, notes on good places to eat, bus information and of course, my panel picks. It won’t turn out as awesome as James Bridle’s SXSW 2010 Fieldnotes book (they’re not for sale! Dang it) but I think it’ll work just fine.

What else?

There are TONS of sites and blog posts out there with tips on how to make the most of SXSW and your time in Austin. Here are a few that I’ve read/used; have any you’d like to add? Put ‘em in the comments! Thanks for reading!

SXSW Baby! is absolutely essential for any SXSW-goer, especially those who are going for the first time!

Citizen Taco’s SXSW Essential Guide and Austin 360’s “Guide to SXSW Food Guides” will help you answer the all-important question: Where Should We Eat? (And you don’t have to eat out all the time, check out this post on SXSW Baby! for tips on snacks to bring from home)

And check out the rest of Austin 360 if you want to see what ELSE is going on in Austin (Yes it’s true, SXSW isn’t the only thing going on). And they have a comprehensive Guide to Austin, looks handy if you want to learn some facts and figures, or perhaps want to partake in some outdoor recreation while you’re there. How about a walk/bike ride around Lady Bird Lake?  They also have a pretty big, clean map of downtown Austin for your printing pleasure (for those times when you can’t connect to Google Maps of course).