OneSpot @ SXSW - Last Day

March 17 2009, 11:49pm

SXSW Interactive 2009 is has come and gone, and the final day ended with some hits and misses. For those of you who spent all day packing and driving to the airport, here is what you missed:

Panels on the last day are typically pretty sparse considering many people have headed back to their real jobs and the few that are left are either exhausted or hungover (or both). I went to one early on, though, that was pretty darn good: UR Blog Sux and Print is Dead. Of course, any time you have the guy from Stuff White People Like and I Can Has Cheez Burger on a panel, it’s bound to be informative and funny. One of my favorite questions to come out of the panel was “It’s easy to end a book, but how do you end a blog?” Great question because once you start a blog, it can be difficult to end it. I’d also like to thank I Can Has Cheez Burger for the cool cat giveaway. He is so fat and cute! (Definitely check out this panel’s podcast later. You’ll laugh and learn.)

Has anyone else noticed all the Macs present at the fest (not just all the iPhones)? There have been very few PCs. Is this because the PC people followed my advice (and others’ advice) and left their computers in their hotel room? Those 17 inch Macs are kinda hard to climb over…

The keynote today between Guy Kawasaki and Chris Anderson was pretty good, and very packed. The first five or so minutes were dedicated to making fun of Sarah Lacy and last year’s crazy keynote with Mark Zuckerberg since there had not been a noteworthy moment like that yet this year (oh SXSW… have you not learned that safe can be boring?). Chris Anderson did a good job talking about the psychology of free and business models around the “freemium” concept. His book, releasing in June, should be a good read.

Interesting idea came out of the keynote: in large, popular panels, you should have to pay to ask a question. That way, when you plug your company throughout your question (was there a question in there?) at least we know you paid to advertise. The going rate at the keynote was $20 to a World Hunger Fund. (Can I get a tax receipt when I pay/donate for my question?) The pay-per-question model also forces an answer from the panelist(s). As Guy said, “Hey, he paid 20 bucks, you have to answer!”

The music kids slowly started trickling into the convention center today to register and check in their band mates. You can always tell when the music section starts because everyone starts to get more eccentric. Though, for the past couple of years it has been girls with 60s bangs and Amy Winehouse/Duffy cat-eye eyeliner and guys in skinny jeans and flat ironed hair. Pretty much a bunch of Gwen Stefani and Jonas Brothers look-alikes. Way to fight conformity…

One of the best panels I went to during the fest was the last one of the fest: From Blog to Book Deal. Guy Kawasaki was on this panel as well, but it was panelist Stephanie Klein who really stood out in my eyes. She had a couple of very interesting tidbits during the panel. First, when you are a blogger who gets a book deal, you have to be prepared to talk in addition to writing. Most people don’t think of the public engagements a relatively isolated blogger must make in order to sell a book. Also, you have to get creative when marketing your book yourself, you can t just wait for your publisher to market your book. For her book Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp, she went to Torrid (a teen plus sized clothing store) to sell her book in their stores. I think her advice translates well to small businesses as well. Overall, a great panel to end on.

That’s all for SXSW Interactive 2009. It’s been fun! Keep following us on Twitter @OneSpot for curated news around the web and OneSpot updates. And, if you are going to SXSW Music, be sure to grab our music widget for the latest news in parties, panels, and more!