SXSW Interactive Day 1

Doug Rushkoff versus first day tactics.

It happens every year. The bad weather thaws or rains itself out just in time for Austin, Texas, to become known as The Place With the Most Amazing Temperatures On Earth. Today it was all big blue sky and 75 degrees and blinding 8 a.m. sunshine, giving SXSWesters another reason to break out the shades (the first being that for culture-savvy, social-Web tech geeks, SXSW Interactive [#SXSWi] is the coolest place in the world to be).

And yet, the Austin convention center was not the picture of cool. It was all voluminous convention center rooms with registration lines snaking along the corridors (so many people!), and heavy first-day goodie bags (conferences require you to use an entirely different set of muscles). The 2pm and 3:30pm panels and talks seemed to have been booked in a backwards fashion — the enormous presentation rooms were not even half full while the small panel or workshop rooms were jam packed and standing-room only.

Could the organizers have planned incorrectly or could this just be first day jitters by the attendees. It seems to me that on opening day at SXSWi, which has always had the tone of “how can we make money with this crazy technology we’re inventing,” people need tactical stuff, not philosophy. Hence the scramble to squeeze into tiny rooms to experience “Content Strategy: What’s in it for you?” and “What are Analytics? A Guide to Practical Data,” and the modest showing for Doug Rushkoff’s high minded critique of the Digital Age or Kaiser Kuo’s meta analysis of Google in China.

The theme of the first day, as far as I can tell among the chaos, was “I’m trying to find my footing,” and most people who are trying to find their footing usually head to subjects that they may already be familiar with, not those that require a further tilt of the imagination.

I wish it weren’t so. Rushkoff, the former cyberpunk and current new media expert, was invigorating. His latest book is Life Inc.: How the World Became A Corporation and How To Take It Back. In it takes a look at the degrading cultural influence of the corporation. At SXSWi, he talked to a modest crowd about what he called the Ten Commandments for a Digital Age, and had quite a few Tweetable comments on the unsustainability of “free.” “When there is no social contract [between the digital world and users], openness can continue until there’s no one left to take from,” was one. “Content is not king; contact is king,” was another. I left the room as wobbly as I entered, but in a good way.

Tonight there will be parties, lots of parties, and then the weekend will arrive, and the official kick off will be Saturday night at the frog design soiree. By then people will be in a familiar SXSW rhythm, which is to say, they’ll realize that since they’re here they might as well throw caution to the wind and learn something they didn’t already know.