[Note: this post was originally written on wed evening when I was a bit sleep deprived. I could have sworn I hit publish - but, oops I guess I did not]
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SXSW interactive is winding down and I am sitting in a hotel room working on a presentation about the Web world I know and love. But I can't focus. My mind keeps racing around with a flurry of thoughts. Most importantly I have this one thought I must get 'down on paper' to clear my brain.
We are at a seminal moment in the the world of the Social Web - we are growing up.
My hope is that this year's SXSW is not remembered for chaos, tribal fighting or as the year "thought leaders" [heh] outnumbered innovators but for a moment in time that the enthusiasm, excitement and energy of the innovators, entrepreneurs and designers, individuals and companies has led to a rich, unique and viable industry.
Where else but on the web can geeks, designers, artist coders, gamers etc all share a space. I was drawn to this this industry over 15 years ago because it empowered me as an individual and enabled me to connect with others and exercise my creative side. I was in college at the time and ran a business where I published a Guide to NY using Pagemaker 1.0. I flipped on a Mac and voila I was a publisher. It was and still is a place where even a dabbler has a voice. As someone who loves to create and connect but does not want to get bogged down in coding - this is powerful stuff!
The web is a place where creative minds who choose to "opt-out" can mix with "business types", where geeks and techies and graphic designers, developers and storytellers can all mash together to use whatever tools suit their needs. Whether they are 23 year old "billionaires" [heavy on the quotes] , grown-up companies that gave birth to an industry or newbies who have taken the tools and built a new life for themselves.
Emblematic of this diversity as I hung out with old friends and met new ones, I was struck over and over by how many people had multiple business cards -- i.e. multiple lives and multiple identities. How many people could not define themselves in a niche and how many people took vacation time to attend SXSW - even if the web is part of their day job. This is because SXSW [and by extension the Web] is something very personal to them.
I had not been to SXSW in years [not sure why exactly - but probably because I had lost touch with that creative, developer side of myself]. So the jump to the grown up SXSW was indeed sharp. Part of me misses the smaller community aspects of the Web - "back in the day".
The Web has entered its adolescence [at least as far as SXSW is concerned]. And as it grows and the community breaks into every increasingly larger and diverse smaller tribes, my hope is we focus on creating even better tools to empower more people to experience that same incredible aHA moment I had when I first got a taste of the power and possibility that is The Web.
[note: the Earnestness of this post is dedicated to Heather Gold and Molly Steensen..;)]
