I gotta say, too much build up is a bad thing. I call it the “Forest Gump” effect. Or the “Sixth Sense” effect. Or a more contemporary example, “The Prestige” effect. With all three of those movies, there was so much build-up–you know, “This-is-the-best-movie-ever-and-I-bought-a-copy-of-the-DVD-so-I-can-watch-it-over-and-over” kind of thing–that it never lives up to it. I guess after attending some pretty innovative and informative conferences over my career (UIE is great, btw), I was expecting more. There were a few really great sessions, but too many panels-without-any-direction sessions. Perhaps next year’s SXSW will switch up the format a bit. For more on the conference, check out my friend Paul’s blog.

On the plus side, there was some good swag I picked up–a few Google shirts, a Firefox shirt and hat, and a shirt from Lucky Oliver (which, btw, seems to have a pretty good selection of low-cost, high-quality stock images).