Drawing from the widespread belief that everything’s bigger in Texas, SXSWi 2011 proved to be no exception. A small delegation from Shopify joined over 36,000 industry representatives in Austin to enjoy South By Southwest’s mesmerizing ballet of warm Texan hospitality and a frenzy of brilliant minds wielding cutting edge technology… oh, and a whole lot of BBQ.
South By (as people in the know call it) has always been known as a breeding grounds for emerging tech and this year was no exception. Beluga took a commanding lead as the most popular group messaging app, Hashable may soon put traditional business cards into extinction, and Hurricane Party will undoubtedly be the go-to SXSWi party finder for years to come.
Also of note was the amount of attention given to the little guy. Even though big name sponsors like Miller Lite and Chevrolet pumped infinite dollars into ethanol infused parties, it was the smaller companies that seemed to generate the most amount of buzz. For instance, Shopify’s Where’s Harley Contest was featured in a USA Today article, and people were tweeting more about Instagram and GroupMe than Pepsi and AOL.
Anyways, there’s no sense in tying to put a weeks worth of SXSWi fun into words, so check out the slide show below:
Jeremy getting a free hug at #25 is the best :D
Yeah I really want one of those charcoal grey shopify tee’s and it would for sure promote your store as people would ask me what the graphic means, can I get one of them over to the UK in a medium :)
Nice one shopify – looks like it was fun….so how do we get the free tees now ;)
Soooo much fun! I can’t wait to go next year for my first time to SXSWi. How do you guys even try to make sense of it all. What’s your strategy going in? How do I prepare for next year?