In fact, I didn’t bring it with me to this year’s South by Southwest Interactive festival, choosing to leave it at home so that I could move more quickly through the airport (bringing it along would have required me to check one bag). This is why I have no photographs from the show, but if you’re looking for visual documentation, there’s some wonderful shots from Lisa Whiteman at her Flickr account, and similarly beautiful work from Naz Hamid on his Flickr account, too.
Did I Draw You?
For my part, I brought along my less visually accurate but infinitely more convenient Moleskine notebook and, much as I did recently in Paris, did a lot of sketching. I’m liking this.
So, herewith, a sampling of the off-the-cuff doodles I made while sitting around the Austin Convention Center, watching panels or chatting in the hallways with other attendees. One thing these drawings don’t do well that photographs do better is capturing some other mode of the attendees’ activities other than… just sitting around. That’s the hard thing with sketching a business conference: not much happens aside from sitting around on one’s ass. It makes for rather boring drawings, to be sure, but to add a little excitement, South by Southwest attendees may want to see if they can spot themselves amongst the doodles, as there’s a chance I drew you… hours and hours of fun!