Monday, March 3, 2008
Pocket Guide, Big Bag
“Why is there no SXSW calendar for my chosen PDA?”
“Why can’t I get this SXSWi schedule on Outlook?”
“How do I get the entire conference schedule on my phone’s calendar?”
You may be asking all these questions, and more as you prep for SXSW.
Well, here’s four words why it really matter all that much: pocket guide, big bag.
If you’ve never been to SXSW before, those words may not make any sense, so let’s explain ‘em.
The Big Bag is a canvas tote given out to all SXSW registrants and filled with promotional materials: CDs, magazines, pens, flashlights, guitar picks, weird caffeine packets, earplugs, brochures, flyers, and coupones. There are three different totes for Music, Film and Interactive, and each one is imprinted with a unique design that changes every year. In previous years, the Big Bags have been graced by artwork from David Byrne, Sam Brown of explodingdog.com, and South Park’s Troy Parker and Matt Stone. Big Back pickup should be your first stop after your get your badge. The #1 item you should grab from each Big Bag is the pocket guide.
And the Pocket Guide? Sure, you can download iCal version of the entire SXSW schedule and put it on your phone, or write up some crazy code to scrape the entire SXSW.com site and turn it into a shared Google Calendar, or figure out some bizarre Outlook or Treo hack. But here’s a simpler solution.
The Pocket Guide. It will save your life. There’s one for film, one for music, and one for interactive. For Interactive, you can have all the panels and parties at a glance, in a nice, professionally printed form. Bring this with you, everywhere. For film, you’ll get a nice grid view of all of the screenings happening. For music, you have a thick but small booklet with all official SXSW artist showcases to flip through. Much better than a bunch of 8.5” x 11” printouts, and easier to read than hunching over your phone or some flimsy newsprint.
Paper! What a wonderful technology. And doesn’t drain your battery life, or fall down if you can’t get online. Bonus: Look for a PDF of the Pocket Guide on the SXSW Interactive website this week as a preview.
Update: You can download the film schedule grid as a PDF from the Austin Chronicle.
Pocket guide photograph by mac steve / Michael N, under a Creative Commons license.
