Beer Debt, SXSW 2008 Wrap up
SXSW 2008 happened over a month ago and yet its just this afternoon that I’ve managed to clear a little bit of time to post some closing thoughts about it. To say that March and April have been busy would be a tremendous understatement but still, this post is long overdue.
First, we have a beer debt to clear! Steve Hambo had a case of James Boag’s Premium Lager delivered to our hotel for SXSW. After several grueling days at SXSW we were exhausted and Steve’s gift came in quite handy.
Our SXSW 2008 experience can be summed up in two words, wonderfully exhausting. In 2007 we felt we stayed too long and in 2008 we didn’t stay long enough. We arrived, we worked, we talked, we had Steve’s beer, we left. Next year I plan to stay a day or two longer just to meet people and hang out without the pressure of a schedule looming over my head. I think most of the team felt constantly rushed with the exception of a few hours Sunday afternoon.
We arrived late Friday afternoon and stayed up until 2am finishing the presentation. Saturday we were up by 7am and off to the convention center where we presented three times and concluded with a Q&A. That was the exhausting part.
The wonderful part was getting to throw a great party for the community! For three hours we got to take off our work hats and just share a beer or three with the community. It was a stellar experience and worth all the effort it took to pull it off. That was followed up by a relaxing time at the Solspace Nightcap. You can find a number of photos in the EllisLab SXSW 2008 Flickr Pool.
As promised we released the information on EE 2.0 to the public though if you’re reading this chances are you’ve already seen it. Andru from GearLive did record the Q&A session but had a very legit delay in getting it out. You may want to send him a friendly nudge to get it released. By the way, Andru it was great to finally meet you in person! That goes for everyone I was able to shake hands with and spend some time with.
At this point most of you are likely wondering “this is all very nice, but where’s the latest 2.0 news?” For the time being we’re laying low with EE 2.0 news. There are several important items the dev team wants to finish before releasing new information. Right now we’re being highly productive and don’t want to interrupt that until we’re ready for a break. This means we’ll all have to be patient as we want to tell you what we’re working on as much as you want to hear it.
