Oh hello there….as I sit in my apartment and type this at 4pm on a Wednesday, there are literally thousands of people drinking, smoking, going to parties, going to industry panels and listening to one of 110 bands playing AT THIS MOMENT……40 feet below my feet.
This is called South By South West (SXSW).
It’s a festival/conference that takes over Austin, TX. in a major way every year during March.
100,000+ people visiting in a city of less than 900,000 people adds a certain “crunch” to the system. Not to mention pretty much EVERY ROAD downtown is closed for events, so driving becomes a joke in certain parts.
SXSW is 3 main parts:
- Interactive Festival = This where all the nerds from around the world come to talk about technology (my fav). This is where you’ll seen Tim Ferriss or Elon Musk just walking around.
- Film Festival = All the movie industry people from around the world geek out about making movies. This is where you’ll see Quentin Tarantino or Steven Spielberg chillin at a party.
- Music Festival = This is where every band, musician, and people-who-wanna-see-bands-and-musicians come into town. This is the largest part people-wise. This is where you may see Snoop Dogg or Lady Gaga hanging out.
I happen to live next door to the Austin Convention Center which is the epi-center of all the action…and everything else is within a 4 block radius. AKA…..it gets crazy around here.
With that craziness said, here are my March 2014 goals (which have been interrupted by SXSW so far):
The first part says “SXSW rent place and stay healthy”.
I ALMOST rented by apartment out for over $3,000/night, but tried to ask for a little more. After taking off to Thailand for a while and other work stuff, I listed my apartment almost before the start of SXSW, so the prices plummeted (oh…and there’s also thousands more apt/condos/hotels in downtown Austin this year because of a big building boom here).
So I didn’t rent out my place unfortunately, but I did stay relatively healthy through SXSW! I still worked out, I didn’t eat late night crappy food, I did drink but far less than normal. Overall I stayed reasonably healthy considering the unreasonable amount of free food/liquor shoved in your face for free during SXSW.
A few days before SXSW started I sent out the last 25 NevBox’s I had:
Here’s a bunch of the international ones going out (those are way more expensive and kinda a pain):
I bought a dog shirt:
We had a “Creative Writing Session” from the pool. Here’s Abel from Fat Burning Man (#1 podcast in the world!) working out of my pool:
Noah had a little party:
I knew SXSW was starting when outside my window I saw 4 electric BMW’s being unloaded for promotion (companies spend ABSURD amounts of money to get promotion during SXSW Interactive):
I rented out the guest suites in my building (both on the ground floor), one for my friend, one just to have parties in. One room had 4 big windows on the ground level like this, 1 block away from the convention center:
I stuck my 3D printer in the window:
…..and brought the guitars/mic/amplifier down just for some street-level concerts:
….and there was lots of co-working by the street also:
It was funny to see random crowds gathering to watch the 3D printer in action. It was the first time a lot of people got to see 
The street view:
A lot of people would just stand there and watch. Kinda awkwardly-funny if you were in the room!
Then we hit up a bunch of the SXSW Interactive panel sessions. Here’s Maneesh and Dave Asprey having one:
I was most happy to see Neil DeGrasse Tyson speak….I listen to his podcast all the time and love the way he can get complex subjects into your brain:
Abel playing a gig in the “Glass Box Room”:
I think by far one of the best parties I went to was the Uship party (Their headquarters happens to be across the street from my building which made it even better)!
One of the founders Jay who I know (and had to name-drop big time just to get me and everyone else in the party):
South By South Dog:
South By South Dog:
Some friends said, “Ok….you can print anything right? Can you 3D print a penis??”
Apparently the answer is yes……you can download a 3D penis from the internet and print it. Here it is:
A cool mural being spray painted:
A common sight during SXSW:
People are just EXHHAAUUSSTTEEDD from all the stuff during the day, and will grab random cat-naps whenever they can:
Saw this MASSIVE 3D printer that could print out big objects like full-sized motorcycle helmets:
Exhausted from panels and roaming around….I FOUND A HAMMOCK!!
After playing guitar and singing in the “The Glass Box Room” several nights in a row, I stumbled upon a booth at SXSW that sold throat relief spray for hoarse throats…PERFECT!
And now that the Interactive part of SXSW (aka the nerdy part) is over I’m back to work. I generally skip the music part.
Now off to finish all those March 2014 goals!