Hasta La Creative!

With so much anticipation for South by Southwest (SXSW), how can it possibly deliver on the hype? If you’re obsessed with coming away having annointed the “next big thing” it most certainly won’t, but then you’d be missing the point. It’s fashionable to declare SXSW “over” every year, but I actually think it’s even bigger and more important than people realize. But to get value out of it you have to start looking for the small things.

Last year the big stuff at SXSW was easy to identify. It was the year the Nike Fuelband launched, which became a hot, mainstream consumer product. It was the year American Express connected its Sync program to Twitter, making a company founded in 1850 one of the pioneers of social commerce; sponsoring a free concert by Jay-Z helped too. It was the year that an agency turned homeless people into WiFi hot spots, leading Jon Stewart to remark on his show, “So rather than train people to become computer workers, we’re training them to become computer equipment.” Events just don’t get much more memorable.

This year, there’s no sign of any of that. Countless brands will be present, and many will have a presence speaking, demoing new technology, running hack-a-thons, or hosting private parties. Others will be trying to crowd into the Twitter party just in case Mike Tyson shows up like he did at Twitter’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) soiree. But there doesn’t seem to be one hit product like the Fuelband, a hot breakthrough app like Foursquare or Twitter, or any train wreck that will distract Stewart from the sequester.

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