The cool kids have been telling me about it for years, and this year I finally did it – I made it to Austin for SXSW Interactive. The panels were as informative as I’d heard, the parties were even crazier, and boy, what a good-looking and intelligent bunch attend – especially that Sean Percival! (Sean, if you could mail that $1000 by Friday, that would be excellent.)

I’m a research junkie, so I looked for first-timer’s guides all over the place, hoping I’d find something like I did for Burning Man. But despite the fact that SXSWi is made up of a bunch of compulsive Tweeters and bloggers (who, as I mentioned before, are all good-looking and intelligent), you guys are completely pathetic when it comes to any kind of online tip guide. Seriously, when a bunch of Burners outdo you in the organization department? That’s a sorry story, right there.

So, in the spirit of sharing – and because the end of SXSW has left me with the three-second memory of a goldfish and I’ll forget this all if I don’t get it down – here’s All The Things I Wish I’d Known About SXSW.

Things I Wish I’d Known About Food and Drink at SXSW

@sxswfreenoms would make you think that food just floats out of the sky at SXSW. And sometimes it does. I was dodging cupcakes left and right in front of the Conference Center Saturday, and if Zone Perfect bars were $5 bills I’d be able to buy myself a new MacBook (okay, okay, at least an iPod). But for actual sustaining meals, there’s a lot of things I wish I’d known before SXSW.

1. If you’re vegetarian you will starve. There is allegedly a lot of great vegetarian food in Austin, but just about none of it is within a mile radius of the Convention Center. When parties say “We have free food!” they’re really saying “All the cow you can eat!” You can try a bean and rice burrito, but the refried beans are made with lard and the rice is made with chicken stock. And God help you if you have food allergies. Which is why you should…
2. Hit Whole Foods when you get into town and stock up. It doesn’t matter if you’re a vegetarian or a carnivore – stock up at Whole Foods. The Whole Foods Death Star is at 6th and Lamar. It is approximately the size of the Austin Convention Center. If you haven’t been there, you think I’m exaggerating, and if you have you’re probably saying to yourself, “Actually, I think it’s a little bigger.” It’s like Yuppie Wal-Mart – they have everything. But before you hit Whole Foods, go a block down 6th and…
3. Get ice cream at Amy’s. HOLY CRAPNUTS. I’d heard that Amy’s had the best ice cream on the planet, but I thought that was hyperbole. I wish I’d gone the first day. And every day. It’s not like I was eating anything else, anyway, because I didn’t…
4. Research restaurants before you go to Austin. 80% of the restaurants within a 10-minute walk of the conference center suck, and 18% of the rest are wall-to-wall with SXSW folks. Which means you can either miss three panels waiting for a table or eat bad food. If you flail on Yelp looking for something decent and nearby, you’ll burn valuable time that you could be using walking to a restaurant. If you walk into a random place on 6th Street, you will, like we did, have them deliver your meal an hour late, with every item wrong. (Staring at Anil Dash for 35 minutes didn’t improve things.) Do the research and write it all down before you come. Or better yet, mark it on a map.
5. You can get free water if you bring a water bottle. There’s plenty of water coolers around, but SXSW staff frown on attendees wrapping their lips around the spout. Bring an empty bottle and refill it. (Or buy a bottle of water, but that’s about $3.50 in the convention center.)
6. Don’t dehydrate. There’s a few ways that SXSW is like Burning Man, and this is one. It’s dry, it’s dehydrating, and most of the drinks people are handing you are alcoholic, which will just dehydrate you more. Drink water, and tons of it. Next year I may bring a Camelbak.

Things I Wish I’d Known About Panels Before I Went to SXSW

Every time I had #panelfail, because the panel was packed and I couldn’t get in or it sucked or it just wasn’t applicable to what I do, it made me crazy for the next few hours, because I knew I could have been at something better. Here’s some info that might have helped.

1. Panel rooms are really spread out. It’s about 4/10 of a mile from the front door of the Hilton to Ballroom A in the Conference Center, plus there’s geeks to dodge. If your prime pick panel is in the Hilton, several floors up, and your backup is in Ballroom C, you might make it in time for the Q&A, or as I like to call it, “oversharing time.” (More on that later.) When you pick a panel, make sure you have a backup in the same building, or that time slot may be a wash.
2. If you get the vibe you’ll hate it before hand, you’re probably right. I went to a panel that I thought would be on professional development. The bullet points on the boards made it clear it was about “The Secret.” I still stuck it out for 15 minutes, hoping I was wrong. I would have been better off bolting to my Plan B before the panel began.
3. Q&A sessions = audience self-promotion. At least half the people asking questions would spend several minutes shilling their skills, then ask something just meant to show themselves off. If you need to get to another panel, or lunch, skip the Q&A.
4. Panel hashtags almost always change. SXSW likes giving panels 30-character hash tags. Panelists ruthlessly shorten them, usually by scrawling with a Bic pen. This is a problem if you’re in row 40 and trying to monitor the Twitter backchannel.
5. Panelists need lessons in how to use the microphone. No, actually, that’s what I wish SXSW knew about panels. Speaking directly into a mic may seem simple, but many speakers can’t seem to grasp it, even when the audience shouts it repeatedly. Sit near the front so you can hear them even without the mic.

Things I Actually Got Right at SXSW

And here’s some things I actually did right that friends of mine who came to SXSW wished they’d done.

1. Bring multiple pairs of shoes and rotate them. I learned this lesson, painfully, at Burning Man last year. C.K. Sample didn’t have that info, and by Day 3 was Tweeting desperate requests for shoes.
2. Give yourself foot massages at the end of the night. It may sound lame, but otherwise you will wake up with feet that are almost as sore as when you went to bed.
3. Bring an umbrella. Nick Fairbairn of Engine Company One gave me this tip the day before I left, and I listened. Monday night the skies opened up when I was standing in front of Tech Karaoke. Suddenly, I had five new friends standing as close as possible. I wish more of them had showered during SXSW.
4. “Remember” people’s names. Everyone is wearing a badge with their name on it. Everyone forgets they’re wearing a badge with their name on it. When you say hi to someone you’ve met before, glance at their badge and use their name. It makes them feel special and it makes you look like you care.
5. RSVP for every single party. Some parties are hard-core about their guest lists; some will let anyone walk in who has a badge. There’s no way to tell which will be which, and I missed a few parties because I had RSVPd but my crew hadn’t. Just because you RSVPd doesn’t mean you have to show. Follow @sxswparty, @sxswparties, or @sxswPartyList(or next year’s versions of same). Check out the blogs Austinist and Republic of Austin about two weeks out. Between all of them, you should find 80% of the parties.
6. Make plans to see people. You think you’ll just run into people. You’re wrong. (Unless they’re Sean Percival, who is everywhere. How does he DO that?) I missed a good friend who lives in London because we’d never made real plans and he left Saturday afternoon. He was on London time and I was on California time, which meant when one of us texted “What are you up to?” the other was sleeping. I only got to see Jason Calacanis, Lon Harris and Mark Jeffrey – all people I really wanted to see – because I knew they would all be at the TWiST event, and I completely missed C.K. Sample there, which was when I knew I had to make plans. You won’t just run into people (except for Sean) – you have to make it happen.
7. You will always miss something cool. Deal with it and enjoy where you are. At every party I went to, there were a bunch of people sitting there, jacked into Twitter, trying to find out if they were missing something cool. And they were – they were missing the cool thing right in front of them. There’s a million cool things going on simultaneously at SXSW. Enjoy the cool thing where you are rather than searching for something cooler.