I’ve just returned to life at WebWorks.com after spending the past five days taking in SxSW Interactive. SxSW Interactive brings together an eclectic mix of doers, thinkers, and users. How many conferences have you experienced where the attendees and presenters include Sci-Fi authors, journalists, psychiatrists, psychologists, marketers, designers, coders, and gamers? People were as likely to talk about coding websites with Ruby on Rails as they were to opine the death of newspapers in the Age of Twitter.
Looking back, I came away from SxSWi understanding that everyone attending was on a quest to create emotional connections. More than a few vendors present were literally banking on this fact. People want to feel connected. People want community.