On the day after we landed in St. John – we got the word from the SXSW Interactive selection committee that our proposal on Technomadism was accepted for SXSW 2011!
It is quite an honor to be one of the few hundred selected out of over 2500 proposals. We owe much gratitude to all of you who answered the call to support us. Thank you!
While it’s completely exhilarating that SXSW accepted our proposal, they accepted it as a ‘Core Conversation‘ and not as the panel filled with other Technomads that we had initially pitched.
This is a somewhat disappointing shift for us. We had hoped to bring together a diverse collection of other awesome nomads to join us in presenting their various flavors – tapping into folks self-identified as Technomads, NuNomads, NuRVers, digital nomads and location independent professionals. It feels somewhat incomplete to have just the two of us presenting, and then leading a large round-table conversation.
We even had some great technomads holding March open in their travel schedules in case our panel was selected, and we feel as if we let them down by not being able to bring them with us.
But regardless of the format… we will rock it. And I am sure that our session will draw a fabulous crowd of current and potential future Technomads to connect with us, and each other.
Now that our session has been approved, we have logistics to figure out. We’re in St. John with a lease through the end of March, but SXSW starts March 11th. Do we end our time in the island early, pay our final month’s rent without being here to enjoy it, and deal with the time and costs necessary to drive from Florida to Texas with our RV home in tow? Or do we buy expensive plane tickets to fly to Texas to present, and then come back for a final week in the tropics? Either way, we now have a lot of travel costs and logistics to work through.
But regardless… meet us in Austin in March for SXSW Interactive 2011!
I’m sure you guys will do great! SXSW was tough for us to plan around because it was 1/3 of the way around the country from MI but time-wise fell half-way through our planned year. It would have been a puzzle to figure out how to get there – so it was definitely one of those “nice if it happens and nice if it doesn’t” moments.
I did attend a Core Conversation last year on Social Media and Roadtrips – but it was unfortunately interrupted by a fire alarm & building evacuation.
Hope that doesn’t happen to you!
Thanks. .I’m sure it will all work out. Would have really loved to show the family on the road aspect of technomadism, however. Oh well, we’ll be sure to use you guys as an example of it, and probably have some sort of resource handout.
Congrats! That’s awesome
Thanks 🙂
I’m not sure how many of our proposed panelists will be able to make it, unfortunately. One of the perks of being on a panel is having your badge comped. They’re rather pricey otherwise. Hopefully other technomads who are planning to attend will be in touch, and we can know to call of them during our event.
Hopefully over the coming months we’ll get more clarity on what a Core Conversation is, and how to best approach it.
My best understanding of the format SxSW proposed is for each person in the audience to identify themselves and their primary concerns and competencies so others can later search out those most likely to be able to help. Could you have your proposed panelists be in the front of the audience and you call on them first to quickly share their experiences? Your own introduction would need to be very short to provide an example of what you expect people to share and you’d have to be ruthless in cutting off people who can’t be concise but helping people make good connections later seems to me to be of value. Bringing lots of business cards and encouraging those exchanges would also be good for a program like that.
I’m sure whatever you decide to do will be well received.