SXSW #3: Inspiration Overload

11 Mar '13

written by Jeroen Mooijman |  photo © dennis bouman 2013 — at Dutch Fellows Base.

From march 8 – 12 Jeroen will explore SXSW Interactive festival for innovation on photography, communities and online business.

3rd blog.. 4th day.. mm.. something must have gone wrong. Well I took my time to get a little better last days. And I really have to admit: I didn’t go to any party yet, for which SXSW is very famous, and which is a bad sign. Very much NOT me!

But what I did do is going to some very interesting talks last day by some very famous and respected people. And one of them was by Tim Ferriss, the author of “the 4 hour work week”. His latest book is about cooking but not only for food, about your whole life. Got the book, signature and photo! 🙂 Love him or hate him; There’s even a talk here about ignoring Tim Ferriss because he makes us believe that every single person can learn just about everything which is I think simply not true. I’ve read the 4-hour workweek and it didn’t work for me (i’m still working way more than 4 hours). But one thing I do like about Tim Ferriss is that by his books and blogs he stimulates readers to think outside the box and go straight out of their comfort zone. This book promises that I can become an expert chef in about half a year… ok. Never thought about it that way but hey, let’s find out!

Elon Musk also had a very impressive talk about his companies and personal life. Just Google the guy if you’ve never heard about him before, he’s truly amazing. One of the things i’ll remember is that he went into the space business just because he couldn’t find any information in NASA’s website about when they planned to go to Mars. Well then I’ll do is myself he tought. The result is Space-X and one of his customers is.. NASA.

I also shook hands with Tim Berners-Lee, one of the inventors of the WWW as we know it and his talk was quite academic and way to complicated for a blog like this. Just google on “semantic web” and open standards and you’ll know. It was very nice to be even in one room with this huge celeb! (ok.. maybe only for true web geeks)

Three people who’ve had great impact in their specific fields, with talks that where truly inspiring. I’m having a great time here! Ok, little information overload maybe. So next stop is an roundup session with all trends on SXSW 2013. Stay tuned!