No, not another post listing all the wonderful speakers at the conference, but my experience on the first day of South By Southwest Interactive - lines for everything!

I arrived at the Austin Conventon Center with what I thought was plenty of time to park the car and get into my first session. That was a mistake. I lined up with all the other drivers to get into the parking lot, finally it was my turn to pay, except that whilst the car in front of me paid and drove up the ramp, the attendent left their booth and flagged me forward and told me the parking lot was now full and I would have to turn around and leave!

This was followed by 15 minutes of driving around the block to find another parking lot - fortunately I found one only a couple of blocks away.  So having parked the car I headed back to the convention center, only to be greeted by one of the longest lines I have ever seen. I confirmed with a helper that this was in fact the line for the people who had already pre-registered, yes I was told it was.  So 50 minutes later I had finally progressed to the front of the line - except it wasn’t it was the front of the downstairs portion of the line. Next was to line up to use the escalator to go up to floors to the badge pickup. Finally I was allowed upstairs to be met with, yes you guessed it another line. 15 minutes later and I was standing in front of the badge pickup desk confirming my details, those confirmed, I was told to go and “wait in line” for my badge to be brought out. Ten minutes of waiting produced my badge so now off to get my conference bag and directory. Back down stairs past all the people still in line, I over hear one of the assistants telling someone that the end of the line is now outside the building (its raining out there) guess my wait indoors wasnt so bad.

Bag pickup, is of course at the end of another line - this one not so long, only about 5 minutes. I pick up my directory and bag. I am cautioned that the directory will cost me $40 if I lose it - yikes, best I don’t lose it then. The schwag bag contains some odd things. A $20 camera bag from Crumpler (very nice), an iPod sock from Adobe (very strange) and a bunch of magazines (very wasteful).

So that was my Lineup experience. More from the sessions coming.

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