TED vs SxSW

Last night we held a roundup of all the conferences various people had been to recently - TED, SXSW, LIFT, ETech etc (see summary here) - "conference voyeurism" as one wag put it. As I'd been to both TED and SXSW I did a compare and contrast spiel, which was basically this:

Pricing:

TED is $6,000 for 3 1/2 days of packed programming, and SxSW is $450 for 5 more relaxed days - about the same amount of hours. At more than 10x the price (c $1 per minute) I felt more pressure at TED to Do Everything, and one literally felt one was p*ssing away money by going to the toilet

Attendance:

TED c 1200, SXSW c 9,000. In theory the TED audience is much more high quality, and there are big names - but there were also too many of those annoying "Startup CEO" types who interrupt the conversation you are having with Mr Famous to pimp their Thang and press a business card into said hands - this happened often at TED, hardly ever at SXSW. I did not pay $6000 for some rude little MBA sh*t to interrupt me in mid convo (at $1 a minute.... )

Content Range:

TED - huge, from Robotics to Jazz. SXSW less so, its a Techfest, but being part of the overall SXSW music & film festival means there is a lot going on in Austin at the same time

Talks:

- TED - very high quality of presentation, lower quantity (single stream) of talks. Good content quality overall, and even the poorer ones are bearable owing to the high presentation quality. Not much Q&A

- SXSW - some of the panels were dire, some (eg Steven Johnson) were TED quality - but the quantity is huge, and there is a quality in such quantity as if you didn't like one you moved. Not much Q&A in panels. However the discussion groups were very good, as typically the audience were informed

Networking:

Better at SXSW - more time, more space, and people seem more amenable to it. In theory the quality of networking at TED is higher, but I'd say at SXSW there were a similar number (say c 1,000) of high profile people, and a larger number of ordinary oiks - of whom many were very interesting. TED has a wider range of people, however, and the big hitters are very big. SXSW is more T/M/T focussed and has more Tech hitters, but fewer big name VCs and certainly no movie stars (to my knowledge, anyway). Someone said that TED is where you go to meet yesterdays' heroes, SXSW is where you go to meet tomorrows'. A bit cruel, but you know of what they speak.

Parties / Apres Talks:

TED is more structured to facilitate meeting people, at least until c 10pm when the formal stuff typically closes. SXSW has more "party" parties - free beer, some grub, lots of people milling around in brownian motion. After c 10pm its much the same though, groups of people chatting over drinks in bars/hotels/whatever. SXSW has an "In crowd" party scene, but its more about A-lister pecking order, as the parties themselves are much of a muchness.

Here endeth the lecture.....