SxSW: Returning with Renewed Vigor!

Scott, Derek and I went down to Austin this last week to attend the interactive portion of SxSW. For us, it’s a bit of an anniversary and a time to reflect on what we have done over the last year — as well one heck of a shindig.

This year was no exception. The highlights in no particular order:

• Scott and Derek’s panel on Getting Things Done was a huge success. I walked in, expecting to see a table of 12-15 people, and to my surprise the room was packed. 30 or 40 people people standing six deep to listen and participate with Derek and Scott. Very cool.
• Seeing Kevin Rose from Digg try to bribe his way into a restaurant ahead of us. (Sorry, Kevin. We tried that too and still had to wait an hour.)
• Catching up with Kathy Sierra and listening to her fantastic presentation about 20 ways to woo your users. (Expect some experience changes in our UI.)
• Shawn Henry from the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative gave us some great tips on improving our accessibility — making SurveyGizmo not just “compliant in letter” but also in spirit.
• A large number of our customers attended (next year we’ll try to have a party) like Narissa from Big Fish Games, Andrew Hyde from Startup Weekend and Linux Journal and our friends from Wondermill. Interesting note: Narissa’s input last year resulted in one of our popular question types–the image chooser–so every one thank her! :)
• On the fun side: Everywhere we went Scott was mistaken for Quentin Tarantino (even with his name tag hanging from his neck, lol)

The most important benefit of this break is perhaps that it *is* a break and has reminded all of us to keep innovating and, most importantly, look at our interface from your perspective. These next few months we have decided to make things simpler, easier and add a sense of reward for using SurveyGizmo.

Thanks for everyone who has been patient as half our company attends the event. And thanks especially to the other half of the company who’s been stuck back at the office keeping everything running smoothly. We’ll all be back Thursday with renewed drive and fresh ideas!

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