When we highlighted Aaron Brazell's SXSW Cheat Sheet a few weeks ago, we made the error of assuming all of our readers would know what those four letters meant. As a result, we neglected to identify the Austin, Texas, festival-cum-conference by its full name—South by Southwest—or to explain that the annual event attracts a host of cutting-edge musicians, filmmakers and new-media practitioners.

In a post at the Email Wars blog, Dylan Boyd says no less than 15 of his colleagues attended the interactive segment of SXSW this year—up from six the year before—and left with important takeaways like these:

• Don't lose sight of your Web site's user. The launch of a new site or redesign is only the beginning; it will never be perfect, and feedback from your visitors will help you to fine-tune functionality. "Do you launch and learn or launch and pray?" asks Dylan Boyd. "I would choose learning and change every time, as would almost everyone at SXSW."
• Everyone faces similar challenges. As sessions opened to discussion, he found that major corporations and small businesses had the same concerns. "From privacy, to preferences, to opt in, to data storage, to user experience," he says, "everyone is trying to do the best thing for the end user."

According to Boyd, the SXSW festival energized his team with Marketing Inspiration: "All of the ideas and knowledge gleaned made us return with a new focus on how we create, design and think about the work we do for our clients and ourselves."

More Inspiration:
CK: Hold the Plastic, Marketers: People Want Pure.
Andrea Learned: 'Targeting' Women Indeed: Satirical Wisdom
Ted Mininni: Will a Wisp Propel Colgate Forward?

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