How To Be South By South Best

The definitive checklist and video guide to dominating your time in Austin during the 2011 South By Southwest Interactive festival.

So you’re going to Stratlandia. But have you thought about your game plan for how you’re going to crush it when you get there? In the video and checklist below, you will find a definitive guide to dominating your time in Austin at SXSW Interactive. Find out everything you need to know about being the coolest, hippest, indiest, networkiest and successiest person at the whole festival.

The 9 Things You Need To Be South By South Best

9. Business Cards are so 1.0. Identify the latest digitools for bump-blasting your contact out to other people’s smartphones and tablet devices.

8. Get active in some extreme activities during the day. The coolest thing to do during Interactive is not go to any actual Interactive events, and instead tell everyone you’re too busy keg-skydiving, wasted mountain biking, and whiskey-kayaking to actually bother showing up at panels. The most popular and important activity is, of course, extreme bandwagon-jumping, whereby you determine what THE hot new Web 3.0 tech to emerge from the festival will be, then start going crazy on it so your friends back at home will all see that you were FIRST.

7. Discover the secret BBQ spots. Stubbs and The Salt Lick are for amateurs. You have go “off the grid” to find the most authentic, underground spots in all of Texas so you can top every story about who had the best BBQ.

6. Get your gadgets together and ready to go. Fill a backpack full of batteries. A major part of the SXSW Interactive experience is wandering around, staring listlessly into various screens, so you CANNOT risk being without your devices for even a moment.

5. Get the inside scoop on the right parties and digital lounges. Make fake VIP passes if you have to. You wouldn’t want to be caught dead hanging out a lame lounge, so figure out where the other influencers are hanging out, and go there, demanding to be let inside (tell them how many followers you have if necessary). Remember: if you pay for food or booze any point during your time at SXSW, you are worthless and you have failed.

4. You’re not there to make friends. Only talk to/interact with people who have more followers and/or VC capital than you do. Don’t waste big networking ops with friendly normal conversation – you need to be hustling and selling THE WHOLE TIME.

3. Do not sleep or eat properly. Rely only on alcohol, energy drink 2.0′s, caffeine and other chemical substances to keep you awake and quasi-functioning throughout the festival. Drink and defile your body as much as possible, the whole time.

2. Dress “Cool Casual”. Make sure you bring only your most ironic T-shirts and branded swag. All ironic everything.

1. Stay plugged into my complete Stratlandia coverage hub at IFC.com/SXSW. I’ll be strat-chatting with all the innovators, thought-leaders, game-changers and next-lev social media gurus in the field and at the IFC Crossroads house, helping you to stay South By South Best whether you’re actually going to the festival or not.

(video Directed by Andy Schlechtenhaufen)