So, anyway, a not-so-quick wrap-up on SXSW. I’ve waited a week to write this, hoping I’d develop a more nuanced view on what in general I felt was a fairly disappointing conference, but I haven’t, so here goes.

First, the good: As with previous years, I met a lot of smart, talented and frighteningly intelligent people, and got the chance to catch up with folks I only see when in Austin. There were a number of good panels as well, with the Ambient Findability, Ubiquitous Computing, Folksonomies and (dangerously overcrowded) Online in Offline Spaces panels sticking out. This year also brought the opportunity for me to drag a couple of people to the conference, and it was very cool to see them take full advantage of all it had to offer.

That said, SXSW didn’t seem to have quite the friendly, collaborative feel it had in previous years. To be sure, that was at least partly due to the size of the conference. (The scale really hit me at the frog design party, when I remember thinking that if there were people there that I knew, I was never going to run into them.) But the conference had more of a corporate feel as well. Where in previous years it was usually pretty easy to meet people by simply turning to a neighbor before a panel and saying hello, this year doing so seemed to be an invitation to a sales pitch.

Now, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with a business-orientated conference–I’ve been to a number and have generally found them to be useful–but one of the main things that made SXSW so great was that it usually seemed to transcend the business element. It was a place that people would talk about the web in terms of culture, art and community, usually with straight faces, and often without any discussion of monetization. While that heritage was still evident this year, the focus had shifted dramatically from previous years, and I’m concerned about what future conferences will bring. To boil it down, I’d gladly give up the free food and alcohol for a smaller conference where people don’t bring up connecting on LinkedIn in their second or third sentences.

I’m not sure anything can be done about this year’s shift, or even if anything should be done. The conference has grown, and barring a Bubble 2.0 situation, it’s probably going to stay big. One of the more interesting conversations I had was with an accomplice from last year who’d ditched SXSW for BarCamp Austin, and had clearly had a fantastic time at it. I’m looking to attend MinneBar, but obviously not as a replacement to SXSW. The problem is, if you have a conference–or unconference–that’s primarily made up of geeks, the main thing it’s going to turn out is a bunch of people geeking out, and that’s only a small part of what has made SXSW special in the past.

The word “culture” keeps popping into my head. That’s what I feel we’ll lose if SXSW goes corporate, and I’m not sure something will rise to replace it.

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This is my fault, but my panel judgement was very poor this year. With the exceptions listed above, I didn’t learn all that much from them, and there was nothing that really surprised or frightened me. I specifically regret missing the Creating Passionate Users and Future of Radio panels, both of which were spoken of highly by those who attended. Hopefully there will be podcasts.

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I know I’m coming across as cranky, and probably a bit disrespectful, but that’s not my intention. SXSW has changed, and I’m having trouble adjusting to it.