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SXSW: Surviving the Chaos and Learning About People

Scott Tremper

Creative Director at Traitify | Lover of Film, Games, Music, and Wiener Dogs | Inventor/Planner in News

There are few things in life your parents can never prepare you for. Your first heartbreak. Having a kid. And attending SXSW.

As a hardcore tech-, audio-, and cinephile, SXSW has been a sort of Mecca to me for some time now. I had made efforts to go in the past, and something always got in the way, whether it was work, finances, or even just being literally too worn out to throw myself into a 2 week event. This year, however, Traitify was there in full force. We attended sessions, sponsored the Tech Breakfast, crashed parties, and let hundreds upon hundreds of attendees demo our Personality Assessments at our booth in SXSW Trade Show. Stumbling away, we left with some lessons learned and some interesting insights about the SXSW crowd.

The first, and most important, lesson learned is just how delicious Texas BBQ is, equal even to the endless amounts of Tex-Mex tacos. Seriously if you end up there and don't dive head first into some breakfast tacos, regular tacos for lunch, and then every variety of BBQ'd meat for dinner, stop reading now and go do that. My God, it's incredible.

Beyond that vital discovery, we started to put together some really interesting insights into the audience at SXSW. One of our favorite things about traveling to expos and conferences is setting up a booth in the trade show area. We always bring multiple touchscreens or iPads that allow someone who's intrigued by what we do to experience it first hand, meaning our booth is constantly packed.

 

Our bangin' new shirts, courtesy of the incredible Dave Volpe.

 

Or it could've been the killer t-shirts we were giving away.

Either way, after four 8-hour days, and hundreds of assessments later, we were able to sit back and look at the personalities of those that had cruised by our booth. Interestingly enough, the data isn't what you would expect at SXSW. Given the stigma of non-stop parties that take over Austin every March, you would think those in attendance would rank high in rowdiness. But it's quite the opposite in fact.

Looking at our Core Assessment (directed towards finding a general level of personality), we quickly discovered that personality types like Social and Charismatic were less present in most people — Social for example was the strongest personality type of only 3% that took this assessment.

 

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