Vancouver does SXSW: SWAG

Contributed by John Biehler

Once again, SXSW Interactive dropped a huge pile of swag on all attendees.

The first year I attended, I ended up having to get an additional bag for all the goodies on the way home. Where possible, I brought extra swag for coworkers that didn’t make it to the conference and it was much appreciated…even if it ended up as a cubicle feeding frenzy once I dumped it out on my desk.

Last year, I planned ahead and had a lot of extra room in my main bag (I packed lighter for the warm weather) and which was overweight upon checking in at the airport to come home (by 5 pounds) so I simply pulled out some magazines and put them in my carry-on.

This year, I just brought a bigger suitcase and was still 16 pounds over upon leaving. I brought an extra carry-on for all the books and pulled it and the paper goods out….and the check in attendant let me go even though I was still about 4-5 pounds over.

Aside from a pile of free t-shirts from all kinds of places, here’s a few shots of some of the stuff that was picked up on the trade show floor – a few purchased items from the Make store or via donations to Creative Commons (CC/Mozilla Moleskin FTW!) and a few trinkets from my brief stopover at BarCamp Austin:

Photo Credit: John Biehler on Flickr

Photo Credit: John Biehler on Flickr

Here’s a video of me dumping out and going through the swag bag you get as an Interactive attendee. If you attended the Music, Film or had a Gold/Platinum badge, you’d get additional bags for those events too.

I shudder to think how much paper was wasted (and not recycled) from the thousands of bags issued to attendees:

Photo Credit: John Biehler on Flickr

Contributed by John Biehler