I didn't have the same problems at SXSW this year that some people did. Was it too crowded ? Sure. But there were plenty of alternative things to do. Did some of the keynotes bomb ? Yes. But there were plenty of other things to listen to. Did AT&T fail? No. Actually, they did an awesome job keeping the network up. Instead, I had a problem of a different kind: check-in fatigue. Seeing as location was this year's Twitter at SXSW , and seeing as I write a lot about location, I wanted to try to use as many of the services I could during the actual conference. I drastically underestimated how much work that would actually be.