XOXOhausted: Another Great Event

exc-52431eaee4b0344ba8c6f157

The XOXO conference and festival was last Thursday to Sunday, and I’m still exhausted (and suffering from a conference cold) the following Wednesday. It was another exhilarating year — even better than last year.

The New Disruptors was an outgrowth of XOXO 2012: my attempt to capture in a weekly podcast some of the magic of what Andy Baio and Andy McMillan put together in having artists, makers, producers, programmers, and others tell the stories about how they took their work in their own hands.

The day before XOXO, September 18th, we had a live event  that was a hoot, and we’re seeing if we can pull enough audio out of it to make a standalone podcast that will be interesting if you weren’t there. We had music, comedy, and three interviews, and a lot of conversation. You can see pictures of our event and of XOXO.

Special thanks to Alison Hallett, Christa Mrgan, Michael Warner, and Brittany Shoot for their various major parts in making this a fantastic evening; to Scott Simpson for his comedy; to guests Dylan Meconis, Elly Blue, and Andrew Sloane for subjecting themselves to an interview; and to Ford Food & Drink for graciously hosting us. Thanks to everyone who came. The audience was warmly receptive and a bunch of great talkers, too.

Thursday to Sunday was a non-stop series of mixing and listening and learning at XOXO. I got to meet a lot of listeners at the shindig and at XOXO, and I was glad to get your feedback and attach faces to people who I speak to out of the ether! We’ll definitely do that again. (I recorded a few interviews there that we’ll definitely air.)

There is a strong overlap between guests on this podcast and speakers and attendees at XOXO: we want to make things (real and digital), often collaborate, and share the results with others.

Here’s a list of speakers and attendees from this year’s event and in which podcast episode you can find them: