Jonathan Cusick

Once SXSW 2010 was over I was lucky enough to get a tour of some pretty cool places around Austin, one of which was the Zilker Botanical Garden. It is a really great place and I hope to visit it again next year.

The interactive side of SXSW is now drawing to a close and I have had some time this morning to reflect on some of the things I have learned from some of the companies, developers and designers that have been involved at the conference.

One of the most important things I have learned was from a group of freelance developers and also from Gary Vaynerchuk which is really about providing a world class level of customer service. Often when developing you are mainly focused on delivering the end product and the next extension of that product so customer service can often be made a secondary objective.

I have heard this a few times during the conference and actually saw some examples of great products which where not offering much in the way of customer service or support, mainly just a contact e-mail address. From my personal experience with other big companies such as PayPal and Ebay it can be nearly impossible to contact them and a considerable amount of time to get a reply.

If the big companies don’t fix this it does mean that the smaller developers can capitalise on this and set a high standard which hopefully will be replicated throughout the industry.

On another note the SXSWNI guys have all been working hard throughout the trip even if there are no desks or chairs.

David Rice hacking away during SXSW

Lee Munroe has also been giving a series of updates on are trade trip to SXSW which can be found on his blog and also on his Posterous.

We are now on day 5 of our epic adventure in Austin, and have managed to speak to pretty much every company that had a presence on the trade floor.

From my perspective even though I am mainly focused on Mac and iPhone development I was very keen to meet the Microsoft guys to discuss Windows Phone 7 and WebSiteSpark.

I was lucky enough to be interviewed in a commercial for Microsoft discussing the benefits of the WebSiteSpark service and what this would mean for a development studio work flow – this was a great experience and they even gave me a 16GB Zune HD for taking the time to work with them.

I also managed to bump into a few of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders who where promoting WebSiteSpark this was pretty cool!

This has been a great day and I am looking forward until tomorrow where hopefully I will learn more about the underlying technologies behind Windows Phone 7.

As we enter day 4 of our SXSW trade mission so far the journey has surpassed all expectations.

The presentations are all world class and are happening all throughout the day, the trade hall is full of well established companies such as Microsoft, Veer, LaCie, Sony and many others all displaying state of the art technologies.

From a business perspective many leads have already been uncovered, just by having a quick chat with other companies and explaining what Digital Robot Software offer, I have already had several e-mails looking to follow up on possible projects which at this stage is fantastic.

It is great to be able to network and learn from the other Northern Ireland based companies on the SXSW trip who combined have a wealth of experience which is providing a strong foothold for Digital Robot Software and establishing a presence at the conference.