I’m sitting out SXSW
The second weekend of this March will not treat me to a few things that have been constants in my late-winter business travel since 2012: a taco- and BBQ-centric diet, the squawks of grackles, panel FOMO, and sore feet from walking up and down the streets of Austin.
I’m breaking that streak of covering SXSW in person (including moderating panels at this conference in 2012 and 2019) not because I’m tired of that event or its excesses but because of other events.
One is MWC Barcelona, which this year takes place a week later than in previous years. That scheduling means I’d either spend barely half a day at home between returning from Spain and flying out to Austin–or I’d have to fly from Barcelona to Austin, resulting in 12 days in a row away from my family.
The other is HumanX, a new AI conference in Las Vegas that runs from March 9 to 13–overlapping half of SXSW–and whose organizers saw fit to invite me to moderate a few panels there. As much as I vastly prefer Austin to Vegas, comped travel beats paying my own way, especially when that involves SXSW-inflated lodging expenses. So that officially shut the door on my going to Marketing Spring Break.
The final plot twist to my late-winter schedule came with the Web Summit people asking if I’d like to speak at Web Summit Qatar. I had passed on that last year because this new addition to their conference lineup overlapped with MWC, but this time it happens the week before. And since I’d heard good things about last year’s event and was curious to see that part of the Middle East, I’m off to Doha in a week and change.
The catch here is that because Web Summit Qatar itself ends only two days before the first MWC pre-conference events start, I’d have little more than a day at home between crossing the Atlantic westbound and then flying back across it eastbound. Instead of that overdose of jet lag, I will spend 12 days in a row away from my wife and our kid–but not entirely away from family, since I’ll stay with my wife’s sister and her family in London for those between-conference days. I know I’ll appreciate that chance to reconnect with a part of my non-work life, even if it comes with elevated odds of my stepping on a Lego.
I have *no idea* what I did all those years ago. 
