SXSW tips

So, SXSW is two months away. Does anybody have advice for getting the most out of it, either from the perspective of a performer or an attendee?

In particular, what's the deal with booking other shows around an official performance? SXSW says you can't do any other public performances that happen at night. But it seems like dudes do a bunch of shows while they're there, which makes sense. So what's that leave, house shows? Do you know anybody putting anything like that together?

SXSW SAYS that but everyone does it anyway. Lots of bands perform 5 to 6 times that weekend. There's people that go down and just see free shows all weekend and don't even see any official SXSW events and can still see most of the bands they want.

And it's not house parties it's usually

1. Free day parties thrown in venues by magazines, blogs and corporations
2. Free after hours parties thrown in venues by magazines, blogs and corporations
3. In-store appearances at Waterloo or art galleries
4. Rogue events like Todd P's free stage on the back patio of a mexican restaurant or the always-excellent Fuck By Fuck You.

- go in w/ low expectations if you are playing
- try to bum VIP passes off people when they leave VIP events where they're serving free beer/food. we got into a bunch of 'private' parties/day shows this way.
- hit up one of the famous BBQ joints at least once
- check out 'flatstock', it's free and full of awesome artists - it's a screen-printing convention for people who do show posters
- subscribe to the txt messaging service for 'surprise show announcements' and keep an ear to the ground for other surprise performances. my buddy saw 1/2 of wu-tang play a surprise show @ stubb's bbq, hardly anyone was there
- hit up the music trade show, get some swag. free packs of elixir gtr strings when i was there
- be friendly, talk to people. we made some random connections through people who were on our shuttle bus that ended up being useful later
- come prepared w/ samplers of your music/buddies music/whatever that you can give to people. we printed up samplers with a couple of our songs + songs from 5-6 other bands from back home. we all split the cost
- most of all, enjoy yourself and see as much music as you can. we played a couple of showcases and they were alright, but getting to see rhys chatham play w/ 11 other guitar players (incl. thurston moore) in an old church was waaay more memorable and fun than both of the shows we played

Thx dudes, that's the kind of stuff I want to know.