In 2008, SXSW pulled off something of a coup by booking Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg–who had never attended the festival–as a keynote interview. The Q&A was conducted by journalist Sarah Lacy. Anticipation was remarkably high before the event, but things quickly went wrong. In this excerpt from our complete oral history of SXSW Interactive, we get the inside story from the people who were there.
Brian Solis, blogger, author, and principal, FutureWorks Labs (now principal analyst, Altimeter Group): We were on Facebook all the time, and there he was onstage in front of all the cool kids. It was everybody’s first time to really learn more about him.
Baratunde Thurston, director of digital, The Onion (now cofounder and CEO, Cultivated Wit; Fast Company columnist): The Sarah Lacy–Mark Zuckerberg keynote interview. I was there for that. This is pre–IPO Facebook, but it’s still one of the most important companies in the world–to this community, definitely. There are overflow rooms, and thousands of people are tuning in. There’s a level of curiosity from people who want Facebook to work. There’s a level of criticism and issues with Facebook censorship, how the messaging tools work or the reliability of service. There are questions about Zuckerberg–is he the right person, this college dropout, to lead a billion-dollar company? He didn’t do a lot of media either. So you had this rare access to a clearly important person about a tool we all use and have issues with.
Anil Dash, blogger; new-media development, Village Voice Media; VP, Six Apart (now CEO, ThinkUp): I was sitting there with [tech journalist] Sarah Lacy and Mark Zuckerberg right before they were about to go on. They were about to do their keynote and we were in the green room, and Mark was visibly nervous. He knew SXSW was a big deal among the older web people. So being able to go out there was a big platform.
Solis: You just couldn’t contain the excitement. The energy in that room was so amped up. Something was going to go down. It was so intense when you walked in there. People were dancing on the chairs because they were playing house music before, as they were bringing people into the room. Before anything even happened, there was stuff happening. I don’t think I’ve ever walked into a room like that again.
Hugh Forrest, director, SXSW Interactive: There was this great energy. There were people dancing in the front row. The crowd seemed happy and into it. I could see he was not too comfortable with the number of people in the room–at least I assumed that. Bottom line is we didn’t do a good enough job preparing Mark or Sarah.
Omar Gallaga, technology culture reporter, Austin American-Statesman: Me and another reporter were in the front row. We got there an hour and a half early. We camped out with a video camera and watched it all unfold.
