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My first couple of jobs were early on, in my teen years, for companies under 50 employees (first one about a dozen, the second one approaching fifty.)I was extremely used to discussing high-end decisions with senior management or the CEO directly. It wasn’t frowned upon, but rather appreciated.It was a lot more DIY and working odd shifts was kinda normal. This, combined with the various forms of multitasking and stepping in for unusual roles, was more thrilling for me, equipping me with better, diverse skills, across a broad set of subjects.Expectations are big, and so are the responsibilities. But this reflects independence of sorts, aligned with decision-making.My third job was for another company of 20ish which grew to 50 while I was there. Half of my job was training, including companies like SAP and VMware, a bank, and a telecom.Spending weeks half-time trying to get a manager to finally hand me a list with their staff, begging trainees to cancel their 30-minute smoke break and attend class, listening to complaints over the free breakfast meals, observing people impatiently waiting for 6pm to arrive to immediately leave the premises, wasn’t something that made me passionate.And the complete opposite of dozens of training courses for startups and smaller companies, universities, and workshops.What we’d been building for 3 months in my company was a 6-month discovery session in SAP, followed by a 4-year estimate with 2 years of support to follow.Our sprints were weekly, theirs were quarterly.A 2-minute convo at the office was equivalent to 2 weeks and 15 emails plus two mandatory all-hands meetings in VMware.Note: I don’t rant against big corps. Larger organizations require numerous layers of management, and communication overhead is staggering. Everything takes longer due to coordinating between dozens of departments. Processes are designed for stability and reliability, not for speed.It’s just the way it is.And some R&D teams may move a lot faster, somewhat independently. But that’s certainly more of an exception than the norm.

Recently, I attended the First Winter Convention of SPIC MACAY at IIT Roorkee. Many positive points of a SPIC MACAY Convention have been mentioned in the earlier answer to this question. However, I will cover some of them again before moving to the 'critic' part:1. Yoga: Yoga sessions at morning were very good and organised to give a divine feel and put the energy for the rest of the day on right track. There were various Yoga sessions like Naad Yoga, Hath Yoga and meditation programs like Mindfulness meditation, Buddhist meditation etc. All of these were scheduled from 04:15-06:45 am.2. Workshops: The workshops were scheduled from 09:00-12:00, There were workshops for various areas like Vocals, Dhrupad, Art and Crafts, Kathak, Bharatnatyam etc. All of these gave a taste of the respective elements as it is practically impossible to teach any of these in 5 days.3. Concerts: These were the attraction of the whole convention. With performances from the likes of Pd. Hari Prasad Chaurasia, Pd Vishwamohan Bhatt, The Mysore Brothers, Pd Rajan and Srajan Mishra, Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan and performances of various dance forms like Sattriya, Odissi, Bharatnatyam, Kathak, Cholom etc; the whole concert lineup was successful in giving the taste of rich culture of various parts of our country. The concerts were schedules daily in two sessions: 13:15-17:00 and 18:15-22:00.4. Lodging Arrangements: Lodging arrangements were provided in the hostels of IIT for free. It was decent. Warm blankets were provided. The food was good and nutritious.Overall the whole convention was attended by various schools and colleges. The schedule was followed very strictly.BUT,There is other big side behind this convention that i noticed. Consider following points:1. Schedule and strictness:There is a common saying that 'excess of everything is bad'. The same applies to SPIC MACAY. The whole convention was based on 'blind following of rules' without any 'logical interpretation'. I have following instances of mine and some fellow mates that I would like to share:Many volunteers were so crazy about rules that they did not care about how they should talk to people who are elder to them. This very thing defies the 'culture' part of SPIC MACAY.If a person leaves to attend nature's call in between the Yoga Session (early in the morning), the volunteers rudely interrogated them with all the enquiry about the person's bowel movements and related criticizes.In cold days of Uttarakhand (Roorkee), People were not allowed to go for washroom if a concert was 2.5 hours long even if they tried going between two songs.The timing for dinner was 17:00. Just 4 hours after lunch. And then there were snacks at 22:00 following which everyone was expected to sleep immediately to be available at Yoga Sessions the next morning. For any work, the volunteers never 'knocked' the door; they always banged them instead such that they would break it.Small children from many schools were hospitalized at IIT Roorkee Hospital between the convention due to extreme cold and harsh schedules. Many students and other delegates left just within 2-3 days.The most brutal of all was the schedule of 18th and 19th December. The afternoon concerts were cancelled and delegates were advised to sleep from 15:00-19:00 so that they can remain awaken for the overnight concert of 20:00-06:00. Seriously?! Yes, we were expected to sleep 4 hours at afternoon to pull out 10 hours. This does not end here. After coming back at 06:00 of 19th December, delegates were expected to get ready by 07:30 for breakfast which was to be followed by a heritage trip at Haridwar/Roorkee/Deoband (depending upon the choice of delegates). This trip was scheduled for a total of 7 hours from 09:00-16:00.The auditorium was cold like anything, at the midnight temperature of 5-7°C of Roorkee. Imagine small children of below 15 years of age struck there. Because delegates were not allowed to go out of the auditorium and the hostels were also closed. It was like a JAIL.Above is the picture of the IIT Roorkee's Convocation Hall where all concerts took place and the picture was taken around 02:00 am at night. All the people sleeping in the picture are none but small children from various schools. I could not capture picture of people sleeping on iron chairs because of dim light. Logically, there is no point in calling eminent artists like Ustad Shahid Parwez Khan and make them to perform in front of such dull audience. The organisers were okay with people, children sleeping in the hall in cold at 7 degrees but none were allowed to go back to their rooms. The only case where delegates were allowed to come out of the hall was when someone got seriously ill and had to be taken to hospital.2. Hypocrisy: Mobile phones were not allowed inside the hall. But the VIP's sitting in the front row in sofas were seen using their cellphones for facebook, video recording, whatsapp and what not. Not only this, at the time of overnight concert some of the organisers were allowed to go out at 03:30 am when they wanted to move out. This happened in front of many small students who were standing at gate and requesting them to be allowed to go to hostel but were continuously denied. Imagine what they would have felt!3. Baseless and Illogical Arguments: There were cases when the organisers were involved in illogical and irrational arguments. It was like the cloth of rules was wrapped around their eyes which restricted them to absorb any logic. I had some volunteers willing to help but they too were bound because the main gates were occupied by those senior people. Some of the discussions which I saw happening either infront of me or was myself involved in are as follows:I caught cold and got ill on the morning of 18th December and had to take painkillers and skip my yoga sessions and workshops for the day. However, I thought of going to the overnight concert for some time and come back. But when I tried coming out, one of the organiser stopped me and started a discussion saying me that ''this is what you should aim to improve, you are mentally so weak that you cannot handle this timetable and that is what we target, to make our delegates strong''.Continuing the above discussion, I asked him the logic of performances in front of tired and sleeping audience to which he replied "I woke children up during performance of Ustad Shahid Parwez Khan at midnight. But I am not doing it for the following two concerts of 4 hours. But as hosts we have to keep some audience in front of the performers and hence we cant allow people to leave at any cost".This happened one day at my workshop. One of the organiser made a random visit and came inside the room and as the workshop instructor completed his sentence the organiser added 'yes, this is how you have to do things and kindly don't sleep, and keep responding to sir'. He further added ''All the people sitting at the back kindly leave the support of the wall and fold your legs''. When the ladies responded saying that they have to bear pain for it and their old body does not allow this, the organiser was like ''Yes, but you have to bear pain, that's how things should go''. I mean seriously how can a matured man ignore the issues of old people!There are more examples like these. But it is not possible to write down everything.Conclusion: Overall the convention for me was full of various kinds of experiences. We always get to see various kinds of people in the world and the same was the case with me. The introduction to Naad Yoga was one of the best things. The concerts of Mysore brothers, Sattriya, Ustad Shahid Parwez Khan and some Kathak performances are something that I will remember for long. The initiative of SPIC MACAY to support artists is very good. But the 'promotion of culture' part needs changes. The whole convention was becoming a 'give and take scenario' where delegates were expected to do whatever the organisers demanded and at any cost 'in lieu of' free accommodation and food, for 7 days. It was becoming about enforcing rules on people.There are always two types of rules:1. Which is hard and fast and cannot be broken without danger to life.2. Which are rules of guidance and can be wink or applied at as per commonsense dictates.SPIC MACAY should understand the distinction between the above and should not try to put everything in the first category. Following such rules blindly is more like a forceful enforcement of 'culture'. No one will accept anything if is forced upon them. One has to be rational and logical in the approach.Disclaimer: Above are my experiences of the convention. All the situations that are mentioned either happened with me or were witnessed by me. However, I am not trying to enforce my ideas on anyone. It completely depends on the reader, whether to believe it or not.

On this topic, I'd say that SXSW is a conference one needs to be prepared for. You've got to PRIORITIZE the stuff you REALLY really need to have checked out/accomplished in order for you to feel the trip was a success when you get home.This means you can't just show up and expect to hop from one thing on your list to the next. You must pad your schedule for crowds. And then build in some more fudge factor for showing up early (at least 30 minutes early as a rule, a couple hours if you want to make an especially buzzy session) before the line gets stupid-long and/or the room reaches capacity.Also, have secondary and tertiary picks ready to go as backup in case the thing you wanted to check out ended up being cancelled/at capacity/etc. (Or you ended up getting lost horribly lost in the 4th street district or South of the river)If you plan accordingly, and manage to fit in some rest here and there...there's a lot of potential for actually extracting value form your time. Wanna schmooze with thought-leaders in a specific niche market? -there's a day party (and probably an app) for that. If you want technical panels and workshops, there are hundreds to choose from. If you want cyber anti-marketing marketing 3.0 talks, there are probably more than there needs to be.But it's also a ridiculous and exhilarating spectacle. We the oh-so-clever "creative class" intoxicated on inforsensory overload, visions of greandeur, not enough sleep and free booze... It can truly be too much, And SXSW may seem "self-distracted" in various ways to various folks for various reasons.Still, I have to believe that a ton of folks are making their trips worth the effort, time and $$$$ spent.*In service of full-disclosure I did not officially attend this year but have been lurking about meeting up with old friends and catching a few showcases/parties. I like it here. The music started today.Adam G.Austin, TX