SWSW is a bacchanal masquerading as a conference - 95% of the people there are there to get sloppy. That's not to say it's useless - fast friends are made throu

SWSW is a bacchanal masquerading as a conference - 95% of the people there are there to get sloppy. That's not to say it's useless - fast friends are made through the social lubricant of alcohol, and these friends can then be leveraged later, when they've returned to both home and sobriety. A recruiter doing traditional recruiting, in my opinion, would have little success. People don't want to be recruited, they want to have fun and enjoy Texas. If you're targeting specific individuals, on the other hand, you could send a couple of developers and telling them 'hey, there's no need for the hard sell, but if you can, go have some drinks with recruiting targets X, Y, and Z.' That could end up working well.