I note that you didn’t provide any sort of user name; if you had no problems with what happened at the keynote, then why hide your identity?

The bigger picture is that people are no longer there to actually learn. They are there to drink, socialize, and turn SXSW into one big cool-kids party. You attend a keynote to be “entertained?”

The keynote wasn’t the only session disrupted in such a way. It was, however, the only one to plaster Techmeme, and the only one to blame it on a single person on stage rather than the “adults” in the audience.

First of all, as far as being boys (since you decided to highlight gender in your post) …from my seat at sxsw, there were just as many women heckling her as there were men (left side of the room, 2nd grouping of seats near the A/V hardward).

Second of all, as far as being fans (and if you can get past your gender issues for a second point), you would also have realized that the people in the room were not huge facebook fans. In fact, the very first heckler yelled something along the lines of “Beacon Sucks!” referencing the whole fiasco of privacy invasion by Facebook.

Lacy failed on her on accord. After her droning on for 30 minutes people were over her, over her continuous self-promotion, and her repeated insertion of herself into the spotlight.

People were there to gain some insight on Zuckerberg’s way of thinking, find out what cool stuff (or further privacy related issues) facebook might be doing down the line, get some perspective about what it’s like to run a global phenomenon (something everyone in the audience is pretty much trying to recreate in their own way), and be entertained.

Lacy completely missed the boat and wanted to showcase herself. Plugging her book was the least of my complaints. In fact, I only bring it up here because you did in your original post.

And yes Adam, things unfortunately do come down to gender since the IT/Web community and industry have a much bigger ratio of men. The women are not treated the same, which is a shame.