Bozena Pieniazek

Digital photos. There are trillions of them out there. Yet finding good-quality, free images that we can use on our websites, social media, and print publications is somehow still difficult. We all know about the big stock photo sites. But we also know that the rights to good photos don’t come cheaply. And if you’re lucky enough to stumble upon a decent image, you’ll likely see it cropping up everywhere.

At the end of last year, we put aside some of our marketing budget to attend events. Full disclosure: we’d never done anything event-related before, and we had no idea how we were going to use the money. So where did we start? Texas. In March, five of us packed our bags for the US to check out the notorious South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin. We also brought along a few goals: find out what other startups are doing at events, connect with peers, and get inspired to do something special.