Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2009 > March > 17
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Panel: Are Music Games the New iTunes?
Date/Time: 10 a.m. Tuesday
Panelists: Nabeel Hyatt (CEO/Founder, Conduit Labs); Bart Decrem (CEO, Tapulous); Gillian Connole (Music Licensing Mgr, Song Computer Entertainment Europe); Chris Deering (Board Dir, Geomerics); Ali Partovi (CEO, iLike Inc)
The gist: Labels often see placing music in video games as dually beneficial: Not only is revenue earned through licensing agreements, but it’s also a form of promotion. Songs and artists included in games often get a boost in sales — especially at online dealers such as iTunes.
Game publishers feel pressure to include classic hits or the newest songs from major label artists in their releases, but not always. With so many great bands on indie labels hungry to expose their music to a larger audience, a title can still florish without the popular hits. “You can make a successful game without 1,2,3 major labels” (Partovi).
Also, the majors aren’t convinced a song appearing in a game will necessarily lead to sales. It tends to only happen with older, more established artists whose music is re-introduced, said panelists. Newer songs have a harder time translating.
Quotes: “[Listening to music in a video game is] better than just listening to an iPod. It’s used for music discovery as well as music immersion” - Hyatt.
Takeaways: If your game is dependent on a full catalog of songs to be successful, it’s in trouble. That necessity gives leverage to major labels when negotiating a licensing agreement. Surrounding a few popular hits with a deep catalog of unknown artists is a better business plan when starting out.
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Panel: Rawking SXSW Year Round: Staying Inspired
Date/Time: 5 p.m. Tuesday
Panelists: Kevin Smokler (Chief Evangelist, BookTour.com); Silona Bonewald (Founder, League of Technical Voters); Corey Denis (reapandsow); Kevin Lawver (Chief Architect, Music Intelligence Solutions); Clarence Smith Jr. (Do you KNOW Clarence?)
The gist: And so it ends. Another year; another farewell. Now turn ideas into action. Stay connected, stay inspired — that was the parting message in one of the last panels of the year:.
Step one? From panelists:
—Lawver writes out his lessons learned, organizes project ideas and sets a to-do list — and does it immediately lest he forget. “The daily routine will eat your soul,” he joked.
—Smith looks at business cards, browses the Web sites of his new contacts and e-mails people.
— “First thing I do is get on Facebook and de-tag myself” (Denis).
— Smokler organizes business cards (“If not, they end up in a stack.”) and prioritizes contacts. He gets a massage, hits the gym, detoxes, takes his girlfriend on a date.
Quotes: “I am South by Southwest! You are South by Southwest! We are all Southwest!”—Smokler. “Half of the successful things I did at AOL started here at South By Southwest.”—Lawver.
Takeaways: SXSWi is a platform to network and to explore your industry, aiding both your idea bank and career (Lawver). And it’s about ideas — good ones that’ll benefit your start-up or help persuade your boss to send you back.
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Panel: Who Will Check My Email After I Die?
Panel: Will I Check Email After I Die?
Date/time: 5 p.m. Tuesday
Panelists: John Romano, senior Web developer at Capstrat, and Matt Ludwig, creative director and experience designer with mLdesign.
The gist: What happens to your online identity after you physically die?
Quotes: “There’s a great deal of money to be made here…death is important.” - Romano. “Consider the fact that you have digital assets.” - Ludwig. “What happens if you’re reincarnated and you want to assume that identity?” - random attendee.
Takeaways: Digital identity means the sum total of all that content you have created online throughout your life — photos, Twitter, e-mail, Facebook. We’re rushing into posting blindly without thinking about long-term ramifications. Yahoo has a policy that if you die, it will delete your account, Romano said, so that if you have photos on Flickr, they’ll away.
Ludwig wants to launch a start-up that will give you a time-release e-mail after death. He says there are people that will care about your content after your death, and wonders what will happen to the content and who really has ownership of it.
Romano said content on sites like Facebook or Twitter is legally theirs. One attendee said the companies don’t want to pay to store virtual items left by dead people. There was a big debate over how digital assets are recognized in wills, and it varies state by state. People can alert loved ones to what their passwords are before death. But there was some confusion as to whether this is legal.
Also, if you give somebody access and you have already died, the companies that run these sites might not be able to tell you’ve died. And, how do you prove an e-mail or Web page belonged to a certain person?
Romano said companies won’t give people access to the next-of-kin without significant documentation. A lot of companies put pages in a “memorial” state — they don’t delete but can’t post to it.
There are lots of businesses that have sprouted up to try and solve some of these problems. One is called the Great Goodbye — it sends a postmortem message to your loved ones. There is Asset Lock, Vital Lock and Legacy Locker, which lock up your digital assets and give passwords and access to loved ones.
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Core Conversation: Too Much Text: When I Was Your Age, We Sent Email
Date/Time: 3:30 Tuesday
Panelist: Jay Cuthrell (qthrul, Fudge.org)
The gist: Is e-mail dead? Is social software taking over? Not exactly. E-mail is still the most popular method of communicating, according to Cuthrell. But will it last? According to Cutherall, a majority of people over 24 tend to think e-mail will be obsolete in five to 10 years. People under 24, however, think e-mail will last, even though social sites (like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter) are more popular in that demographic. For them, e-mail is usually reserved for Web registrations and getting a syllabus. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and text messaging are for the day-to-day.
Still, e-mail can be frustrating. More and more people (and companies) are dropping it altogether, sick of an overstuffed inbox full of bulk messages and spam. But it’s still the most reliable means of connecting electronicall. And besides, you can’t register for social sites without an e-mail address.
Quotes: “Social networking is just another piece of the pie”—Schmulen. “I’m not saying email is going to die, I’m just saying we can do much better”—Cuthrell.
Takeaways: The question isn’t “will Facebook and MySpace replace e-mail?” because each has its own special purpose. The better question is: “What’s the next step?” Best-case scenario is that social software and e-mail combine seamlessly into one.
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Keynote: Chris Anderson interviewed by Guy Kawasaki
Oh, Hugh!
The Lacy teasing continued as venture capitalist and former Apple Fellow Guy Kawasaki and Wired editor Chris Anderson started their punchy, amusing keynote conversation Tuesday in Ballroom A. Kawasaki early on said, “I”m not wearing my skirt.”
He followed that one by interrupting Anderson during a rambling anser: “I was hoping for an answer someday. Clearly, I’m not Sarah.”
Kawasaki played life-of-the-party, taking questions from Twitter posters following the interview and asking irreverent questions, including whether Anderson would give a PDF version of his book out for free to all those gathered in the room.
Anderson, a fast-talker with a mind that races to match, was unflappable and told an invested audience about some of the ways “Free” could change everything. The two talked about Facebook and Twitter — the constant questioning about how the two companies will monetize their massive user base.
Kawasaki asked if the important question is what percentage of people would pay for what was previously a free service. Anderson told him that it’s important not to raise the bar too high for growing the number of people who use a service and not to cripple the free version of a product that also exists in premium form.
But what should the price be? Nobody knows. “If you’re a free product, you really haven’t tested the market price,” Anderson said.
Kawasaki asked about Anderson’s own book — how it would be sold and what Anderson would do differently if he was starting Wired today (it started in 1993). “You’re a hypocrite if there’s not something free,” Kawasaki teased.
“Yes, I’ve thought about that,” Anderson deadpanned, to big laughs. He acknowledged that he and his publisher are working on some innovative ways to distribute the book, due out July 6.
Anderson stressed the importance of books and paper — he said there’s still an audience that feels that’s hardcover is still the preferable form for books. But companies are tempted by new ways to attract larger audience, given that “Free is the best way to maximize your reach,” Anderson said.
And contrary to what most believe, Anderson thinks the music industry is doing fine, except for publishing. He said there’s more music than ever and more methods of distribution to put it out.
As for piracy, Anderson said that in China, you can’t fight it, but you can accept it and make money instead from personal appearances, concerts, commercial gigs and other methods.
“Ironically, the Chinese are going to teach us capitalism,” Kawasaki added.
“Free wants to be the natural price,” Anderson concluded. “If you don’t do it, someone will take advantage of those falling costs and do it to you.”
Anderson seemed fascinated not only by the concept of “Freemium” (inverting the traditional giveaway method to give away 95 to 99 percent of online content, then sell only the premium 1 to 5 percent), and by the way video game publishers are innovating in online multiplayer games and premium downloadable content.
In the end, Kawasaki got Anderson to agree to give away digital copies of his book to those who follow him on Twitter. And the business model rocking didn’t stop there: when audience members kept plugging their companies in the Q&A, Kawasaki demanded that one of them donate $20 to a charity. It almost turned into an auction.
It was a feisty way to end the major programming of the conference, and very entertaining.
Here’s an idea: we get Bruce Sterling’s view of the future every year. Can we have a yearly slot for Guy Kawasaki?
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Panel: Behind the Scenes With Mad Men on Twitter
Date/Time: 2 p.m. Tuesday
Panelists: Helen Klein Ross (Supporting Characters), Michael Bissell (Conquent), Carri Bugbee (Big Deal PR)
The gist: Last summer, characters from the AMC series “Mad Men” started showing up on Twitter, talking to each other and to fans of the show. A Twitter hit was born. At this panel, three of the people behind the characters talked about how the whole phenomenon came about, and what it might mean to the future of marketing.
Bugbee, who Tweets as secretary-turned-copywriter Peggy Olson, said she started the Peggy Tweet as a whim just because it sounded like fun, but, as followers poured in, she quickly realized it was on to something interesting.
She and fellow panelists Ross (suburban housewife Betty Draper) and Bissell (ad executive Roger Sterling) talked about the research that goes into their Twitter project. Bugbee watches episodes repeatedly and even transcribes dialogue; Ross is now the owner of a collection of 1960s cookbooks. When they make a mistake, Twitter followers let them know.
Ross said the “Mad Men” Tweeters aim to extend the lives of the characters between episodes and between seasons of the show. They strive to remain parallel to the universe of the show and not to do anything that conflicts with the show’s actual storylines.
Quotes: ““I took it upon myself to get inside (Peggy’s) head.” — Bugbee
“I really looked at it as a form of fiction.” — Ross
“We’re transforming fan fiction to a new form of marketing.” — Ross
Takeaways: Panelists said social media projects like theirs can enhance fans’ loyalty to a show. Ross calls what they are doing “brand fiction” (instead of “fan fiction”). Bissell said that what they did with “Mad Men” is not set in stone as a model for how to do this kind of marketing because the social media universe changes so rapidly.
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SXSWi Parties Monday Night: Mashableicious
If Sunday night was the return to party form after a dismal Saturday night social performance, Monday night was riding even further into the storm to put a triumphant end to my evening events
I rode into that storm, people. I rode it.
After shooting a video with Robert Scoble (with help from the ever-helpful, ever controversial Loren Feldman of 1938Media):
I headed across the street to the big Rackspace tent in Brush Square Park. There were skewers, cheesecake lollipops, tiny desserts in and delicious meats, cheeses and drinks, not that I partake of such creature comforts. Talked briefly to Austin networking maven Caroline Valentine, who told me that the new SXSWi Accelerator start-up event went well.
I was biding my time until the 6:30 p.m. Paramount screening of “The Two Bobs,” a movie about guys in the video game industry living in Austin. I’ll write a separate post about it, but I’ll say at this moment that I blocked off several hours to see the movie and had been excited about it for a while.
I left after about 25 minutes. If I had only one word in which to review the film, the word I would use, based on what I saw, would be “Broad.”
Having recovered some time I didn’t think I had, I made my way back over on Sixth Street and headed to the Do512 party at Aces Lounge, which I’d been invited to. They’ve been super-nice to us and even though our entertainment site competes with them in some areas, I’ve had nothing but nice experiences with them on Twitter and in other interactions.
I got there about 7:30 and maybe it was too early (things look like they picked up later), but if felt like there were barely 5.12 people in the whole place. I wandered around the empty space and left soon after checking my e-mail and sitting for a spell to have a drink and rest up a bit.
Again, struggling to figure out where to go with unexpected time on my hands, I grabbed my car and headed to the Palmer Events Center to check out Plutopia, a bit mashup event. Jon Lebkowsky was gracious enough to interrupt his very busy schedule helping set up Plutopia Sunday night to attend our Statesman Texas Social Media Awards, so I thought it would be nice to return the favor.
Plutopia was much bigger than I expected with lots of live music, lots of booths, The Heather Gold Show, tents and oddities. It was (and I don’t mean this in a snarky way) a very hippie-dippy event, with lots of good vibes and groovy tie-dye. But with tech mixed in, which made me feel like I was back at Maker Faire, an event I’ve come to love.
Some pics:
FG Squared booth at Plutopia
This little box makes cool noises and has lots of knobs.
At “The Heather Gold Show”
I caught up with Wesley Faulkner of AMD who became my party companion for the rest of the night. We attended the first chunk of “Heather Gold” and were both blown away by Amber Rubarth, who played a song called “You Will Love This Song” that was so beautiful and clever and funny and awesome that Wesley and I were both scrambling to find out her name and Google her to find out where we could listen to the song. You can listen to it here. Please do.
Next, we hit downtown. After catching up with some news folks at Fado, we braved the gigantic line at Mashable’s party, the one at Six Lounge.
Let me tell you something about this line. Mashable threw a party at Buffalo Billiards months ago and THAT party was completely packed. Six is much smaller. You can imagine the ramifications.
We ran into people across the street who were so terrified of the not-moving line that they just stared at it like survivors staring at plane crash wreckage, wondering how things were going to play out.
By a combination of lucky, chutzpah and an accidentally flash of the orange press badge strapped to my tiny camera, we got in.
And then there was another line to go upstairs.
Then there was another line to get up to the roof. Wesley pulled out some magic from his just-formed close relationship with one of the bouncers who somehow managed to get us past the worst of the lines. Suddenly, we were on the roof, where it was torso-to-torso packed. It seemed like this was where everyone was ending up and the perfect rooftop weather, open bar and appearance of Web notables like Erica O’ Grady, Karen Hartline and lots of friendly Austin locals made it the place to be.
We talked and drank (but mostly talked), Tweeted, exchanged business cards and just had a blast. This was the last big party for me and I tried to soak it all in, to get people’s impressions of the festival, to make up for lost time. I had a burst of energy from knowing the fest was only going to go another day and it didn’t even bother me when the clock rolled past 1 a.m., way past my planned departure time.
Around that time, Pete Cashmore, of Mashable fame, was holding court in a corner as a seemingly endless streaming parade of people crushed the place to try to get Pete’s attention (and maybe a photo). It was young ladies, social media wannabes, and dozens of others as Pete, smartly dressed in a vest (who in 2009 can pull off a vest!? Pete Cashmore, that’s who), chatted and posed for what felt like hours.
Let me say this about Cashmore: I’ve made many, many jokes on Twitter about how handsome he is. In the tech world, he’s our Brad Pitt (though he looks more like a buffed, not-trying-so-hard version of Justin Timberlake).
Sunday night at the Facebook party, I Tweeted: “While we were talking, I put my hand on the bicep of handsome Pete Cashmore from Mashable.com. Never. Washing. Again.”
I thought it was just me and that at some point he would call me and say, “OK, dude, knock it off, this is getting uncomfortable.” But just as I was about to put the Cashmore thing to rest, two young, very attractive women showed up. They looked at him and said, “OH MY GOD, WHO IS THAT?!” Their male companion told them it was Pete Cashmore of Mashable.
Out of curiosity, I asked one of them, “So, you think he’s pretty attractive?”
“God. YES!”
“On a scale from 1 to 10, how attractive do you think he is?”
“10! Plus!”
They got photos with him later.
Sorry, Pete. There are lots of attractive people in the tech world (surprisingly so), but you win the crown. Please wear it well.
I went home, Tweeting this just before I left: “At this late hour, mancrush Pete Cashmore of Mashable is still being mobbed by ladies, photographers and fans. Going home to cry.”
This is Pete Cashmore. Bow to your new media king.
Bonus: A-list pics from the Mashable party. Much better than mine.
More party pics from me (sorry, no IDs on many of these):
One of the INSIDE lines. There are more lines inside the Mashable party?
True story: this guy stole a woman’s seat and sat on her purse. When I pointed this out, he said, “I don’t care.”
Stripes were big this year at the fest.
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Panel: Delicious Tech for Localism: Sustainable Food 2.0
Date/Time: 11:30 a.m. Tuesday
Panelists: Rachel Weidinger (marketing director and senior consultant, Common Knowledge), Humberto Kam (senior manager online communications, Monterey Bay Aquarium), Andrew MacRae (Get Involved), Melanie Cheng (founder, FarmsReach.com)
The gist: Each of the panelists talked about their specific projects, so not much philosophical debate on how technology can improve the way the food system works. Melanie Cheng of FarmsReach.com has created a way for farmers to connect with restaurants, schools and hospitals that want to serve local food. The benefit to the farmer, who usually makes about 20 cents for every dollar spent on food, is reduced costs because it cuts out the middlemen. It is also transforming the 4,600 farmers markets in the country into distribution hubs because restaurants, etc. can pick up their deliveries at the market.
Humberto Kam, who works at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, created an iPhone application version of the Seafood Watch guide, which helps people choose sustainable seafood when dining out or at the grocery store. When 1 in 4 sea animals will die as bycatch (animals killed in nets that are harvesting another animal) and 15 pounds of marine life are killed for every pound of shrimp sold, choosing sustainable seafood isn’t something to be taken lightly. Some estimate that by 2050, 90 percent of wild fish stocks will be gone. You can now check the Seafood Watch guide, which categorized seafood by “best,” “good alternative” and “avoid,” anywhere from your iPhone; the application has been downloaded 44,000 times.
Andrew MacRae cited data that more people search for “farmers market” on Yahoo instead of Google, so you should think about designing an SEO strategy toward the Yahoo demographic, which isn’t affluent suburbanites. One problem facing farmers’ markets is that there isn’t a comprehensive source that lists every market in the country: You can add to a database MacRae started at farmersmarketsource.com.
Rachel Weidinger listed a few sites to help inform people interested in eating responsibly and sustainably: GoodGuide.com, which rates how food on how safe, healthy and green is it, WattzOn.com, which measures your personal carbon footprint, and common, ClimateCrossroads.org, a social network for people interested in sustainability.
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Panel: UR Blog Sux and Print is Dead
Date/time: 11:30 a.m. Tuesday
Panelists: Christian Lander, writer of Stuff White People Like, Kerry Miller, passiveaggressivenotes.com, Heather Armstrong, dooce.com, Ana Marie Cox, national correspondent, Air America, and Ben Huh, CEO of I Can Has Cheezburger?
The gist: Your blog is successful, now what? Panelists who have been there, done that, they advise bloggers on how to deal with success.
Quotes: “I’m currently six months pregnant, which has made this whole South By Southwest thing awful.” - Heather Armstrong.
Takeaways: All of the bloggers say they’ve received death threats, and even “suspicious packages.” Once you become known on the Internet, people try to find out more about you than you’d like to reveal. Armstrong said her death threat came after a post about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. But she said she doesn’t take it seriously. Miller says she is not “zen” when dealing with the haters. Lander said he just has people hoping for his death, but not actually threatening to do it. He also recommends paying the extra $15 to sites like GoDaddy to make your registration address disappear.
How they got started: Cox said she was hired to start Wonkette, but never expected a book deal out of it. Lander said that in January 2008, he wrote his first post. By February the blog has blown up and by March he had a book deal. He expected maybe 10 people to read the blog. In the beginning he said the people who found it were searching for “fair trade coffee.” Miller said she was writing for magazines like BusinessWeek, but the blog connected with more people. She said not to start a blog because you want to be Internet famous, because people can tell.
Dealing with people who don’t understand blogs: Cox says she wants to start an advice column for people who are “Internet famous,” with their number one problem being people don’t know they are famous. Lander says he is just used to explaining what it is to people. Huh says joked that he can’t walk five feet without a cat rubbing up against his leg.
A guy who runs the blog for PETA wanted to know how to be funny. Laughter ensued. Lander said he shouldn’t try to be funny, that animals are serious business. Huh said you can have a serious blog and a humor blog, just know how to make fun of yourself.
They also addressed the issue of whether blog writing shortens your attention span. Armstrong said she’s always had a short attention span and never reads books, while Miller said she is still trying to balance her freelance writing with her blog.
Limits: Lander says he won’t write about abortion. Armstrong says she does have lines she won’t cross (like her sex life) but likes people to think she has no boundaries. Cox says there is nothing she won’t write about.
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Panel: Quality: The Next Online Video Opportunity
Date/Time: 10 a.m. Tuesday
Panelists: Eric Feng (Hulu)
The gist: Now that Web video has become widely available and convenient to use, the next big frontier will be high-quality video. Reasons for the shift include growth in broadband penetration, improvement in bandwidth speeds and advancements in video technology.
Quotes: “If you make media hard, users are going to find other things to do.” — Feng
“Today you don’t get any credit at all for making online video available. That’s not enough. The interesting problem of today is getting video in high quality.” — Feng
Takeaways: Feng debuted the new Hulu commercial, which features Seth MacFarlane from “Family Guy.”
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Panel: The State of the Internet Memescape: 2008-10
Date/Time: 10 a.m. Tuesday
Panelists: Tim Hwang (ROFLCon)
The gist: It’s a tall order to keep an audience entertained at 10 a.m. the Tuesday of South by Southwest Interactive. Everyone is exhausted, people are thinking about their return flights home and the panels in general are usually starting to peter out by this point. Lucky for this panel, Tim Hwang of ROFLcon is a polished, fast-talking, engaging speaker who packed so much information into his one-man presentation that he was done and ready for questions from the audience by 10:35 a.m. The topic was Internet memes — jokes that originate online and take on a life of their own, like Rickrolling, Hamster Dance and lolcats. Hwang talked about everything from the controversial 4chan griefers group to the book success of sites like icanhascheezburger.com and ways that these ongoing jokes have grown communities and hacking their own Internet culture. While the large hall was only half-full, those who attended expressed in the Q&A how much they enjoyed the talk about such a fascinating subject, with one audience member saying it was his favorite talk of the entire fest.
Quotes: All from Hwang: “It’s funny that Rick Astley got picked. Who thought about Rick Astley before this year?” On Bruce Sterling’s Monday talk: “I heard he was really angry.” “Internet culture is the product of a lot of people looking for jobs. Creating something viral has been proved as a tried-and-true way of getting employment.” “The thing with ‘meme’ is when you start trying to define it you start to lose meaning.”
Takeaways: While some may think Internet memes will flame out with the suffering economy, Hwang thinks that laid off people sitting in front of computers looking for work are actually fertile ground for Internet memes. When companies try to create an artificial meme, they risk shooting themselves in the foot because they rarely find the “Secret sauce” necessary to make something truly go viral.
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
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Core conversation: Sex Ed Online: How Teens Self Savvy”
Panel title: “Sex Ed Online: How Teens Self Savvy” - Core Conversation
Date/Time: 5 p.m. Sunday
Panelists: Karen Kreps (Author, Net Ingenuity); Karen Rayne (Adolescent Sexuality Today)
The gist: From terminology to kissing techniques, kids use Google as a sexual resource. It’s their Dr. Ruth. “In some ways, kids are much more naive about sex,” says Rayne, an adolescent sexuality researcher and middle school teacher. “But in other ways, they’re much more knowledge.” She gives an example — a student in class asked her one day what a nipple was — the same kid who often walks down the hallways singing along to songs with sexually explicit lyrics.
So what to do? Parental controls aren’t the answer (“All the kid has to do is search ‘How to break a parental control’ said Rayne). But how do you stop your child from learning about sex? Or is that the right question? People often ask her: “When do I have a talk about sex with my kids?” But Rayne argues the “birds-and-bees” talk should be an ongoing thing, not just a one-time deal. And it’s not the child’s duty to start the conversation; parents should be proactive. “Sex is your responsibility as parents to bring up - not your kids,” she said.
Both panelists agreed sex ed in the classroom is underfunded. (“Texas has one of the worst sex education programs, and one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country,” said Kreps). The result can be sex ed-gone-wrong: a gym teacher told a student of hers that jumping up and down would kill fertile eggs.
It’s also important to establish early bonds with your children, said the panelists. Fifty percent of children have lied to their parents about reading or watching sexual content online, according to Kreps’ research. “That doesn’t mean talking to your kid on your laptop or while your cooking,” said Rayne.
Takeaways: Be present with your kids. Sit down and browse the Internet together. (There is useful information out there — learning how to be intimate, how to develop emotional connections, choosing a reliable mate). But mostly importantly, have a conversation — and many more. The problem is “we don’t talk about these topics openly,” Rayne stressed.
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