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SXSW Panel: SXSW Interactive Town Hall
Panel: SXSW Interactive Town Hall
Date/time: 12:30 p.m., Tuesday
Panelists: Hugh Forrest (director, SXSW Interactive), Shawn O’ Keefe (festival coordinator, SXSW Interactive)
The gist: In the very large Ballroom D where a panel on the digitally connected living room was scheduled (but was scrapped due to panelist cancellations), Forrest and O’Keefe gamely took questions from an audience of about a dozen. They addressed a question from me about Monday’s Twitter keynote on whether Umair Haque was the best choice of interviewer for Twitter CEO Evan Williams. Forrest said that Haque was Twitter’s choice of interviewer that they were most comfortable with and that there may not have been strong enough communication before the keynote between the festival and the keynote interviewer. “Some of our best keynotes have been people who have been a little off-topic and wouldn’t fit in your standard tech conference,” Forrest said. However, “…the keynote yesterday generated a lot of buzz and maybe didn’t live up to that buzz.” Forrest said that the interview format has worked well in the past, but that “It just didn’t click yesterday.” The interview format may not lend itself to doing as much preparation as a traditional keynote speech. He thinks that for high-profile keynotes, the festival may consider more strongly going to a solo, lecture-style format. The festival looks to conferences like TED in terms of documenting with videos the experiences and wants to do more of that and to better communicate with the public what they’re doing.
Quotes: “Don’t do what everyone else is doing. Do something completely different.” Forrest, on submitting suggestions to the SXSW Interactive Panel Picker. “Ultimately, SXSW has to take rsponsibility in terms of training interviewers better. We didn’t do that good a job with (2008 interviewer) Sarah Lacy and we didn’t do a good job with Umair yesterday.” — Forrest. “The most brilliant minds and the most amazing geeks aren’t always the best speakers. It’s a challenge for everybody. One big part of the event is bringing fresh blood.” — O’ Keefe. “To me the most interesting sessions there are the ones that are completely off-the-wall.” Forrest, on Panel Picker submissions. “Personally, I hate that. It is incredibly hard to keep speakers on track.” — Forrest, when asked if the festival could add live Twitter “back-channel” feeds as visuals in panels. “We don’t do a good job of sharing what we’re doing.” — O’ Keefe.
Takeaways: Panel Picker begins in june for next year’s festival. The festival is looking for more diverse, more unique panel ideas and also wants to work with non-profits and other organizations to do new and different things. One audience member described the festival as a good mix of “left-brain” and “right-brain event.” O’Keefe said he’s like to see a media library of people’s experiences at SXSW Interactive, including more video. He thinks the TED conference sets the bar for this. 63 percent of SXSW Interactive audience has iPhones.
- Omar L. Gallaga
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