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SXSW 2009

March 10, 2011

SXSW keynote preview: playing with Seth Priebatsch

Would you like to play a game?

Seth Priebatsch, “Chief Ninja” at Cambridge, Mass.-based SCVNGR, has two of them in store for attendees of his South by Southwest Interactive Festival opening keynote presentation, which he’ll deliver 2 p.m. on Saturday at the Austin Convention Center. (It’ll be live-streamed to the public on sxsw.com as well.)

While most keynotes at SXSWi typically involve a single speaker and some slides (like Zappos.com chief executive Tony Hsieh’s talk on happiness in 2009) or an onstage interview (Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s legendary train wreck with journalist Sarah Lacy in 2008), 22-year-old Priebatsch promises to break the format with a more participatory presentation.

“I do like to have a lot of fun, and I do like to have a lot of fun with the audience. It’s either going to work and be one of the coolest joint experiences that anyone in the audience will have had … or fail gloriously,” Priebatsch said. “It’ll be epic either way.”

From his “Chief Ninja” job title (he could also be called founder and CEO) to his company bio (“Seth Priebatsch was born in Boston, MA at the age of 7”) to his cheery, hyper, completely convincing banter by phone, Priebatsch is part of a wave of online companies and Web executives who work humor and games into the fabric of what they do.

It worked for Groupon Inc., the online deals service that by some estimates could be worth $15 billion.

For SCVNGR, which started off as a location-based business app that Priebatsch developed as part of a business competition at Princeton, the mix of quirky and forward-looking is paying off. The service announced in February that it has passed a million users and on Thursday introduced a feature called “LevelUp” in Philadelphia and Boston.

SCVNGR in some ways resembles a mix of location services like Gowalla and Foursquare, where users check in at specific locations, but is heavily focused on what Priebatsch called a “gaming layer” that introduces elements of, say, video games into real-world interactions. “This decade was the decade of social,” he said. “The next decade is the decade for gaming.”

With LevelUp, SCVNGR will work with merchants to reward repeat customers, cracking a problem that seems to affect daily deal and location-based sites that attract flocks of new customers to local businesses but doesn’t give them enough reason to come back.

“We’re trying to crack the science of loyalty for local business,” he said. “ We believe that (location-based services) and the local deals space are on a head-on collision course.” The potential on the business side for being one of the first companies to crack the code is huge, but Priebatsch is equally excited about the implications of video-game mechanics increasingly working their way into the real world. Points? Leveling up by completing challenges and earning achievements? Finding the (metaphoric) princess by completing a stage of a game that is spread out across your city?

The keynote will tie that in by example, he says: “It’ll force everyone to experience this in a visceral way,” Priebatsch said.

Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Internet, SXSW, SXSW 2009, SXSW 2010, SXSW 2011, Videogames

SXSW Interactive grows up, faces social backlash

In today’s austin360 print edition and online, we ran a piece I wrote about South by Southwest Interactive’s growing pains and how it’s addressing a backlash that brewed after last year’s festival.

As soon as last year’s festival was over, my editor and I talked a lot about what the surge in growth for the fest means and whether it would continue. We were amazed to hear that this year’s attendance will likely mirror last year’s growth, somewhere in the 30 to 40 percent range.

Is the fest growing up or growing out of control?

Here are some links that go with the piece:

The Jolie O’ Dell blog post we mention in the article.
The Robert Scoble blog post about the need for “MicroSXSW” events.
Our Digital Savant podcasts featuring Wesley Faulkner and Stephanie Klein with tips on how to navigate the fest.

At 2 p.m. today (Thursday, March 10) CST, we’ll be doing a live chat here to talk about the fest. Bring your questions, concerns, and advice for others on how to grapple with this growing event.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Internet, SXSW, SXSW 2009, SXSW 2010, SXSW 2011

February 25, 2011

Digital Savant Podcast #2: Stephanie Klein on SXSWi

We have a second podcast!

After our chat with Wesley Faulkner, we decided to record another Digital Savant podcast, this time with author, blogger and South by Southwest Interactive panelist Stephanie Klein.

Stephanie talks about her experiences at the fest, her panel, “Tell & Sell Your Story,” and why you meet the best people at the festival in the bathroom. No, it’s true!

This is probably the last podcast until after SXSW Interactive is over, but we definitely hope to continue.

Download it in MP3 format.

Download it in podcast-enhanced AAC format (includes images and links).

Show notes:

The SXSW Out of Towners blog entry
Stephanie’s SXSW panel and her book signing info.
More from Stephanie about how not to behave at the fest (possibly NSFW).

What’s in the podcast:

0:30 — Introducing Stephanie Klein.
1:15 — Stephanie’s SXSW panel, “Tell & Sell Your Story”
3:45 — The festival is coming! Exciting!
5:20 — Pro tip: start drinking now.
7:40 — Stephanie doesn’t like wrist-band/VIP exclusivity.
9:18 — Experiencing the fest to the fullest, especially in the bathroom.
10:45 — Getting over social anxiety.
11:58 — Why don’t we like social media gurus?
13:35 — Knowing when to abandon the plan.
15:50 — Being an attendee versus a panelist.
16:35 — Is the fest too big? Do we need micro-events?
17:30 — Wrapping things up.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Internet, Movies & DVDs, Podcasts, SXSW, SXSW 2009, SXSW 2010, SXSW 2011

November 23, 2009

Twitter Mystery List madness!

For several weeks, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with Twitter’s new “Lists” feature, where you can create a directory of Twitter accounts for other to view, even including people you don’t follow.

It’s a handy way to keep track of people and to group them into common interests or careers (I’m on several for “tech” and “journalists”). But until now, I haven’t figured out a single good way to use Lists. Some people I follow have already created lists for Statesman staffers, for tech journalists and other good groupings, but I haven’t felt it was worth the effort for me to curate a list that seems redundant with other ones out there.

I also thought about creating lists for bloggers or for Austin friends or for social media experts, but again, those lists would be so large they’d be next to pointless.

I started to notice people putting me on lists with vague names, or even incorrect lists. One Twitter account that follows media people keeps putting me on lists like, “USA Today.” I began to wonder if I should just put a list together and not tell people what it was for.

Thus began Omar’s Twitter Mystery List. I decided to turn it into a giant guessing game. I started picking out people for the list and over the next day kept adding more names that applied to the mystery theme.

Last night, I posted about it and got a very small number or responses, but today I offered a $25 iTunes gift card (which I will be purchasing out of my own pocket; it’s not a Statesman contest) and suddenly, I was flooded with guesses on Twitter and on Facebook.

I tried to reply to each guess, offering more clues and information.

The answer, it turned out, was “People who attended SXSW 2009.” Even early on, I had a few guesses that it was SXSW speakers or people on the lineup for 2010, both very close guesses, but not quite there. I kept adding more people to the list, relying on the SXSW festival guide, my news stories from the fest and some careful Google/Twitter searches to make sure the list was correct.

In each case, when someone guessed incorrectly, I was able to point out examples of people on the list who didn’t meet their criteria.

The guesses got more frantic and I struggled to keep up with @replies. There were several good guesses that took me a while to shoot down. One person guessed that the people on the list were all Twitter users with more followers than people they followed and I hunted frantically through the list for at least one or two examples of names that didn’t apply. I finally found two, but for one scary moment I thought I was going to have to award a bonus winner simply because I couldn’t prove them wrong on what was a very good guess.

Several people mentioned SXSW, specifically on a Facebook wall post, and I had to decide whether they were close enough.

In the end, Caroling Lee made several SXSW guesses before she finally won with, “People who attended SXSW last year that you think might attend in 2010.” I deemed it very close, especially since she’s already had previous guesses about SXSW that were almost a win.

It was a lot of fun, but much harder to manage once it picked up steam and guesses and responses were flying back and forth. I began to worry that all my @replies were going to annoy people who weren’t interested in the contest but did follow me and other Austinites who were participating.

I also made one big error: I included Texas State professor Dara Quackenbush on the list even though she did not attend Interactive. I thought I remembered her and Cindy Royal (who did attend) going, along with many of their students, and it was a huge mistake on my part. I took her off the list as soon as I realized the mistake, but it was after the contest was over, unfortunately.

Nevertheless, I think it worked out well — in my responses to guesses, I was able to use lots of Twitter handles of people on the list, which I think spread interest in the contest and made more people aware it was happening. (In fact, one person I’ve never met before replied after they were name-checked and now I’m following them on Twitter.) Several people direct-messaged me asking me to spill the beans before the contest was over, but I rebuffed them, figuring it would be over soon enough.

Once the contest really got going, it took only about two hours for it to conclude. A diverting activity on a slow Monday afternoon and, I hope, fun for those involved.

It proved to me again that Twitter is what you make of it. It’s a platform, nothing more, and you can choose to have as much fun or to express yourself as much as you like. People who find Twitter boring or useless, I’ve found, simply haven’t figured out a good way to make it work for them or haven’t devoted the imagination to try to do something new with it or to make it an extension of their own interests and talents.

It seems like maybe a talent of mine is getting people excited about a $25 gift card and frustrating participants with a Twitter-based mystery.

I’m going to think on how to make the contest more streamlined, less chaotic and without the glaring misstep I made at the end, but I think there will definitely be a Twitter Mystery List #2 sometime soon.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Internet, SXSW, SXSW 2009

October 29, 2009

Thoughts from Innotech

I spent half the day at Innotech Austin, a one-day conference that melds elements of business, technology and marketing, among other subjects.

I’m not a business reporter anymore, so I’m always a little leery of events with such a heavy business emphasis, but on the other hand, I love to be around tech people and hear their thoughts on presentations or just socialize with people I normally only see on Twitter or Facebook.

It would be impossible for me to review Innotech as a whole since there were typically six panels going on at once and I was only able to attend half the day, but from my quick peek around the expo floor and attendance in a few panels, it was obvious that social media is a dominant topic — it was the subject of a luncheon presentation from an Intel social media guru and a fiery presentation from self-described social media ninja Giovanni Galucci. (Never mind that ninjas are supposed to be covert about their identity).

Galucci is a great, energetic speaker, but other presenters I saw were not (or, in one unfortunate case, came across like an olde-timey snake oil salesman).

It reminded me how hard it is for someone to put on a good presentation for a mixed tech and business audience. It’s a problem that plagues South by Southwest Interactive — panels and Core Conversations with fantastic-sounding speakers often turn out to be boring or preaching to the choir in actual practice.

One person whom I greatly respect and who attends lots of conferences of this sort told me today, “I want to hear about stuff I don’t already know.”

It’s a common problem — how do you keep the tech and social media from getting bored with information they already know while not overwhelming audience members with less knowledge?

At South by Southwest, I raved about Guy Kawasaki, who made for one of the most entertaining Q&A presenters I’ve ever seen at the conference. Though his sparring partner, Chris Anderson, was not nearly so charismatic, Kawasaki did an expert job of keeping the tone light, but the subject matter deep and focused. He was fun and unpredictable.

I say this as someone who’s giving a presentation tomorrow to a group of college journalism students; I watched with an extra-careful eye today, wondering if I was relying too much on a PowerPoint slide show and if I’d fall into some of the presentation traps I saw seeing right in front of me.

It’s very, very difficult to give a good presentation to a large tech crowd these days. It’s gotten to the point where an engaging, thought-provoking panel that really gives everyone in the room new knowledge has, sadly, become the exception and not the rule.

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September 24, 2009

AT&T opens up about SXSW, future of 3G network

At the AT&T Austin human factors lab. Omar L. Gallaga/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Yesterday, I had a chance to visit AT&T’s Austin lab, where it tests out new wireless products, makes improvements to its U-verse TV service through human interaction testing and makes decisions that will affect many of the products and network services we’ll be using in the coming years. It’s one of six labs the company has in the U.S.

My colleague Kirk Ladendorf was there and wrote an excellent piece for today’s paper about the lab’s 175 workers and the veil of secrecy that surrounds much of its work. (The original iPhone was tested here, as well as in Apple’s own facilities, and it was absolutely top secret. We asked if they’d show us an Apple tablet computer. Can you believe they politely declined to even acknowledge it exists!?)

In addition to what Kirk wrote in his story, we had a lot of discussion about the future of AT&Ts wireless network, the problems they had meeting iPhone data demands at South by Southwest Interactive in March and emerging services they expect will be popular like two-way video and, eventually, voice over its data network.

Jeff Johnson, executive director of services and platform planning, said the company’s current 3G network — as hammered as its been by the multitude of apps and data-intensive smartphone use — simply isn’t ready for services like that, but that we’ll see them as AT&T migrates its devices to a faster 4G network in the coming years.

As for South by Southwest 2010, the company all but guaranteed there wouldn’t be the same network meltdown and said they’ll be steering iPhone users to beefed-up Wi-Fi networks, something it’s more equipped to do since its November purchase of Wayport. AT&T is hoping more people will use Wi-Fi for video and data, freeing up its voice network for voicemail and calls.

The company didn’t say how soon we might see its faster 7.2 Mbps HSPA 3G network in Austin (it’s launched in Dallas and Houston among a handful of other cities) and whether it would be active before next March’s festival. Of its iPhone lineup, only the iPhone 3GS has the hardware technology to access those speeds.

One interesting tidbit: although I’d heard previously that there was plenty of overhead in the 3G spectrum before the company transitions to a next-generation 4G network, what I got from yesterday’s meeting was that AT&T believes 4G will be here before there’s a need to squeeze more bandwidth out of 3G. That seemed a bit contrary to what I’d been told at a recent broadband meet-up at a Capitol Mac User Group meeting.

Other highlights of the day were a truly cool usability lab where about 2,000 people a year are brought through to test out U-verse remote controls and video quality, phones, DSL install kits and other products. We saw the control room where users are monitored and the level of detail in the testing was pretty inspiring. One major project the company is working on is self-install kits for its U-verse service, but Jeff Brandt, head of the Human Factors lab, said it’s a large-scale project fraught with all kinds of complications inherent in how people’s homes are set up. Nevertheless, it’s a project that could save AT&T millions of dollars in labor a year. A similar project for self-install DSL kits saved AT&T $450 million a year based on work done out of the Austin lab.

Here’s a few photos from the day:

Steve Harbin is the director of subscription engineering at AT&T’s Austin lab. In addition to new and unreleased wireless devices, the lab tests human factors and usability of products the company already offers. Larry Kolvoord/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Sunpreet Kaur is an engineer at AT&T’s wireless lab in Austin. The lab has eight copper encased rooms - to block interference from existing cell phone networks in the area - testing unreleased products such as netbooks and GPS devices. Larry Kolvoord/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

One of the copper-encased rooms used to block interference for testing wireless products. Omar L. Gallaga/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Detail of the outside of one of the copper-encased lab rooms. Omar L. Gallaga/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

A peek at an AT&T microcell device, which boosts 3G signals in the home. It’s been introduced in Charlotte, North Carolina, for $150. Omar L. Gallaga/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Phones, SXSW 2009, SXSW 2010

March 24, 2009

The Linkdown returns for Tuesday, March 24

You can’t see this (thank goodness), but I’m doing deep knee bends and wrist rotations in order to try to recover some muscle memory of the last time we did a Linkdown around here.

Has it really been that long? It must be because my Linkdown e-mail folder has gotten fat and lazy. It needs some exercise. Here we go:

Down economy? Job seeking? The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department is looking for a Director of Interactive Services. You can find out how to apply here.
Speaking of which, yesterday’s NPR All Tech Considered segment was about online job hunting and what recruiters are looking for. I had background help from local experts Kim Haynes and Caroline Valentine.
Although it’s not listed on their Web site, PopCap Games has released a version of the game “Bookworm” for iPhone. If you’re a word nerd and you’ve played it on PC, I don’t have to tell you what this means for your productivity levels. They shall plummet.
Do you have trouble understanding rap? Well, grandpa, this Web site may help.
This was pitched to me before South by Southwest Interactive, but it might still be relevant if you go out a lot: an iPhone app called “Have2p” which tells you… well, it tells you where to go when you have to go (image at the bottom of this entry).
This 8-terrabyte home storage device is like something out of my wildest, most wonderful dreams.
D.C. Comics and Six Flags are working together on an alternate reality game (ARG) set in the Superman mythos. Web sites involved include Lex Luthor’s Clawshun Industries, Jimmy Olsen’s blog, Jimmy’s Twitter account and The Daily Planet.
If this OnLive thing for PC gaming on the cheap actually works, it’s going to change everything.
Yes, Steve Wozniak is still dancing (badly) and surviving on “Dancing With the Stars.” His online support may have something to do with that.
Rachel Muir has long been one of our favorite Austin tech people with her involvement in Girlstart. We wish her well on her new adventure. Congratulations to new interim executive director Julie Shannan.
Lively Animoto videos from South by Southwest Interactive.
iTunes now rents/sells HD movies. Not surprising, but still good news.
Ever wanted an Undo Send feature in your e-mail? Gmail has got your back (for about five seconds, at least).
Pearl Jam’s album “Ten” is now on Rock Band.
Alamo Drafthouse Village wows us with tantalizing 4K digital projection. We are so there, man.

The “Have2P” iPhone app — good for emergencies.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival, Austin, Computers, Internet, SXSW 2009, Videogames

March 23, 2009

Lingering SXSW questions

It’s been almost a week since my head exploded from all the fun that was South by Southwest Interactive (maybe you heard something about it on this blog?).

Although i didn’t get enough rest afterward like I’d planned (never plan rest; it doesn’t work), I did have a little time to reflect on the fest, even beyond the postmortem that ran in yesterday’s paper.

Mostly, I was left with a few questions that I hope to have answered before next year’s festival rolls around. Things like:

If AT&T fixed their network service midway through South by Southwest Interactive, why did it seem to flail again on Wednesday when the music service started. You’d think a lot of iPhones would have left town by then, but maybe musicians like their iPhones as much as techies.
Why was the Comedy on the Web panel, which had a great lineup including B.J. Novak from “The Office” such a snooze? Was it because it was so late in the day on a Saturday? All I know is that the comedy heavy hitters were almost outclassed by Boxee CEO Avner Ronen, who was knowledgeable and funny.
If SXSWi had a 25 percent jump in attendance, the film fest was flat and the music fest dropped, does that mean the Austin Chronicle will give the fest more attention next year? Is Interactive becoming the fest’s crown jewel?
Was Tony Hsieh’s great opening remarks keynote a rehash of previous speeches? Though it was fun to watch, people who’ve seen Hsieh speak before said they’d heard many of the things he talked about before, right down to an anecdote about a Zappos employee who called in to ask one of their customer service reps about pizza places.
How exactly will keynoter Chris Anderson’s book “Free” be marketed? He hinted strongly in his interview with Guy Kawasaki that he and his publisher are looking at innovate ways to market the book that fit the theme. And will SXSWi attendees who follow the two of them on Twitter get their free copy of the book as promised?
Will Sky Lounge and Pangea continue to be the big, crowded party places next year?
How well attended were the 6:30 p.m. salon sessions? I found I missed every single one of them — the timing just never worked for me. Was the experiment a success?

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March 19, 2009

Attendance at South by Southwest Interactive tops 11k

In an interview yesterday, South by Southwest Interactive director Hugh Forrest (pictured at right) said attendance at the festival grew about 25 percent over last year, which we estimate puts the number of people with access to SXSWi at more than 11,200 paid registrants. Previous estimates of attendance growth had ranged anywhere from 10 to 15 percent to 20.

Forrest said final accounting for the fest is not yet complete, so that total is not official, but is close to what the festival expects will be the final numbers.

In 2008, more than 9,000 were registered for the Interactive fest. That includes platinum and gold badge wearers, who may not necessarily have attended Interactive events.

Theories about the growth included job seekers looking to weather the bad economy, a large number of start-up companies trying to promote their wares at the fest and the continuing cross-over between Film and Interactive.

“Part of our growth is from the film side buying Interactive badges for the Interactive programming,” Forrest said, “there’s lots of carryover in the audience.”

Forrest said the Film fest attendance was estimated to be flat from last year and the Music fest attendance is expected to be down about 5 to 10 percent.

Overstuffing was a problem at Interactive in some Core Conversation panels with many an attendee sitting on floors and the larger parties at the fest suffered from long lines. Forrest said that fewer larger companies send 15 to 25 employees at a time, but many smaller companies were able to afford to come.

“In a down economy, it’s a great place for innovation to happen,” he said.

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March 18, 2009

Videos: Felicia Day, Digg guys, iPhone body language and SXSWi wrap-up

We shot a whole lot of video during South by Southwest Interactive, and if you were following this blog for our coverage (thanks for that, by the way), you might have missed some of the videos we posted on the front page of Austin360. Here are the ones I helped with, shot by our talented staff of videographers including Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon, Emma Janzen and Jenni Jones.

You can see all of our SXSWi videos (yes, there are more) at our main Brightcove player page, under Event Videos, including videos of some of the big parties like Statesman Texas Social Media Awards, Facebook at Pangea and the Frog Design blowout at the Mexican-American Cultural Center.

My wrap-up of the fest:

People were walking around cell-phoning and talking. We ask why:

Interview with Felicia Day:

Interview with Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson of Digg:

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SXSW Panel: Is Web 2.0 Killing the Sports Business?

Date/time: 3:30 p.m. Tuesday

Panelists: Pat Coyle, Pres. of Coyle Media Inc.; Derek Eagleton, Digital Media Dir. for Dallas Cowboys; Mike Levy, CEO of OPEN Sports Network Inc.; Hooman Radfar, Founder/CEO of Clearspring Technologies Inc.; Kevin Chou, CEO of Watercooler

The gist: To answer the question in the panel’s name - no. But Web 2.0 is changing the way fans, teams, players and the media interact, mostly in ways that is changing the way money flows into the sports industry.

Fantasy sports is the still the biggest growth market in the sports online space, with at least 20 million participants per year and more expected as technology offers more features and makes the sport more appealing to casual fans.

Takeaways: The online world has made athletes into brands and content producers, for good or for ill. That accessibility has made fans even more connected to their teams, which creates opportunities for businessmen like Chou and his fan interaction site.

While there’s lots of differentiation in offering from team sites and how leagues utilize the Web, all panelists agreed ESPN is one of the best sites in all the Web regardless of direction. One reason for the company’s success is its willingness to embrace new technology and find a way to make it work easily for the everyday fan.

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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

We could tell that this keynote was going to be different when Hugh “‘O” Forrest wished the SXSW Interactive crowd a happy St. Patrick’s Day then proceeded to joke about last year’s disastrous Sarah Lacy keynote with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, noting that he’d heard the festival hadn’t yet had its “Sarah Lacy moment.” He joked that he didn’t know what people were talking about when they told him that.

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.”

It set the mood for the rest of the one-hour session, focused around Anderson’s forthcoming book, “Free,” which was also a Wired article about how companies can make money with radically new business models.

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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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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March 16, 2009

Core Conversation: Love in the Cloud: Online-Only Marriages

Dates/Time: 11:30 a.m. Monday

Panelists: Todd Moy (Senior User Experience Design, Capstrat); Margot Carmichael Lester (Owner, The Word Factory)

The gist: Life is easier with a partner. But what if that partnership is online? Seems hard to keep a relationship going on 140 characters (the Twitter message limit), but traditional marriages have overcome the strain of distance (especially now with our busy, busy schedules), so what makes online-marriages so doomed? Will they ever be legitimate?

Lester was clear that most online-marriages are not exclusive. Many have real-life relationships, too, with partners who don’t mind their virtual union; however, these relationships are often monogamous in that world, she said.

They often develop on dating sites or in chat rooms, and more and more on virtual-world games like Second Life, where user-generated avators walk around and socialize in real-time, she said.

Quotes: “How do you take your online-date to a dinner party? And what do you tell your mom?” (Moy); “By 2015, two percent of the population will have an online-only marriage” (Lester); “I’m not having sex with a robot!” (Attendee).

Takeaways: More questions than answers:

—Will insurance companies ever recognize these marriages?

—Are couples in online-only marriages inadvertantly taking themselves out of the gene pool?

— Marriage has evolved from political unions to romantic love. Will the next evolution be intellectual partnerships void of touch?

— How important is physical presence? Is it possible to virtually replicate body language or touch?

— What’s worse: physical or emotional infidelity? Should you feel guilty for a one-night (chat) stand?

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Robert Scoble video interview

Omar Gallaga talked with Scoble earlier today:

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Core Conversation : Commu(k)nity: Lessons for Marketers From Online Crafting

Date/Time: 5:00p.m., Monday

Panelists: Stephen Houghton, Web manager, Clif Bar & Company

The gist: DIY’ers innovate and use the best of the Web to create their own communities. How can companies can profit by encouraging user/consumer passion and being more than just “friends”?

Quotes:

“This intersection of geeks and knitters is very exciting.”

“You can never predict what people are going to do with your tool set”

“Can marketing or can brands create genuine, authentic communities online?”

Takeaways: Work of marketers needs to be personal and form relationships with your target audience to get noticed. It helps to have a product people care about and can be passionate about. The community needs to spread the word about the thing the community is based on.

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Panel: Building a Web Business After Hours

Date/Time: 3:30 p.m. Monday

Panelists: Gretchen Heber (NaturallyCurly.com; formerly a journalist at the American-Statesman), Jeremy Bencken (Buzzstream), Aruni Gunasegaram (Babble Soft LLC), David Altounian (iTaggit.com), Elisa Camahort Page (BlogHer Inc)

The gist: Ideas on managing a Web business on the site while you have a day job.

Takeaways: — A good partner in your venture makes life much easier. Besides doing part of the work, he or she can contribute skills that complement yours. The moral support of a partner is also essential. While friends and family can commiserate to a degree, only a partner understands what you’re really going for with the business. Make sure that your partner shares similar goals in areas like how much money you expect to make and how much time you expect to put into the business.

— Don’t mix up your side work and your company’s work. Doing your own gig on company time and company equipment can mean the company owns your work.

— Be clear with family and friends about the time you’ll have to devote to your venture.

— Be careful when you accept external funding. If you’re working on your venture part time, make sure an investor doesn’t expect you to be working on it full time.

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Panel: Are Women Taken More Seriously On The Web?

Date/Time: 11:30 a.m., Monday

Panelists: Blagica Bottigliero (Social Media Consumer Brands, Edelman), Karen Chu (graphic designer, PlayFirst Inc), Laura Roeder (principal, roederstudios.com), Carly Kocurek (doctoral candidate, University of Texas at Austin)

The gist: For better or worse, how women are treated online reflects how they are treated in a society, and historically, the technology industry hasn’t been as open to women. In theory, the Web allows women to put out ideas and opinions without first being judged for being a woman, but with the availability of profiles and people using their names, gender anonymity isn’t a given.

Blagica Bottigliero said that women have the opportunity to be taken eqully, but in some ways, we’ve taken a few steps back, by using tools in an incorrect fashion. She used the examples of profile photos and videos. She also talked about using a different writing style in e-mails to disguise her gender (when asked for specifics, she said she uses “dude” and ends verbs with “-in” instead of “-ing”).

This was the calmest, least combative of the women and technology panels so far at the festival. The panelists agreed that women are often to blame for undermining other women on the Web, because it’s difficult to have a disagreement online without it being called a “catfight.” Carly Kocurek said that being critical of one another isn’t the same as being in a catfight, but when these discussions are public, it’s easier for people to pick them apart and deem them “catfights,” instead of allowing women to simply disagree.

There are equality issues with who is able to get online in the first place, Kocurek pointed out.

Takeaways: Don’t apologize for interests that are perceived as feminine, Kocurek said. It creates a crack that people can then go into to pick you apart. Take yourself and your interests seriously, but the bottom line is that you have to know what you’re talking about to be taken seriously anywhere on the Web.

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Panel: Why Is Professional Blogging Bloodsport for Women?

Date/Time: 11:30 a.m., Sunday

Panelists: Rebecca Fox (managing editor, mediabistro.com), Rachel Sklar (Abrams Research/The Daily Beast/Charitini)

The gist: This conversation seemed an extension of the Saturday panel “Everything I Needed to Know About the Web I Learned from Feminism,” with many of the same discussion points and heated arguments. Like the previous day’s panel, members of the audience talked a lot about the differences between third and second waves of feminism.

As much as we’d like to think that the Web has evened the playing ground (see entry on Panel: Are Women Taken More Seriously On the Web?), it’s not an ideal space where women are treated equal. Where people feel free to expose ugliness, extreme views are always going to seep forth.

The “catfight” argument came up: Why is it always a “catfight” and never a legitimate disagreement? Women reject criticism of one another, often putting on kid gloves, which they wouldn’t do if they were disagreeing with a man.

An audience member pointed out that it takes courage to write personal essays or blogs, which is what a lot of women write online, because your’e admitting you’re not perfect, which then opens the floodgates for attacks.

Personal information (relationship status, children, hobbies) are always asked of women bloggers, but not of men. Another member of the audience said that it is naive to think you can write about your personal choice online and not face criticism; you have to own your choices.

Takeaways: Free speech is for public space, but a blog, even if it is not password protected, isn’t necessarily a public space, so it is up to the blogger to outline the rules for engagement and commenting.

Be clear about what you will allow in comments, and stick to it. If someone does unfairly attack you, pick your battles. If you spend a lot of time reacting to trolls or derogative language and commenters, you give away all of your power. (Their intention is to shut women up, so don’t let them win, one audience member said. “Don’t feed the troll.”)

Women should positively and constructively engage each other, even if you disagree; don’t wait for someone else to tell you that you matter.

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Keynote address: James Powderly

Date and time: Monday at 2 p.m

Speakers: Open source art evangelist and political activist James Powderly talks about his craft and his mission with Virgina Heffernan who write The Medium column for The New York Times Magazine.

The gist: The affable and slightly goofy Powderly started off by asking everyone in the audience to flip him off — and then he took a picture of it.

When asked if there was a politics to his technology-based art actions, Powerdely answered, “It’s not moral or immoral, it’s amoral.”

Indeed, if there was one point Powderly made during the somewhat cursory and scattered discussion with Heffernan, it’s that he doesn’t consider himself an artist - especially not an artist with a message.

“I’m a trickster,” he repeated again and again. “Only to the cops, I’m artist.”

Nor did Powderly profess an originality of intent, either. Everything he and his co-horts do by way laser tagging and creating open-source tech methods for graffiti, is nothing but a new medium for the creation of graffiti. “It’s all stolen directly from the trajectory of graffiti,” Powderly said.

And if he’s not an artist, he’s also certainly not a man with a specific political message to espouse either. Well except this: Open source equals free speech. And all he’s doing is providing the do-it-yourself high tech means to take the graffiti to a new level.

Still, Powderly gave a rambling recollection his experience this summer when hewas detained by Chinese authorities during the 2008 Summer Olympics while attempting to project the words “Free Tibet” on a building with laser beams.

Powderly quotes: “We say yes to everybody (who approaches us about a project). We’re a free speech organization.”

“I think graffiti should be illegal. If everybody is a transgressor, it’s bad — it’s Australian.”

“The trickster, the transgressor steps over the line constantly. We draw people in, and then step over our own boundary and show everyone how to do it themselves. The magician reveals his tricks and makes a hundred more magicians.”

“Can you guys guess what operating system I’m using?” (When his PC froze on a streaming video)

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SXSW Panel: How to Protect Your Brand Without Being a Jerk!

Panel title: How to Protect Your Brand Without Being a Jerk!

Date and time: Monday at 11:30 a.m.

Panelists: Twanna A Hines, Writer/Editor/Blogger/Sexpot, funkybrownchick.com; Elena Paul, Exec Dir. of VLA; Oren Bitan, Atty for HIQI Media; Eric Steuer, Creative Dir. at Creative Commons;’ Danny O’Brien, eff.org

The gist: The Internet has clouded the already murky area of copyright and ownership, and panelists discussed what rights copyright and trademark holders have, what their legal options are if those are violated and how to take action effectively.

Quotes: “People freak out when the first thing they see is lawyer language. You don’t want to ramp things up and the minute you drag out a copyright protection they think you’re going to come after them and kill their kids or something. People do that because those confrontations are all you hear about, but you never hear about the situations that are solved by a quick message that says, basically, “Dude, don’t be a d—k.’” — Danny O’Brien

Takeaways: If copyrighted material is improperly used, don’t fly off the handle right away and instead consider if the use (such as a musical remix) is something that might be of possible benefit. The best way to take action for digital content is to send a removal letter to the site host and open a discussion with the offending parties. Seek legal action once those options are spent, possibly from O’Brien or Paul’s groups that work on behalf of artists.

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SXSW Panel: Finance 2.0: Money Management to Save this Generation

Panel title: Finance 2.0: Money Management to Save this Generation

Date and time: Monday at 10 a.m.

PanelistsNichelle Stephens, Founder of Keeping Nickels; Michael Ferrari, President/ Co-Founder of SmartyPig; Aaron Patzer, CEO/Founder of Mint.com; Murali Subbarao, Pres/CEO of Billeo Inc.; Stessa Cohen, Gartner Inc

The gist: Online money management tools offer users options and ways to save money that the bulk of national banking companies don’t. Because sites like Mint.com and Billeo.com aren’t directly affiliated with one bank they can pattern users’ behaviors and offer suggestions discounts and better management behavior. And the lack of personalized features on large bank Web sites doesn’t invite people to visit frequently, which makes it harder to stay on top of cash flow.

Quotes: “You can’t monitor what’s going on with your money if you don’t look at it regularly. But people have problems with doing things they feel is drastic when it comes to working with their money, so this is some new ground we’re working on. We have to get to the people who have so far just used Excel or Quickbooks.” — Nichelle Stephens

Takeaways: Especially in a recession, the importance of keeping track of money and making the most of it can’t be overstated. Taken together Mint, Billeo and Smartpig offer three interlinked but unique services to help users get a handle on their financial situation and start being active in the effect money has on their lives.

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Panel: International Business in China for Fun and Profit

Date/Time: 2 p.m., Monday

Panelists: Kris Krug (President, Raincity Studios Inc./Bryght); Christine Lu (Founder, The China Business Network); Andrew Lih, Researcher/writer); Dan Harris (China Law Blog); Sage Brennan (Director of Research, Pacific Sun Investment Management).

The gist: Companies that change into China thinking they can do business the way they do elsewhere are in for a rude awakening. Lih likened the experience to playing Calvinball — the rules can change at any moment. Contract? What contract? Especially in technology, it takes an understanding of the culture and how it uses technology. For instance, as Lih said, “No one uses voicemail. Which is amazing when you think of it. It’s a short message culture from the very beginning. That’s why everyone picks up right away.” China has also been plugged into Twitter-like services for years, including QQ, which has a staggering 300 million users. MySpace China, which was shepherded by Rupert Murdoch’s China-born wife Wendi Deng Murdoch, failed to make traction with the site. It’s now down to two staffers. One company that did it right is the NBA. The basketball association’s Web site gets half of its Web traffic from China. This panel dovetailed with yesterday’s “Run to the Hills” panel in which Kaiser Kuo talked about how much better China is taking advantage of its market than outside countries. On that panel, Kuo, a business consultant, said, “There’s tremendous opportunity, but it’s not the white guy” getting it.”

Quotes: “It’s bigger than the Internet, which is ridiculous.” — Brennan on QQ. “MySpace tried to go in and say we’re the big Kahuna in the U.S., we can do it in China. That strategy is usually a huge failure. — Lih “If you don’t follow these rules, they’ll blacklist you and you won’t be able to do business in China.” — Harris. “Don’t expect to go in thinking you’re going to change China. China’s going to change you.” — Lu. “The rules can change at any moment.” — Lih. “We obsess about what’s restricted— it’s fascinating the conversations that ARE happening.” — Lih

Takeaways: Doing business in China requires a certain kind of entrepreneur, one willing to accept that they won’t change the rules in China — China is more likely to change them. Though much attention is paid to what Web sites and technology the Chinese government restricts, those kinds of action have become much more precise — instead of blocking entire sites like Blogger, the government now is more likely to block specific blogs within that network. And there’s lots of high-level conversation and tech happening in the channels that do exist. Lots of companies in China have money are are looking to invest overseas: you may not plan to do business in China, but maybe China will come to you. Also, Beijing is NOT Shanghai. They are as different as Los Angeles and New York City. As to the recession: China will feel the economic slowdown like everyone else, but despite the bottom falling out of exports, the country is still chugging along. The country has a lot of headroom to turn spending inside the country and not relying to much on exports. Lu made the point that the panel coincided with James Powderly’s keynote and she took him to task for his “Stunt.” She said people who do business in China don’t necessarily condone what the government does, but that Powderly got attention for something that probably got many other people arrested for his actions. Her remarks drew applause.

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Panel: Quitter: How to Leave Your Perfectly Good Job

Date/Time: 2 p.m. Monday

Panelists: Bryan Mason (Small Batch Inc.), Ryan Freitas (Plinky), Christopher Sacca (Lowercase Capital), Laura Mayes (Kirtsy)

The gist: How do you know when it’s time to quit your job and venture out to start your own business?

Quotes: On why you should finish strong in your current job: “People only remember the last thing you did there.” — Mason

“There’s such a price for inaction.” — Sacca

Takeaways: — Take care of housekeeping before you quit. First, don’t forget to actually resign. “It’s amazing how often this doesn’t happen,” Mason says.

Get a copy of all your agreements. “You might have more than you know you have,” Mason says. These include invention assignment agreemnts (do you own the things you’ve been making?), noncompete and confidentiality agreements.

— Don’t burn bridges. You want to maintain the relationships you established at your job, Freitas says.

— Other people don’t get to decide what makes you happy. Even if everyone tells you should love your job and doesn’t understand why you’d want to leave, it’s still up to you to figure out, Sacca says.

— Think about your backup plans, such as how much you have in savings, Freitas says.

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Sunday night parties: Tweetin', connectin', breakdancin' and lovin''

Remember how badly I partied Saturday night? Inexcusable. I was decidedly D-List. Sunday, I tried to party like it was all A-list up in here. (Which it’s not. A-List is actually over there.)

For a half hour before party time, I watched Gary Vee blow people away with his tornado answers on a panel that ran very, very long. Addie Broyles and I hoofed it over to Ballet Austin for the Statesman Texas Social Media Awards.

Now, can I park here for a minute? For a little while, I’ve been a bit reluctant to blog about the TSMA’s (TSMAckies, which have recently lost the apostrophe but retained the silent T). I was a judge, it was a Statesman thing and I thought it might be a little weird to write about it in a news capacity.

Some of that trepidation vanished last night when I witnessed the totality of what had been pulled together. Two dozen amazing people were being honored not only for being good connectors and social networkers, but for making a real-world impact in their communities and being pretty great people.

There was a lengthy drinks-‘n-grub gathering (I stuck mostly to Sweet Leaf Tea) where it was impossible not to have a great conversation with someone. Then we gathered in the theater to give out the awards. The winners were gracious, host Robert Quigley kept things moving and overall winner Michelle Greer gave a speech that had me edging toward the dark part of the stage lest anyone notice I was fighting back tears. The gist was that the people in the room need to DO. Not talk. Act. And get the people in their circles to act and make some sense out of the multiple messes we are in. It was inspiring. And that was perhaps my understatement of the fest.

Photo by Rodolfo Gonzalez, AMERICAN-STATESMAN

I got to meet Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell for the first time, as well as Houston Chronicle tech writer Dwight Silverman and many locals I’ve only known on Twitter of Facebook until now.

I could downplay it and pretend it wasn’t a special, huge moment for us and for Austin’s social media scene, but that’s now what my overfull heart is saying.

Brave new Twitter-based headwear via CheapTweet.

After it was over, many were streaming out of the Statesman event headed to Aces Lounge for the Austin Tweetup, an unofficial event that was great for me because I didn’t eat at the Statesman shindig and was famished for chicken wings and beer.

I had two wings and one beer. It was enough.

Although the venue didn’t fill up the way the recent Austin Twestival did, it was still a good time with good music, lots of prize giveaways (a new friend won a gaming keyboard. She does not game. And she won an iPod Shuffle earlier in the day. We wanted to take her to Vegas.).

From there people split off to either the Buffalo Billiards shindig sponsored by IBM or the giant Facebook party at Pangaea.

After some wrangling at the door (“DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM!? No? Oh. OK. Cool. I’m not that big a deal, really.”), I wandered upstairs with my laptop bag and jacket into the thick of young, hip, grooving people with post-Nordstrom clothes and an iPhone in every hand.

The music was LOUD and THUMPING and INSANELY INSISTENT. I found a wall outlet and camped out on the sidelines as dancers from Austin’s B-Boy City did their breakdancing, surrounded by a sea of tech peeps. Instead of grooving myself, I opened my laptop and took notes for a future Facebook story. I wrote about how everyone was taking pictures or video-capturing or Tweeting the moment for later instead of actually living the moment. Yet I wrote it two degrees out, even more removed than those who barely moved, lest their cell phone camera images blur.

I stayed as long as I could, letting it play around in my head that the song playing at the Facebook party was, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.” I thought about Facebook’s mushrooming global population, probably past 180 million by now. I thought the song sounded about right.

Breakdancing at the Facebook party

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Monday morning panels

The Power of Small

Panelists: Myles Kleeger (Managing Director KTG Buzz, The Kaplan Thaler Group)

Date/Time: 10 a.m. Monday

The gist: “Smallness” is an advantage for start-ups over the Big Boys. There’s room for trial-and-error and creative exploration in terms of their product and marketing campaign. “Use your smallness to your advantage,” said Kleeger.

Have breaks and perks for employees (Monday breakfast, birthday parties, family-friendly shifts); keep in touch with customers (give them an opportunity to air complaints with blogs, wikis, forums ); focus on small insights to come up with creative solutions.

Quotes: “A great idea is nothing if it isn’t followed with great execution” - Myles Kleeger

Takeaways: Make small talk with industry folk; go the extra inch for your business (take on an extra assignment); say “thank you” (people notice these things); be open to changing — “What am I doing wrong? What can I fix?”; make positive impressions on clients; become a mini-tasker (break down long-term goals into short-term steps).

— Geoff West

More panels

In “Entrepreneurship in the Belly of the Beast,” panelists talked about ways to operate like an entrepreneur when you work at a big corporation. Key points included finding people to protect your efforts and supporters who have already succeeded at innovation. More advice: Work under the radar if you can. Emphasize that your project is a way to develop talent.

A little visual thinking on the part of government could enhance our understanding of things like the economic stimulus package, according to Dan Roam of Digital Roam Inc., a panelist on “Shift Happens: Moving From Words to Pictures.” With a president who likes to draw (Roam showed slides of Obama’s doodles and of the president drawing a chart on a chalkboard), Roam is surprised that we aren’t seeing visual tools used more to communicate.

“Beyond Aggregation — Finding the Web’s Best Content” talked about advanced ways to find the best content online, but even with tools like Google Reader and customized RSS feeds, the basis for finding good content still comes down to trusting the person who supplies it or recommends it. “

— Sarah Lindner

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SXSW Panel: Kick Ass or Suck - Escaping Internet Mediocrity

Panel title: Kick Ass or Suck - Escaping Internet Mediocrity

Date and time: Monday at 5 p.m.

Panelists: Lance Loveday, CEO of Closed Loop Marketing

The gist: The quickest way to have a crappy Web site? Let people with little understanding of Web development make big decisions; or spend too much time on features and projects that produce little benefit.

Lovejoy returned to an X-Y graph that measured effort vs. results and said all projects should be judged on that scale while they’re being conceived so decision makers have realistic expectations. That lets them understand a project better and focus energy on the most important parts of a Web site or digital campaign.

Quotes: “Don’t just try to meet expectations and do ‘good enough.’ Good enough is like getting a C grade.” — Lance Lovejoy

Takeaways: If digital novices expect magic from their online departments, set up clear metrics so they can (eventually) see that their ideas may be flawed. And have people from outside online involved in some way so designers aren’t working in an “echo chamber” that can result in missing obvious details and goals.

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March 15, 2009

Game design competitions

Panel title: Game Design Competition / Casual Games Date/Time: 3:30 Sunday Panelists: Kain Shin, moderator (IGDA); Morgan Romine (Ubisoft); Harvey Smith (Arkane Studios); James Portnow (CEO, Divide by Zero Games)

Panel title: Game Design Competition / AAA Date/Time: 5:00 Sunday Panelists: Shin; Colantonio; Chris Chala (VP Business Development, Foundation 9 Entertainment; Souris Hong-Porretta (VP of Interactive Media, Entertainment Media Ventures)

The gist: Gwendolyn Murray (Casual Games) and Seth Smith (AAA) were the two winners at today’s Game Design Competitions. Murray won for “Sloppy Ice”. Smith won for “Project Z.E.U.S”.

Both winners, along with three other finalists in each competition, pitched their game to a panel of industry experts in five-minute PowerPoint presentations followed by a Q&A with panelists. The idea was to emulate an actual pitch to a publisher. Following the presentations, the moderator (Shin) asked the audience to applaud their favorite.

Murray and Smith won an Xbox 360 Elite: Limited Edition Resident Evil 5 System Bundle. All eight finalists won a trophy.

Murry and Smith, both students of Savannah School of Art and Design, say their games originated as class projects.

Takeaways: What publishers ask themselves when considering a game: how innovative is the concept? How aesthetically pleasing? Will it attract a non-gaming public? How advanced is the interface? Is it easy to learn but difficult to master?

Other finalists in the Casual Game category were: Jerry Paffendorf (Blorst); Anders Howard (FLOAT); and Deborah Colon (Full Moon Manor). Finalists in the AAA category were: Kristin Boyett (Cover Up); Evonne Heyning(ManorMeta); and Jill Taffet (Ringmaster).

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SXSW Panel: What Do I Do With Myself, Now that the Economy Has Collapsed?

Panel title: What Do I Do With Myself, Now that the Economy Has Collapsed?

Date and time: Sunday at 3:30 p.m.

Panelists: Andy Baio, Writer/Coder for Waxy.org; Lane Becker, Pres. of Get Satisfaction Inc.; Ben Brown, founder XOXCO; Jane Mount, 20x200; Michael Sippey, VP Prod. for Six Apart Ltd.

The gist: Veterans all of the ‘99-2000 dotcom bust, the panelists shared their stories of scraping by and later succeeding in the tech world. One of the most important lessons offered was the importance of staying in contact with colleagues and friends and following interests as a way to find new opportunities.

Quotes: “Now is a much better time than when we were at the top of the bubble. I hate bubbles. Where we are now gives you the chance to think and explore, but in 1999 everyone was in a constant hurry, working all the time to take your company public. But that’s not why you came into it in the first place. Now, you work on the company you want… then you try to sell it to Yahoo or CNet.” — Lane Becker

Takeaways: Down times are times to try new things. Even if it means working as a waitress or taking a straight 9-5 job as a primary income, use free time to dabble in other projects you find interesting and explore new skills and hobbies. Combined, those efforts usually lead to new and exciting careers. Becker admitted that might sound a little “too California,” but he and the other panelists have found it to be true multiple times.

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AT&T's network not up to the task at SXSW?

UPDATE: Here’s a response from AT&T spokesman Mike Barger.

“To accommodate unprecedented demand for mobile data and voice applications at SXSW, we are actively working this afternoon to add capacity to our cell sites serving downtown Austin. These efforts are ongoing, but we anticipate that customers should see improved network performance this evening and for the remainder of the event.

“We will continue to monitor network performance throughout the event, and will do everything possible to maximize network performance throughout. We apologize to customers who were inconvenienced during this surge in local network demand.”

AT&T officials now say the network is working as it should. The company doubled the network capacity in the downtown area. Those in the know said no one anticipated so many people to show up with iPhones, an AT&T-exclusive product, and that’s what overwhelmed the network.

More than a few iPhone users are venting their frustration on the Web about the AT&T network here in Austin.

According to a number of tech sites and twitter feeds, SXSW attendees with iPhones have been unable to make calls and send text messages anywhere near the Austin Convention Center. Data services have suffered as well, although users can still get the Web via Wi-Fi. Here’s what CNET has to say about the situation:

But AT&T’s network has not been nearly as impressive, and that’s a shame. I suppose there’s a reason, but it would seem logical that the company could have put in the effort to ensure that the thousands and thousands of people at SXSW—which may constitute the highest concentration of iPhone users anywhere on Earth—could get good cell service. Alas, that wasn’t the case.

Check out the frustration on Twitter here.

Tell us - are you experiencing iPhone difficulties at SXSW?

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Panel: Video Blogging: Turning Wine into Gold

Date/Time: 5 p.m., Sunday

Panelists: Gary Vaynerchuk (host/founder, Wine Library TV), Susanna Hamner (writer/reporter, Business 2.0 Media Inc.)

The gist: SXSW 2008 was big for Gary Vaynerchuk, the host of Wine Library TV. Keynote speaker Kathy Sierra called him up on stage to give his love-yourself-and-hustle- and-the-money-will-follow talk, which to his followers (self-proclaimed Vayniacs) is what he’s been preaching for years. A few months later, he launched his first book and continued speaking around the country and on national tv programs.

His blog on wine (and the Jets and whatever else is on his mind), which garners more than 80,000 views day, and his two-minute videos on GaryVaynerchuk.com have continued to grow his popularity. But the message has stayed the same.

The panel, held in a mostly full ballroom, was more of a Q&A, with members of the audience asking questions from the personal (How do you handle death threats?) to the professional (How can I work with you?). He talked about a new book, this one will be about building brands and businesses, and announced that he and his brother AJ are launching a media company in June.

Quotes: On technology: “People who come up with this stuff, it blows my face off.”
“Your energy is contagious; I’m getting a rash” (from a member of the audience during Q&A)
“Do what you want to because you can monetize that (stuff).”
“You don’t have a (expletive) shortcoming; you have you.”
“If you live for the weekend and your vacations, your (stuff) is broken.”
“You can’t get anything until you take it…Waiting for something to happen makes me throw up in my mouth a little.” — Gary Vaynerchuk

Takeaways: You can’t get away with being a jerk, or else your intern will film you and put it up on YouTube. Don’t cry about what you do wrong. Delegate everything, except what you love. Cut out the people in your world who say no.

Hustle. Putting out your content is just the beginning of your day (What you do right there when you’re rubbing the cold out of your eyes, he says.)

Businesses are scared to monetize: There are lots of ways to monetize, not just by selling ads on your site. Sometimes you have to make tough decisions (he gave the example of selling an ad that covers your homepage).

Reactionary business wins: See something, then do it. See the market and execute against that. Don’t worry about what will happen in 24 months.

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Keynote interview: Nate Silver

Date/Time: 2 p.m. Sunday

Panelists: Stephen Baker of BusinessWeek interviewed Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com.

The gist: Baker talked with SIlver about the statistical analysis that brought him so much attention during the 2008 presidential election, as well as some other topics.

— How long will President Obama’s grace period be? Silver said that while there’s fear about the economy, Obama still has relatively high approval ratings. He predicted that after Obama has spent about 18 months in office, “People will assign him as much blame as they assign Bush,” he said. One factor working in Obama’s favor might be that the public expects a long recession, making it easier for Obama to beat expectations on when a recovery will begin. On the other hand, Obama could be hurt by the fact that employment is a lagging indicator: Even when the gross domestic product begins to recover, jobs might lag behind.

— He said a lot of what was called “momentum” during the campaign was just a function of the order in which states had their primaries.

— But it wasn’t all politics. Silver talked about his Oscar predictions this year — he missed two categories: Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress. He says Kate Winslet mucked up his modeling on best supporting actress. In earlier awards such as the Golden Globes, she won in the supporting category for “The Reader,” but was nominated in the lead category for the Oscars. With Winslet winning the other supporting awards, he couldn’t get enough data on the rest of the Oscar nominees to see how they would fare on Oscar night.

Quotes: All from Silver:

On why he started the site: “I was using it as a way to procrastinate.”

On election coverage: “Polls were too much a part of the narrative.”

“We shouldn’t lump any one racial group of voters together. People are too quick to assume something is about race when in fact it isn’t.”

“I think oftentimes voters don’t get enough credit for their level of sophistication.”

“A lot of what I was doing was urging patience.”

Takeaways: Silver talking to forecasters in various fields (including fashion) for a book he’s writing on forecasting and prediction.

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Old-school gaming

Remember “Pong”? How about “Duck Hunt”? You can’t go home again, but you sure can play your unreliable Nintendo Entertainment System in your basement again. At least that’s what Mountain Dew hopes.

One of the most popular exhibits at Screenburn Arcade has to be Mountain Dew’s games-through-time.

Four eras are revisited:

— the early-to-mid-‘80’s (Nintendo, Atari, Super Mario Brothers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tecmo Bowl)

— Late ’80s-to-early 90s (Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, NBA Jams, Sonic the Hedgehog)

— Late ’90s-to-early 2000s (Playstation, Xbox, Golden Eye, Star Wars Battlefront); as well as modern times (Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii).

One guy sat at a Super Nintendo for 45 minutes playing “Mario Kart” — a game he beat years ago.

Scott Holmes, an account supervisor for GMR marketing, took months collecting the gear. He went to thrift stores, borrowed games from friends and went on eBay.

People have the same response, he said: “Oh man, I played that with my brother [when I was a kid],” or “I feel like I came into my basement,” they say, according to Holmes.

Everything’s period-appropriate (so there’s no playing Atari on a HD flat screen). For decor, there’s a “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” movie poster, a 1997 NCAA Final Four jersey, dartboards and more.

“I’m not really into these (newer games); they’re too hard” says Tom Kita, a gamer by the Playstation and XBOX area. He prefers the older consoles: “I like simple games.”

They’re also offering free drinks — fuel for daylong gaming.

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Panel: Your Personal Blog Is Dead

Panel title: Your Personal Blog is Dead

Date and time: Sunday, March 15, 2009 at 3:30 p.m.

Panelists: Marlynn Schotland, CEO of Mamapreneurs, and Alain Schotland, creative services supervisor for Standard Insurance Company.

The gist: Do you Twitter, Flickr, or Facebook? Then you could be guilty of blogicide. Users of those and other social networking applications are accused of helping to kill off the personal blog. And that may not be so bad. In this interactive session, we’ll present the evidence. You be the jury.

Quotes: “How much does Twitter rob society of the full blog?” - Marlynn.

Takeaways: We started out hearing a slew of statistics about how Facebook and Twitter are causing people to blog less. Marlynn said she keeps eight blogs (eight!) including three that were personal blogs (or was it four?). The audience seemed defensive of Twitter, with many saying they could use Twitter to drive more traffic to their site. Others said they use Twitter for blog ideas and have even started blogging more since getting a Twitter account, though others said they blog less and wonder of it’s overkill to blog about something after Tweeting. Guess the jury’s still out on this one.

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Screenburn update

Lots of kids (and trailing parents) out here for the last day of Screenburn Arcade ( through 6 p.m.). If you haven’t been out yet, try it out. Head-to-head game competitions run throughout the day with a Red Bull-hyper MC keeping the tension high with his nonstop scoring updates over the PA. Or check out the vintage video-game exhibit sponsored by Mountain Dew where visitors get treated to comfy couches, free cola and old-school console gaming — Nintendo, Sega Genesis, etc.

Today’s highlights include the Game Design Competition / AAA (http://tinyurl.com/dfwuxg) at 5 p.m. Winners will be featured in a conversation with an industry professional at Studio SX on Monday.

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Panel: Ditch the Valley, Run for the Hills

Date/Time: 10 a.m., Sunday

Panelists: John Erik Metcalf (Co-founder, Conjunctured, Austin), Penelope Trunk, (CEO, Brazen Careerist, Madison, Wisc.), Mike Maples, (Hyper9, Austin), Kaiser Kuo (Consultant Intl Business, Youku.com, Beijing), Robert Scoble, (Managing director, Fast Company TV, Silicon Valley).

The gist:Let’s immediately dispense with the obvious: Silicon Valley remains the capitol of tech startup activity. Places that have a pool of expertise, have an attitude that embraces (or at least accepts) failure and have local investment money will foster entrepreneurs. Others have it, including Austin, but no region has more than the Valley.

But the usual structures for startup investment are changing. And for entrepreneurs who care as much about their lives as their companies, the resources to start a successful company do exist. You just might have to adjust your outlook.

Quotes: “Think of me as Yoda.” — Maples, on being the panel’s elder statesman. “I’m now embracing my inner slacker.” — Kuo, on what he’s been up to lately. “All money is local, even on the venture capital level.” — Trunk, on how investors want their companies nearby. “The world is not flat. It’s really spiky.” — Kuo, on how some areas attract more entrepreneurial activity than others. “There’s tremendous opportunity, but it’s not the white guy” getting it. — Kuo, on how Chinese startups are getting the best of their home market. “At the end, it’s still a people business … a relationship business.” — Scoble, on why technology hasn’t helped break the close proximity of entrepreneurs and their investors.

Takeaways: Silicon Valley, Austin, Boston, Beijing - some places have the expertise, money and attitude to spawn tech startups (some than others, too). But how much should an entrepreneur let their business needs dictate their life? For some, the geek culture and buzz of the Valley has no substitute. Others dig Austin and build their business here. Still others want to stay around friends and family - and in a place not known as a high-tech locus.

Regardless, the success of your company will rely on how well you can exploit the local resources. Can you get local money so you’re not pressured to move? Can you find the workers and expertise to help your company expand? Will you be able to reach your customers? How big does your company need to be?

The Valley is not going to come to you - but then maybe you prefer it that way.

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SXSW Panel: Can Social Media End Racism?

Date/Time: Sunday, 11:30 a.m.

Panelists: Kety Esquivel, New Media Mgr. for NCLR; Jay Smooth, creator of Ill Doctrine; Phil Yu, creator of Angry Asian Man; Latoya Peterson, Editrix at Racialicious.com

The gist: Social media on its own won’t wipe out racism, but is a powerful tool that can bring people together to combat stereotypes, spread correct information and advance the efforts of all minority groups.

“If (social media) was the magic button that can instantly correct thousands of years of racism, we would’ve pushed it a long time ago,” said Smooth, who is also a radio DJ.

The specter of racism is one of the main reasons bloggers and Web admins need to stay vigilant about policing comments and directions of discussion. Yu doesn’t allow comments on his blog and Esquivel said NCLR doesn’t either, though other blogs she’s worked with have received death threats that have been prosecuted by the FBI.

Quotes: When panelists were discussing the personal incident of online racism that most stuck out in their heads, Smooth let fly this bon mot; “Each racist comment is a snowflake that is unique and special in its own way. And every YouTube comments section is a blizzard.”

Takeaways: There are three effective ways to reduce or remove racism online:

Spread knowledge, so you invite people into a discussion and they can carry that knowledge into the physical world and elsewhere on the blogosphere.
Provide a refuge, so visitors feel comfortable participating in a discussion without fear of racial or gender intimidation and reprisal.
Mobilize your base, so when real-world incidents such as the Jena 6 controversy flare up, users can take action, spread dialogue and do whatever possible to advance the discussion of racism in a constructive way.

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Panel: No Budget to Low Budget

Date/Time: 10 a.m. Sunday.

Panelists: Meghan Scibona (Producer/Director, “Small Media Extra Large)”, Kevin Sullivan (Producer, Asia Minor Productions), Felicia Day (Creator, “The Guild,” actress, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”), Michael Nigro (Writer/Director, “Partially Submerged”), Jason Nunes (Writer, “Small Media Extra Large”)

The gist: Most of the panelists have day jobs in film, but followed their passions to try to create original content for the Web. All agreed that good, well-produced content will find its audience if you do a good job elevating the work about the din of what’s out there. In Day’s case, she shot her Web series “The Guild” in her house on practically no budget, but built an audience, got donation and ended up funded by Microsoft to have her second season shown on the Xbox Live Network. On low-budget filmmaking, simple, effective methods are where you should spend your money, not on cranes and dollies. The panelist experience run the gamut and many of them have experience with much larger budgets, but the consensus was that it pays to be smart about what you really need and to only use the tools you really need (camera-steadying sticks, for instance, instead of using handheld — a cheap way to make great-looking video).

Panelists say the conversation nature of video on the Web and a great bonus. You get instant feedback and can build an audience using grassroots methods.

Quotes: “There’s no set way to get there right now.” — Sullivan “Somebody donated $100 and I said, ‘Are you sure?’ ” — Day on the power of creating a product people like and are willing to support through donations. “Kill the auteur. It’s old. Nobody cares anymore.” — Day. “Great acting and a great story doesn’t hurt either.” — Nunes. “Don’t be a douchebag producer.” — Day

Takeaways: When it comes to attaining a budget, it’s networking and finding the best ways to use the money you do have. Get good sound and lighting — stand out from the crowd of bad videos on YouTube. One of the best things you can spend money on is food for a good crew. Surround yourself with valuable, passionate people and remain loyal to them. You can make compromises along the way, but make sure you start with the story you want to tell. Don’t wait for permission to start your project from someone who has money. Retain a balance of control and creativity.

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I am not Michael Barnes (Party Fail)

I don’t know how he does it. Michael Barnes, on a normal week, goes to so many parties and does such a fine job documenting the vibe and who’s there (photos, even!) that at the end of an exhausting South by Southwest Interactive Saturday, I realized that I had failed in my mission.

This is the document of that failure.

Things started promising enough. After a late Comedy On the Web and TV panel, I hit an upstairs party at Fogo De Chao. The weather had cleared up a bit and there was no rain. I gobbled on pork meats and talked to Michael Cote, one of our Texas Social Media Awards winners for the first time. Then things went south. I drank an open-bar sugary margarita-like confection (I’m blanking on the name). It made my hands sticky and had a layer of sweet at the bottom. I went back for a second after the open bar and it was $9. That … sort of … balances out, right?

By the time I left, I was unexpectedly sloshed. The meat did not absorb the drinks and I ended up sweaty and stomach-achey, sitting on the floor of the Convention Center trying to catch my breath.

Great start, right?

Next, I went to the big Digg Shindig at Stubb’s, but got there late and couldn’t seem to find anyone from the company. I stood in the back and watched part of an on-stage presentation from Scam School, but found myself distracted by a dinner appointment I had with some Google employees. I didn’t take pictures and left within minutes.

No cabs in sight, I walked the hills from Stubb’s all the way to Gumbo’s on Colorado St. I’ll write about the Google dinner in another entry — it was long and much was learned — but I’ll just say that my hike was not helped by the idea that people from the Bay Area came to Austin to dine on seafood/Cajun. That is exactly the kind of outside-the-box thinking that has made them a success, I have to assume.

After the dinner, I made a pitstop at the Piryx party at Speakeasy. I arrived so late that they didn’t want to let me in at the door without a cover charge. I sneaky-sneaky went to “Look for my friend” and never came back. Upstairs, Piryx CEO Tom Serres was holding court at what looked to be a very wild party. So wild that Obama Girl Amber Ettinger was standing next to him. Serres introduced me to her.

Perhaps she is a much better actress than I would have given her credit for, but she absolutely did not remember me. Or, she was so polite she didn’t mention it. She seemed very happy to meet me for the first time and, in my weakened state, I did not make an effort to dredge up old conflict.

Next, it was time to go to the big Frog Design party at the Mexican-American Cultural Center. It was only 10:30 p.m.! Not too late! Come on, Frog Design! Don’t let me down. I’ve been looking forward to this party all year!

It was too late. When I arrived, droves of people were streaming out. The music was over, the burlesque was long done, and cabs were circling like vultures. I had struck out again.

Hoping to save my night, I made one last-ditch effort to party. I went to a karaoke party at Scoot Inn. It was crowded and I couldn’t find anyone I knew until I wandered all the way to the back and found a person to chat with for about a half hour about what’s going at the Statesman, what the festival’s been like and how things have changed in Austin.

It wasn’t hard-core partying, but by this point, my head was pounding, my legs were tired and I felt like I’d missed so much. It was good to just talk with a friendly person and save my energy for the rest of the fest.

I think Michael would have had much better timing and taken photos. Sorry, everybody. I’ll try to party better tonight.

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Core Conversation: Sex, Violence and Video Games: Where's It All Going

Date/Time: 5 p.m. Saturday

Panelists: John Davison (Co-Founder, What They Like)

The gist: Say your son is at a friend’s house. What worries you most? That he’ll a) drink beer, b) get high, c) look at pornography d) play “Grand Theft Auto IV.” That was a question posed to parents in a poll following the release last year of “GTA’s IV”, the video game many feel is the poster boy of out-of-control sex and violence in games—and also perhaps an unfair whipping boy. The winner? Beer. But “GTA” was high on the list. So high the fodder sparked one of the best conversations at SXSW so far.

Other issues: Games with false representations of and subtle violence against women (how many feature lwomen with perfect figures and smooth skin? Then again, they’re in movies too); motion-sensitive controllers that re-create your violent movements on screen; and a disproportionate amount of criticism directed at a game’s sexual content rather than its gratuitous violence.

The good news is that “games-of-consequence” are already on the market, and more are coming. This is where characters kill targeted bad guys and random, overly aggressive play hurts your character (shoot civilians in “GTA” and the cops show up). Others, like the popular action role-playing game “Fallout 3,” have graphics so life-like that natural morality creeps in). Games can teach too: One person shared the story of an autistic child who taught himself how to read and write by playing “World of Warcraft.”

Quotes: “Naming 10 movies you wouldn’t want your kids to see is easier than naming ten video games” - John Davison

Takeaways: The discussion continues, but the hope is that as technology and the taste of consumers evolves, so too will games—relying less on visceral charges, and more on emotional connections.

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Panel: What Your Startup Can Learn from Barack Obama and Howard Dean

Date/Time: 11:30 a.m. Saturday

Panelists: Jake Brewer (Internet Director, Energy Action Coalition); Scott Goodstein (CEO, Revolution Messaging LLC); Mary Katharine Ham (Staff Writer, Weekly Standard); Clay Johnson (Director of Sunlight Labs, Sunlight Foundation); Michael Bassik (Chief Digital Officer, Air America Media)

The gist: A panel of new media journalists, consultants, and strategists explained how Obama and Dean’s social media campaign strategies serve as a tutorial for start-ups.

How did a presidential candidate (Obama) build the “largest internationally recognizable brand in history” (Bassik)? By marketing locally. Campaign text messages were city-specific. So was his MySpace. 90 percent of his banner ads targeted IP addresses that then adjusted the material accordingly (“localized Web site content strategy”). For instance, visitors to the homepage of BarackObama.com in Ohio had a different experience than those in New York.

Other lessons: Evolve your brand; don’t be afraid to experiment with your image; allow and encourage user-generated content of your product (The Obama campaign hosting homemade videos from supporters on its Website is one example); listen to consumers — don’t ignore grievances.

Quotes: “Every single person is your best evangelist” -Michael Bassik

Takeaways: Personalize the message to the locale — tailor your social media marketing efforts at specific cities, towns, neighborhoods and homes.

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March 14, 2009

SXSW: Core Conversation: The Organic Audience: Growing a Fanbase by Communicating

Date/Time: Saturday, 5 p.m.

Panelist: Victor Agreda Jr., Programming Mgr. for Weblogs at AOL

The gist: Dealing with trolls and negative comments in an even-handed, positive way and encouraging thoughtful posters is the best way to foster an audience for any blogs.

Agreda knows dozens of posters on AOL’s various blogs by name and has a very personal relationship with them, even if he’s never met them in person. Turning visitors into fans is a long-term process but it makes them evangelical in their appreciation of the blog and very likely to spread the word.

Quotes: “Even lots of the biggies in the blog world are in there everyday commenting back and forth with their users because they care and they realize that that close interaction is valuable to know their users. It also lets them deal fairly with the negative stuff, which is often just a knee-jerk reaction anyway.” — Victor Agreda Jr.

Takeaways: Being engaging and involved with users is more powerful than churning out piles of content when it comes to cultivating and maintaining a dedicated blog audience.

And hard as it maybe to regulate, a policy that deletes and restricts as few scofflaw users as possible is best because it makes the blog seem like an open, free-flowing community where people can express their opinions without fear of punishment.

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SXSW: Panel: Feed Me: Bite Size Info for a Hungry Internet

Date/Time: Saturday, 3:30 p.m.

Panelists: Ari Steinberg, Engineering Mgr. for Facebook Inc.; Eric Eldon, Editor of VentureBeat; Dare Obasanjo, Program Mgr. at Microsoft; David Sacks, CEO of Yammer; Paul Buchheit, founder of FriendFeed

The gist: The constant content “feed” format of Twitter (which was conspicuously absent from the panel) has transformed the way users consume most social media products, so much so that Facebook’s recent overhaul has turned it into a “Twitter clone,” as Sacks noted.

Facebook’s Steinberg said the acceptance of feed-style content has succeeded because it’s intuitive and easy to comment on, add to and spread updates and offerings from friends. Obasanjo said changing to more of a feed system for Hotmail has created problems for its users, who tend to be older and less savvy and don’t understand why they’re seeing other people’s content and worry that all of their online material may be on public display.

Sacks said the evolution of feed and its popularity is turning it into “email 2.0” since it’s becoming an almost instant way to spread information and the short format makes it easier to consume.

The entire panel pretty much agreed that Buchheit’s company, which combines feeds from multiple networks into one place for a user, is pointing feed in its eventual direction where, like email and instant messaging, feeds won’t be specific or proprietary.

Quotes: “We are in the process of creating email 2.0 with different filters on an inbox to tailor what you’re seeing right away. If we’re creating a new form of social messaging there eventually develops a winner-take-all situation. Within a year pretty much everyone who’s on a computer is going to have a Facebook account, so it’s not hard to see how this is going to play out.”

Takeaways: Feed is quickly overtaking profile pages and email as the most desirable way to relay information electronically and companies all over the digital landscape are retooling themselves to offer some sort of feed feature. self-contained corporate feed systems are also overtaking company email as the best way to communicate company information.

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HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility!

Date/Time: 3:30 p.m. Saturday

Panelists: John Gruber (DaringFireball.net) and Merlin Mann (43Folders.com)

The gist: Blogging — you’re doing it wrong. The wry and entertaining Gruber and Mann offered some ideas on what doing it right means.

Quotes: “Getting an account on Twitter does not make you Zappos.” — Mann

“Social media is not what you have to say. It’s your tolerance for what people have to say about you.” — Mann

Takeaways: — Think about how to become a go-to person on your topic.

— Set an out-of-reach goal, like becoming better than 80 percent of the people writing on your topic or making your writing New Yorker quality. You might not meet the goal, but even aiming for it will improve your work.

— Whom do you want to delight with your writing? Think about someone you respect or whose work you enjoy and aim to write things that person would love. This makes your writing more meaningful than if you’re just thinking about reaching a big audience or having a certain number of posts per day.

— Don’t do things with your blog that seem profitable but might mess up the reasons that people like you. Think less about short-term gains and more about the long-term goal of showing that you are awesome at what you do.

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Panel: Designing the Future of The New York Times

Date/Time: 5 p.m. Saturday

Panelists: Tom Bodkin and Khoi Vinh (The New York Times)

The gist: Bodwin and Vinh talked about some of the philosophies behind their work at the Times, including:

— The belief that there will be thousands of micropublishers and a handful of global news platforms.

— That to be one of these global platforms, the Times has to reconsider all the traditional approaches to journalism and try new approaches.

— The belief that content should be agnostic and go where customers want it to go, from the printed page to iPhones.

— To deliver news in as readable and usable form as possible.

— To deliver news with elegance in design and minimal ornamentation.

Quotes: “It makes me crazy.’— Bodwin, about the amount of content on the Times home page

Takeaways: Bodwin and Vinh discussed where Web design might be headed. Bodwin pointed out that news sites often look like the story-packed front pages of 19th century newspapers and wondered if they, like the printed product, might become more streamlined over time. Vinh was more of the belief that the crowded pages are an inherent part of monetizing the content that news sites give away.

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Core Conversation: Blog Highways: Travel Blogging for the Wanderer

Date/Time: 3:30 p.m. Saturday

Panelists: Pam Mandel (Writer, Nerd’s Eye View); Sheila Scarborough (Blogger, BootsnAll Travel Network)

The gist: Travel blog guru Pam Mandel shared her starter guide, which was echoed by co-panelist Sheila Scarborough. Among the dos and don’ts:

— Use details. Be as specific as possible in your writing (for example, instead of “T-shirt”; say “a sweat-stained, light blue T-shirt”)

— Make your blog easy to read. Skip the weird colors and small type. “If I can’t read your blog, I’m gonna click away.” (Mandel).

— Don’t list your itinerary. Too easy. Capture your readers with the story, not your schedule.

— Tell us who you are. What’s your age, gender, cultural background? Saying so builds credibility. Everybody has biases and preconceived notions. So, what are yours?

— Take pictures. People love them — but don’t go overboard. (You’re still a writer, after all).

— Avoid MySpace or LiveJournal as your blog host. They rarely show on Google searches. She recommended Blogger, Wordpress and Typepad.

— Leave the diary at home. Focus on the location — not your insecurities or romantic troubles.

Quotes: On what not to say: “We’re better; they suck” — Pam Mandel

Takeaways: Be aware of your surroundings; Look for opportunities to blog. Write with as much detail as possible. And network! Leave comments on other blogs; go to forums; get a Twitter account. “I can’t spread my arms wide enough to express how important this is” (Mandel).

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Panel: Friendship is Dead

Date/Time: 6:30 p.m., Saturday

Panelists: Russ Unger (Director of Experience Planning, Draftfcb), David Armano (VP Experience Design, Critical Mass)

The gist: Technology is changing the way we define friendships. With Facebook friends, Twitter followers and Linked In connections, we are constantly being asked to categorize our friends, which we already do in our day-to-day lives, just not as formally. The panel quickly turned into a discussion, with lots of questions and comments from the packed room in the Hilton. One person in the audience said it would disastrous if those categorizations (inner circle, business acquaintances, family, BFFs) became public, while others pointed out that it’s difficult to categorize many people because they fall into several categories.

A lot of real world relationships don’t translate into your online world, another member of the crowd said. At Christmas, you don’t get cards and updates mailed to the mailbox nailed to your house from your 550 Facebook friends.

Networks like Twitter, where you haven’t met many of the people you follow and who follow you, become platforms to make really good online friends because they are hearing the details of your life. You don’t call your childhood friend to tell her you tried that great new restaurant downtown.

Takeaways: Create categories for your friends to keep them organized. Use different networks for different purposes if you feel the need to separate personal and professional. Use the groups option in Facebook to keep track of relationships. Set business rules about your relationships online so you don’t end up embarrassing yourself with too much information.

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Panel: Comedy on Television and the Web

Date/Time: 5 p.m. Saturday.

Panelists: Meredith Scardino (Writer, “The Colbert Report”), Keith Richman (CEO, Break Media), Ricky Van Veen (Co-Founder/Editor-in-Chief, CollegeHumor.com), Avner Ronen (CEO, BOXEE), B.J. Novak (Actor, writer, producer, “The Office”)

The gist: Though the panel was surprisingly serious and not laugh-out-loud funny, the “Comedy on Television and the Web” panel (known in our office as “The B.J. Novak Panel”) covered a lot of ground, including content distribution, quality of Web shows, how future comedy stars will rise up and whether social networks like Twitter might bring back appointment-viewing with live commenting. Though few definitive answers were presented (Hollywood is apprehensive; comedians are using the Web to get on TV then get back online, like Lonely Island), there was agreement that there’s a lot of good creative experimentation going on and that the best content will reach an audience. Sardino of “The Colbert Report” likened YouTube-style comedy viewing to sharing her old VHS tapes of her favorite stuff with friends. Novak said, “Comedy is like music. That’s why it’s successful on iPods more than drama.” There’s a quick payoff and you either like it or you don’t.

Scardino said that “Colbert Report” is good about egging its online audience to create content and then spinning that content into fodder for the show. Moderator Van Veen didn’t offer much of his own insight, which might have been great, and instead asked vague, rambling questions that sapped the energy out of the panel. Most interesting, surprisingly, was Ronen of Boxee, the Web content delivery app, who seemed to have the most insight on how things will change. He said people are canceling or downgrading cable to watch shows online, but that cable won’t go away anytime soon. He and Novak amusingly sparred over Ronen not knowing what night “The Office” airs because he always watches it online.

Novak spoke briefly about directing Webisodes of “The Office”: “Everyone’s trying to figure that out. We just figure they’re funny and popular. We do it for creative reasons.” He said shooting one costs about the same as a day of shooting the TV show.

Quotes: “My favorite site is Hulu.com. (Laughs.) We love it. We love it so much we can let it go.” — Ronen. “I think they could take the Luxembourg army” — Scardino on the Colbert Nation. “If it looks great and it’s HD, people don’t care where it’s coming from.” — Ronen. On how content will be delivered — it will be the way people will want it: “Nobody’s gonna shove anything down anybody’s throat (that’s what she said).” — Novak. On fear of Web content in Hollywood: “Of course it’s the wild west. That’s why some people are drawn to it and why some people are afraid of it.” — Novak. “I know a guy who looks online to see if people liked his jokes” — Scardino. “Was is Colbert?” — Novak

Takeaways: Nobody has really figured out how “Webisodes” and Web-to-TV shows are going to work when it comes to making money. On “The Office,” they’re more creative experiment than moneymaker, says Novak. Comedy clips seem predisposed to work as online media because they don’t require too much character development and are “Get-it-or-don’t-get-it” much like whether or not you like certain songs. Those who are multitalented (writing, acting, producing, tap dancing) are most poised to rise to the top as these changes play out.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: SXSW 2009, TV

Panel: A Brief History of Growing Up Online

Date/Time: 5 p.m. Saturday

Panelists: Anna Genoese (Aleuromancy), Maria Diaz (Writer), Mark Shrayber (Girl Detective, Louise Miller Enterprises), Sarah Wulfeck (National Community Producer, CBS DMG), Gala Darling (iCiNG)

The gist: In the mid 1990s, teen girls (and a few boys) started journaling their lives as a way to connect with teens with similar interests, express themselves and, admittedly, to get attention. The attention wasn’t always good; Anna Genoese almost got kicked out of high school because of her online journal. Mark Shrayber couldn’t go to the prom because of something he said in his journal. Then password-protection became available and suddenly, the bloggers — before blog was a word — they could control who saw their writing.

For some of the panelists, real life now trumps online presence. Others still blog every detail of their lives online. Gala Darling says in the future, people will get a more realistic version of what your life is like by looking back on your life through online journals.

The backlash against oversharing isn’t new, says Sarah Wulfeck. Some people are secretive, and not everyone is a performer.

Genoese says the act of keeping her blog made her braver to go out and meet people. “It got me out of my shell,” she says. “There’s nothing to talk about when you’re lying on your back staring at the ceiling for 6 hours a day…Every single friend I have is someone I met online.”

Quotes: “Oversharers today don’t have a sense of the line between oversharing and putting things up that shouldn’t be on the Internet.” — Anna Genoese

Takeaways: Use password protection judiciously.

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Panel: Everything I Needed to Know About the Web I Learned from Feminism

Date/Time: 3:30 p.m. Saturday

Panelists: Heather Gold (founder, Subvert.com), danah boyd (researcher, Microsoft Research), Betty Flowers (director, LBJ Library), Julia Angwin (author)

The gist: The nature of Web 2.0 and social networking lends itself to tasks traditionally associated with women: maintaining a circle of friends and contacts, sharing information (gossiping) both superficial and profound and tweaking your public image.

Gender differences are as prevalent online as they are offline, says danah boyd. Social networks just formalize this process. What used to be too personal to be shared publicly is getting smaller and smaller.

Privilege has a lot to do with our online identities. Julia Angwin says she thinks it is a privilege to be able to live your life so publicly online, but the problem is that there is no way to tune your online identities. There are too few protected spaces, where everyone shares the same rules of engagement, for conversation and interaction. Another issue of online identity is that you aren’t allowed to be as multifaceted as you are in your real life, which is a right Second Wave feminists established. Unitary identity, Angwin says, means you’re forced into what a Google search of your name turns up.

Quotes: “”If you do not take diversity (gender, sexual orientation, race, economic background) into account, then you limit yourself on a building and business level.” “The act of being yourself is what makes the world safe.”—Heather Cole

Takeaways: Hire people who think differently than you. Honor the safe spaces that do exist online.

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Panel: Politics, Technology and Pop Culture

Panel: Politics, Technology and Pop Culture

Day/time: Saturday, March 14, 2009 at 5:00 p.m.

Panelists: Mark McKinnon, vice chairman of Public Strategies, Amber Ettinger (Obama Girl), Tom Serres of Pyrx Inc., Alex Wollen, deputy political director of digital content for CNNPolitics.com, Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law School, Dan Patterson, ABC News.

The gist: The SXSW description said this: A shift is occurring in the world of politics. Campaigns are feeling a growing need to move online - learning to compete in a new world, a world where technology offers the average political entrepreneur a whole new level of empowerment. What it really was: praise for Obama’s use of technology, a debate about how good or not so good Twitter is, and Amber Ettinger’s story of becoming the viral sensation “Obama Girl.”

Quotes: “I’m not a political expert.” - Ettinger. “Obama brought people in who weren’t politically inclined.” -Patterson. “We shouldn’t over-romanticize what happened in the last election.” -Lessig.

Takeaways: McKinnon said it is “profound” to look at what is happening with cyber politics. He said working on his first few campaigns, “we didn’t even have Blackberries.” The campaigns lose control of their message and anybody has an opportunity to participate in the process, thanks to the Internet and new technology, McKinnon said. President Obama and Sen. John McCain understood how to harness this technology, he said.

Wollen said CNN is focusing on integration. Meaning integrating television with other new technologies and the Web. The “holy grail” is to have a parallel experience, he said, using the Web and TV, or your phone and the Web.

On Twitter: McKinnon said more communication isn’t better communication. (A guy in the audience starts shouting bull—-t at this statement.) “We have to be able to understand messages about quality and not quantity,” he said.

But Patterson disagrees, saying it is in your individual responsibility to use sites like Twitter in ways that are productive for you. “There is good quality information out there, it’s how you use it,” Patterson said.

Lessig also got a dig in at CNN, criticizing them for obsessive coverage of “small” issues. Wollen responds by talking up iReport, CNN’s citizen journalism tool.

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Zappos CEO wows Interactive audience

By the end of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s keynote speech at the South By Southwest Interactive Festival, you could see the Zappos logo on computer screens and murmurs from audience members saying they wanted to start working at the online retailer.

Hsieh wowed the Web-savvy audience with tales of how his Las Vegas-based company went from zero sales in 1999 to over $1 billion in sales last year.

Zappos.com may be known for its superior customer service, but Hsieh said building a great company culture is more important.

Hsieh said what makes the online retailer so successful is spending much more time and energy on hiring the right people and focusing on the culture.

For instance, Zappos will pay new hires $2,000 to leave after the five-week training period as a test to see how committed to the company they are.

So what is Zappos’ culture? Hsieh said they have 10 core values, which include items like being open and honest and pursuing growth and learning.

Reporters and anyone else who takes a company tour is allowed to talk to anyone in the company, from the call center employee to a warehouse worker or buyer.

This is extremely unusual for a company - most don’t allow reporters to question employees without prior approval.

Hsieh gave a few great examples of his company’s focus on customer service. One customer once left $150 in a wallet she returned and it was mailed back to her by a warehouse employee. Hsieh said call center employees aren’t required to spend a certain amount of time on the phone or even make a sale. The longest phone call ever at Zappos was four hours.

And the best example was saved for last: A woman Hsieh encountered in Santa Monica wanted a pepperoni pizza in the middle of the night and she called Zappos to help her out. They call center representative gave her a list of five places she could order pizza. “If you get the culture right, most of your other stuff, like your brand and customer service happen naturally on its own,” Hsieh said.

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Facebook introduces Connect for iPhone at SXSWi

At a Saturday morning panel, Facebook made news by announcing Facebook Connect for iPhone, which will extend the reach of applications on the iPhone and iPod Touch, allowing users to connect with people they know on Facebook.

On the panel, the company announced several well-known apps that have added the feature and are already available on the iTunes App Store. People using them could use their already-existing Facebook login information and find their Facebook friends in these apps. They are:

“Who Has the Biggest Brain” by Playfish
“Movies” by Flixster
“iBowl” and “Agency Wars” by SGN
“Urbanspoon”
“Tap Tap Revenge 2” by Tapulous
“Whrrl” by Pelago
“Live Poker” by Zynga
“Binary Game” by SayEight

At last year’s South by Southwest, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made a personal appeal to developers to create applications for the Facebook platform. As the site has ballooned worldwide, it looks like that strategy is paying off: Zuckerberg showed up on “Oprah” Friday to discuss the phenomenal success of the social-networking site.

Below: a look at “Who Has the Biggest Brain”:

Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Internet, Phones, SXSW 2009

SXSW: Panel: Is Privacy Dead or Just Very Confused?

Panel: Is Privacy Dead or Just Very Confused?

Date and time: Saturday, March 14, 2009 at 10 a.m.

Panelists: Danah Boyd, researcher at Microsoft Research; Judith Donath, MIT Media Laboratory; Siva Vaidhyanathan, Assoc. Prof. at University of Virginia; Alice Marwick, PhD Candidate at New York University

The gist: More than ever before, the concept of privacy is open to interpretation as people share more of their lives online. Debates included what should and shouldn’t be expected to remain private, what material is reasonable for governments and marketers to aggregate and dispense about us and how to understand the consequences beforehand of making too many aspects of our lives available for public consumption.

There was also plenty of talk about context, social currency and zero-sum transactions that, frankly, seemed a little heady for 10 a.m. the day after the start of one of this city’s drunkest weeks of the year. Really SXSW, this seemed like the best scheduling option? And no one thought to dispense coffee and aspirin at the door?

Quotes:“In the seventies there was a very public moment where people stood up and demanded protection of their privacy from the state, and that resulted in things like a much better credit rating system and better protections. It’s no coincidence that this was right after Watergate. Since then we’ve kind of taken that privacy for granted and now the entire interface has changed.” Siva Vaidhyanathan

Takeaways: Privacy means different things in just about any situation depending on age, authority involved and a host of other factors. To a teenager their home isn’t necessarily a private place (because they lack authority) while to their parents the home is the most private place they can imagine.

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Panel: Emerging Trends of Mobile Technology

Date/Time: 11:30 a.m. Saturday

Panelists: Rob Gonda (Director of Marketing Strategy & Analysis, Sapient), Juan-Carlos Morales (Creative Director, Sapient Interactive), Ryan Stewart

The gist: Even though the iPhone seems ubiquitous, we’re still years behind Europe and especially Asia, where no one wants to buy an iPhone because they’ve had 3G technology for seven years and where 93 percent of people access the Web on phones (in the UK, 60 percent of people access the Internet on their phones only).

Around the world, there are three times as many mobile subscribers (3.38 billion) than Internet and twice as many people use mobile devices than television. In a few short years, the vast majority of people will access the Web on a mobile device instead of a computer.

In Asia, people are more trusting to use their phones to buy everything, from groceries to take-out. Added security on phones will happen, but only reactively, not proactively, Gonda says.

One thing that impedes the U.S. from advancing with mobile technology is that phone carriers have so much control over the user interface and experience online, Gonda says. In other cultures where mobile use is so advanced, carriers simply provide devices, not dictate usage. Flash is a core part of Internet usage, and phones will have to be able to display Flash in order for people to want to use mobiles to access the Web. Gonda said that it doesn’t make sense for developers to have to redevelop sites for mobile phones.

Quotes: “It’s so easy for us to spend 99 cents, Morales says. … You can’t buy a whole lotta things with a dollar. $2.99 for an app is too much.” — Juan-Carlos Morales

“(Mobile use is about) rehashing, remapping, reusing the same technology with new creative uses and experiences. Technology isn’t just a commodity, but it’s a facilitator, and what really sells it is experience” — Rob Gonda

Takeaways: Even though there are already 200,000 mobile applications, with the introduction of more open source phones, we will see hundreds of thousands of more applications in the future. The price will stay low.

Augmented reality, the use of holographic images merged with real images taken from your phone, will become popular. You can play with Pokemon with real cards, with people on the other side of the world, or play ping pong in the middle of the street using your phone as your control and screen. It’s like a Wii-style game using your phone.

Image recognition will also quickly advance. Morales foresees that users will be able to take a picture of an avocado and a recipe for guacamole will pop up. Image recognition can be mixed with public sources of information like Wikipedia, so you can point your phone at a monument and it will tell you information about it.

You’ll be able to use your iPhone as a navigation system, hanging it from your windshield and it will act as a GPS device.

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Panel: Change v2

Date/Time: 11:30 a.m. Saturday

Panelists: Lawrence Lessig (Stanford Law School, change-congress.org)

The gist: Lessig says that we have lost faith in the integrity of government because we see all decisions as being influenced by lobbyist money, not by a desire to do the right thing. Even in situations when an official was not “bought off,” we are skeptical of his motivations because of the pervasiveness of lobbyist money. He says this situation is caused because Congress members are constantly concerned with paying for re-election (either getting themselves re-elected, or ensuring their party keeps the seat). Further, he says politicians on both the right and the left want the lobbyist system to continue because they want to become well-paid lobbyists themselves after working in government for a few years.

Takeaways: Lessig says the only way to restore our lost faith in government is through the citizen funding of elections. He says candidates should get their money in two ways: 1) from donations of $250 of less from individual citizens. 2) from a public financing fund. He is a co-founder of change-congress.org, which encourages people to go on “strike” by refusing to donate to national candidates “unless they support legislation making congressional elections citizen-funded.” HIs talk got sustained applause, and many in the room gave him a standing ovation.

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Core Conversation: Join the Coworking Revolution

Date/Time: 11:30 a.m. Saturday.

Panelists: Alex Hillman (Co-founder, Indy Hall)

The gist: Coworking is an issue we’ve been interested in for a while, especially with one space in Austin and another on the way. In this Core Conversation, the room was filled with current coworking space owners and several who plan to open such spaces in the coming months with their own unique takes on the concept of working in a public space with others. One audience member wants to open a “Hip hop” coworking space in Brooklyn, for instance. Coworking could have been something that was created, then franchised after it started taking off in 2006, but instead it has become an open-source movement with space owners sharing their business plans online and helping each other get off the ground.

Quotes: “You know, bring in the bling, all of that.” — Hip Hop Coworking audience member. “If you get a bunch of smart people in a room, good things are going to happen.” — Audience member. “This group happens to be one of the most kind and gracious when it comes to their time and resources.” — Hillman on coworking space owners, who communicate online and are represented in about 30 countries. “I can travel to almost city in the world and I know somebody there through coworking.” — Hillman

Takeaways: San Antonio has a space called C4 Workspace that is scheduled to open in June. A good coworking space makes people feel like they’re working at home. No two coworking spaces are alike — business models vary and people are finding all kinds of ways to get them started, from putting their house up for mortgage to finding corporate sponsors. Culture is key in a coworking space.

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Panel: Blog on Company Time and Get Promoted

Panel: Blog On Company Time and Get Promoted

Date and time: Saturday, March 14, 2009 at 11:30 a.m.

Panelists: Daniel Hope, consultant and CEO of Tracksuit. Hope is also an instructor at the University of Texas where he teaches corporate blogging.

The gist: How many bloggers are underutilized in their day jobs? This session shows bloggers how to take over or start their company’s blog for instant promotion and industry-wide fame. Learn tools and techniques for taking on the title of Chief Blogging Officer and then making your company’s blog a massive success.

Quotes:“The beauty of it is you don’t have to be a programmer.” - Hope. “If you know how to email, you can run a blog.” - Hope.

Takeaways: Re-define blogs as Web sites. Stop thinking about them as social diaries. You don’t need a lot of computer or programming expertise to run a blog, Hope said.

He took a lot of questions from the audience, including someone from FedEx, which just started their own blog. One woman said she started a blog without permission from her employer and it was so successful that competitors wanted to be mentioned on the blog. Hope called this “going rogue.”

A lot of companies want a way into social networks and a good way in is through blogs, Hope said. He reveals that he got free tuition through UT by offering to start up a blog for them. He also recommends using Word Press Multi-User.

Hope also offered up his 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of the corporate blog should be relevant to the business. Twenty percent can be a photo of a company party or something more personal.

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Screenburn panel -- Strong Gaming Communities: Text vs. Speech

Date/Time: 10 a.m. Saturday.

Panelists: Matthew Bellows (VP Consumer Services, Vivox, Inc.); Amy Jo Kim (shufflebrain.com); Joe Miller (VP, Platform/Tech Dev., Linden Research, Inc.); Dmitri Williams (USC, via “Second LIfe”), Richard Vogel (Co-Studio Director, Bioware).

The gist: In Massively Multiplayer Online Games and virtual worlds like “Second Life,” there’s a big distinction with how relationships form and how things are communicated when written as text versus when you hear them as speech. One person in the audience mentioned that she met her husband online and that when they fight, they take it to a text conversation, which can be more precise, and less emotional. The issue of intimacy over voices raises all sorts of questions about intimacy in virtual worlds and how they should/shouldn’t take the place of real-life relationships. Some talk about the Facebook-ization of online relationships — we’re becoming more comfortable sharing photos, personal details and other info.

Quotes: “People can certainly have intimate relationships with text. What you wind up is giving more information with voice and with tone.” — Williams. “In voice, they trust people more when they hear a voice than when they read text.” — Vogel

Takeaways: Not a lot of conclusions, but much of the preference for speech versus text has to do with that the world is where it’s being used. For “World of Warcraft” voice is essential for team tasks. But in some instances, it may be too intimate for the task at hand. Some of it may be generational, too. Young people are more used to putting it all out online. Voice loses an element of anonymity online that some people still really enjoy.

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Panel: Emerging From A Recession

Panel title: Emerging From A Recession With Emerging Media Intact

Date and time: Saturday, March 14, 2009

Panelists: Patrick Moorhead, director of emerging technologies for Razorfish and David Polinchock at Brand Experience Labs

The Gist: Experience emerging technologies revolutionizing the digital world and glimpse what today would look like if we hadn’t developed emerging technology from a few years past. This panel is sponsored by Razorfish.

Quotes: “We take a lot of technology for granted today. Five or eight years ago we barely knew what iPods were.” - Moorhead. “The coolest function of the original Palm Pilot was beaming your business card.” - Polinchock. “Suspend disbelief in order to get smart.” -Moorhead

Takeaways: Innovation happens regardless of whether times are good or bad.

Broadcast that what you’re doing is new or an experiment, take a look at Google’s Gmail, which is still officially in beta testing. Moorhead asked people in the audience to raise their hand if they had an iPod and pretty much everyone did.

Both panelists talked about some new technologies, such as T-shirts that communicate in code or ordering your favorite sandwich through a text.

Technology can be used to let people engage the brand when they want to instead of inundating then with ads. For example, using your phone to scan RFID codes and order the product you want. Polinchuck mentioned a new technology called Poken which is like a digital business card that allows you to share your information with someone you meet instantly.

Moorhead said clients have a hard time figuring out how to use new technology and don’t want to use a cool new gadget or Web site just for the sake of it. But the recession is the time where you can experiment with new technologies. Throw caution to the wind, Moorhead said, and be prepared to suspend disbelief.

The best part: Towards the end Polinchuck showed an fun new game for MSNBC that he is calling “participatory advertising” that forced members in the audience to lean right or left to hit a ball on the screen, similar to the Brickbreaker game on the Blackberry. It was like getting the entire panel audience to do the wave.

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SXSWi Friday parties: soggy, cold, crowded (still cool)

When I read that the growth of this year’s SXSWi fest might be as much as 20 percent I was skeptical, but that was before I was face-to-back at several parties. Seriously. It was crowded, y’all. Even though I’m all the way at home in New Braunfels, I think part of my body might still be back in Austin trying to get out of The Belmont.

The parties (and a few crowded panels) were a testament to how big this festival is getting. Friday and Tuesday are usually not such busy days. People are still arriving or leaving on those days and it’s not at full capacity. Could have fooled me. There’s Interactive attendees EVERYWHERE and spreading parties across several venues has only meant there are multiple crowded, noisy party venues. And I imagine it’s only going to get worse.

Party-by-party, from what I saw:

Mix at Six — Six was very crowded last year and the plan was to have additional parties going at the same time so Six (on 4th Street) wouldn’t get overloaded. Didn’t work. The line for Six still snaked around the corner when I got there around 7 p.m. and it was cold, rainy and miserable for those who were waiting to get in. Lots of people around me gave up and headed to The Belmont or other parties instead. Once inside (about a half hour later), things were already starting to die down and I only saw a few people I recognized, including one of the Texas Social Media Award Winners, Michelle Greer. Before I chatted with her, though, I was stopped by a woman I didn’t know who offered me the rest of her beer as I walked by. I swear to you, this is exactly how the conversation went:

LADY I DO NOT KNOW: Do you want the rest of my beer?

ME: No! I mean… no, I don’t think so. I mean, I’m very susceptible to… like… Hepatitis C and such. NOT THAT YOU HAVE THAT!

LADY: I see how it is. You think I have Hep C?

ME: No, not at all. I could get Hepatitis from… myself. You never know is all I’m saying. I’m very sorry.

And then I walked off. Later on, I was thinking I should go back for the rest of that beer, but she was gone. Sorry, lady.

Apart from that, Six was a bit of a bust, at least for me.

The Belmont TechSet party — Another cold, rainy line. But inside, the party was bustling. Lots of people downstairs, upstairs, in nooks, in crannies, probably hiding in the wainscotting. It was very crowded is what I’m saying.

The line near The Belmont

Upstairs, in the giant party room and the nearby, more intimate party room, it was again wall-to-wall. Tough to navigate, but lots of friendly folks, all using iPhones. (iPhone cell and Internet service has been crappy, by the way. If you’re not near a Wi-Fi zone, you’re in for some sad times at SXSWi.)

Inside The Belmont

I stayed for quite a while. It was a good party and the place that people who couldn’t get into other parties (like the one at Six) gravitated toward. It was a long line, but the venue was much larger.

Emo’s for Pasties and Pastries Burlesque and Cupcake Party — I’m a Kitty Kitty Bang Bang fan and I love cupcakes, so this seemed like a win-win in more ways than I can count. Unfortunately, I got there so late that all the cupcakes were gone (NOOOO!) and the Kitties were finishing up the last bit of their first set. I lose. Sadness. Now I really want a cupcake. This one also had a line and was also packed.

No cupcakes!

AMODA at Mohawk — I got there just as the laptop DJ battles were going. I went upstairs and met up with a friend from Hawaii, but by this time I was pooped and just wanted to go home. Like the other parties, it was packed. No line, but very busy. I left around midnight.

That’s it. See you all tomorrow.

These heaters are everywhere. Because it is cold.

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March 13, 2009

Panel: How to Rawk SXSW: The Basics

Date/Time: 3:30 p.m. Friday

Panelists: Glenda Bautista (Agendacide.com), Baratunde Thurston (Comedian/Guru, The Onion), John Styn (Digital Explorer, LifeStudent.com), Zadi Diaz (Executive Producer, EPIC FU), Ernie Hsiung (Blogger, LittleYellowDifferent.com)

The gist: Close your laptop. That was the message for all us “newbs” in the audience — those of us insecure and clutching our schedules too tight.

The point is people and friendships, not panels and hangovers, said the festival vets during the standing-room-only SXSW-starter: “The spirit of SXSW…is all about deepening the conversation with people,” said Bautista. “Get beyond your computer. Get out and meet people.” —preferably in “3-D Twitter,” said Thurston. (Or “reality,” he clarified).

Some other things: Go to talks you’re not interested in. Avoid those you know too much (and probably have too much to say) about. Breathe. Be present with new friends — remember their names, faces. Hand out your cards (not slimy). Skip the party; invite people to dinner, especially if you’re not a big drinker. Stock up on energy bars and nonperishables (pass on the $7 pizza — my advice). And bring gum (Thurston).

But above all, take a chance. Say hi. Even to the big shots. A week later, you don’t want to be writing apologetic e-mails that begin: “Hi, I saw you at SXSW but was too afraid to say hi…”

“Make it your goal NOT to send (ones) like that,” says Styn. He gets them every year.

Quotes: “Your girlfriend will catch you: “What happens at SXSW, stays on Flickr.”— Glenda Bautista.

Takeaways: Breathe. Smile. Turn to a neighbor. Talk about what they like (*see Dale Carnegie). And by all means, don’t run away from a conversation because some schedule reminder is blinking on your PDA. Skip it. Conversations are what SXSW is about.

(And P.S: we’re all getting sick next week, so no complaining on Twitter—Diaz).

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Panel: Everything You Know About Web Design Is Wrong

Date/Time: 2 p.m. Friday

Panelists: Dan Willis, consultant

The gist: Even after more than a decade of use and innovation, Web design is still in its infancy and largely informed based on print design instead of using the Internet’s full capabilities to create rich experiences for every user. Willis calls this malady “print in disguise,” pointing to flashy but ill-intended sites for Harry Potter films and Washington Post local sections as examples.

Willis compared current Web design practices to the beginning days of motion pictures, when fixed position cameras filmed scenes on a stage, resulting in flat, shallow productions instead of utilizing techniques such as cross cutting, closeups and birds-eye-view camera angles to add greater impact. It’s hard to know what the analogous practices will be for Web design, but Willis said he thinks offering insight into people’s lives, making content more self-aware and interconnected and enabling more control of data and content by users are some of the mile markers on the road ahead.

And the days are done when design is a last step in business cycle that serves primarily a marketing/arty function. Instead, Willis said designers must be included in the conceptual phase of a Web site to ensure that at its core it gives users the richest experience possible.

Quotes: “In the 21st century content is not about chunks of type, pictures and video because the experience a user has is the content. The user designs their experience as much as the designers do, so put the elements in place and let them do their thing themselves.” — Dan Willis.

Takeaways: Ease of use and flashy visuals are taking a back seat to Web sites that offer pieces of real life interaction, such as a hotel site with online cameras in common areas and an online concierge chatting with prospective customers before they even make a reservation. Added together, those ingredients create a rich jambalaya that users remember.

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Scenes from Screenburn

It’s cold, rainy. The economy’s in the tank. Who’s up for video games?

The third annual Screenburn Arcade kicked off this afternoon inside Exhibit Hall 2 at the Austin Convention Center. The showcase is part of Screenburn, the video-game branch of SXSW Interactive, and a nice prep for next week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

The video-game smorgasbord is free and open to the public, with more than 30,000 square feet set aside for visitors to browse, play and compete in the latest and greatest in video gaming. Last year, the Arcade drew more than 7,500 people.

“3-D Guitar Hero” was an early hit, as well as the collection of vintage games from the ‘70’s, ‘80’s and ’90s courtesy of Mountain Dew.

We’ll spotlight more inside the Arcade throughout the weekend. The exhibit will be open tomorrow and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m.

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Panel: Social Engineering: Scam Your Way Into Anything or From Anybody

Date/Time: 5 p.m. Friday

Panelists: Brian Brushwood, host of Envision3/Scam School

The gist: A carnival performer through and through (even if he calls himself a magician, he started out eating fire), the spike-haired Austin native Brushwood held forth for an hour on the real world applications of studying and mastering people’s instinctive behavior patterns, which include the desire to be liked, value of reciprocation and recognition of authority. Those traits are put to comedic use on Brushwood’s Internet show “Scam School,” to score free drinks and win bets in bars but he also taught the crowd how to slide out of a traffic ticket by getting the cop to laugh, and how to get backstage at concerts.

During the talk Brushwood mixed centuries of behavioral psychology with self-deprecating anecdotes and a pair of audience participation exercises to show how people can be guided and suggested into thinking and doing seemingly random things. At its heart, Brushwood’s expertise is the same as that used by mentalists and faux-psychics like John Edward (who he has no kind words for) or the pickup artist community and its leading men such as Neil Strauss. Of Strauss and his peers Brushwood expressed enthusiastic appreciation and said he has approached Strauss about joining him on stage on the lecture circuit.

Quotes: “Like most anything, these tools can be used for good or ill. I don’t see anything inherently wrong with knowing how the human mind works and behaves, and how you can manipulate that if you choose to.” — Brian Brushwood

Takeaways: People are much less independent of mind than they’d like to believe and knowing what makes the human brain work on an instinctive level can provide an edge in everyday life and protect people from being preyed upon, whether for free drinks or something much more sinister.

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Panel: The Ecosystem of News

Date/Time: 3:30 p.m. Friday

Panelists: Steven Johnson (outside.in)

The gist: Johnson argues that to predict the future of journalism we have to look to the past. Specifically, he says the evolution of technology news and political news online might point to what will happen with other forms of news, such as investigative and international reporting.

Johnson recalled being a college student and obsessively checking the campus bookstore for Mac magazines. There was a lag time of months in finding out the information he wanted. Today, he gets information instantly from blogs and the company itself, but there are also many sources for in-depth analysis. The same was true of how he consumed political news: In the 1992 campaign, he read newspapers and news magazines and watched “Crossfire.” Today, he has all those options (well, except “Crossfire”) plus Web resources that can be very specialized, such as Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com.

Those two areas could point to what we’ll see emerging in other areas of journalism, Johnson says.

Quotes: “It’s ugly and it’s going to get uglier.” (Regarding the state of the newspaper industry)

Takeaways: Johnson suggests that traditional media might find a new role in helping the public navigate all the new sources of information.

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Panel: Try Making Yourself More Interesting

Date/Time: 5 p.m. Friday

Panelists: DL Byron (Publisher, Bike Hugger), Amit Gupta (Founder, Photojojo), Brian Oberkirch (Small Good Thing), Kristina Halvorson (Pres, Brain Traffic)

The gist: Web companies and social media promote a culture of superficiality, where people are numbers and not human beings and the goal of a project becomes how can you make money rather than how can you impact others in your community. DL Bryon is building a community with bikes as a center of creativity. Amit Gupta got tired of working by himself in his Manhattan apartment, so he created a Jelly coworking group, which is now happening in dozens of cities around the world.

Some of the panelists are frustrated by what’s happening with social media because people are too focused on the number of followers and friends and not the relationships and good you are doing. Rather than hyping new interfaces (Facebook) and touting numbers (Twitter followers), focus on real life change, events and people.

Brian Oberkirch has these tips: 1) Give side projects some front and center time. 2) Share. Leave money on the table. Generate more value than you capture. Make things good for the people who use your service.

Kristina Halvorson says that traditional advertising, not marketing, is fading. It’s now a two-way street, and advertising isn’t engaging that way. Marketing, however, will be around as long as there are good products worth knowing about.

Quotes: “Ask yourself, ‘Would you care if this things went away?’ If the answer if no, something is wrong. … Do things that matter. (Gimmicky marketing tactics like the Skittles homepage) are beneath us. They don’t draw on the things that make us useful. Lift your game. Do epic (stuff).” — Brian Oberkirch

Takeaways: Talk to people like they are humans beings, and people are not numbers. Be brave about doing what you love and what you are passionate about. Don’t be distracted by the numbers; it gets in the way of experimentation and keeps you focused on the short term, not the long term.

It’s not about what happens today, it’s what happens over the long run.

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Core Conversation: Reduce MySpace Between Waist & Thighs So Wiki Live Longer

Date/Time: 5 p.m. Friday.

Panelists: David Eckoff (President, Revolutionary Ventures), Biray Alsac (Health/Fitness Educator, FITTmaxx Institute).

The gist: Eckoff, a techie who used to lead a very unhealthy lifestyle (join the club! The fat club!) and Alsac, a fitness educator who is interested in technology, led a well attended core conversation discussing how technology can aid fitness. If you see people on Twitter saying they’re exercising or cooking healthy, for instance, it might be a good reminder to do it yourself. Transparent, subtle reminders can be valuable tools to promote an active state of thinking. There are also many apps available that help you track your workouts or diet and can cross-post to social networking sites. (Fitizens.com and exercisefriends.com, for instance.) One site, Extracon.com, will even text you reminders to exercise. There are plenty of tools and it’s worth experimenting to find the ones that work best for you.

Quotes: On wasting time instead of being active: “Watching YouTube videos is like eating potato chips. You can’t watch just one.” — Eckoff. “Stop calling it exercise. People hate to exercise. Call it physical activity.” — Alsac.

Takeaways: The new Core Conversation format, with a round table at the center of the room instead of multiple tables, works MUCH better than last year’s approach. And a very clever title for the session doesn’t hurt, either. It doesn’t take as much time to live healthily than it sounds. Take the stairs. Just because you don’t see immediate results doesn’t mean it’s not working. Whether it’s an iPhone app, a text messaging reminder or an online calorie tracker, there are plenty of new ways to tackle an old problem: don’t be afraid to try them out.

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Gary Vaynerchuk loves you

Gary Vaynerchuk, the energetic social-media loving wine video blogger I road tripped to Houston with last June, is in Austin this week for a SXSW panel on video blogging. We caught up this afternoon about the new projects up his sleeves, including pending parenthood, and why he doesn’t mind getting stopped every 30 seconds to greet a fan.

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Hugging Loren Feldman of 1938media.com

For several days before the festival, I’d been telling Internet provocateur Loren Feldman of the aggro satire video site (with puppets) 1938media that when I saw him at South by Southwest, I was going to give him a hug.

At first he resisted, shooting off a string of profanity and protest on Twitter. But I knew that I could wear him down over time with my incredible persistence. (Just ask my wife.)

That hug was finally delivered in the TechSet Lounge, about 4:05 p.m. You can see it below.

I give good hugs.

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Panel: Bike sharing

Panel title: Plan B: Can An Ad Guy Bring Bike Sharing to America?

Date and time: Friday, March 13 at 5 p.m.

Panelists: Alex Bogusky of Crispin, Porter and Bogusky

The gist: Ad agency Crispin, Porter and Bogusky has teamed up with health care company Humana and Trek bicycles to create B-cycle, a venture that promotes bike sharing. Crispin is a well-known ad agency with $1.5 annual billings. Clients include Volkswagen, Hulu, Microsoft, Best Buy, American Express and Domino’s Pizza. Did the viral campaign “Subservient Chicken” for Burger King and more recently the talking mannequin ads for clothing retailer Old Navy.

Quotes: “I’ve never been a giant fan of advertising.” “I love the people in advertising.” “I get more joy out of reading AdBusters than Adweek.” “Anything good I’ve been apart of has been the result of sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong.” “Mannequins have not smiled since the Depression.” “We are living in interesting times, moving from slightly depressing to suicide-inducing.” “Will bike sharing save the world? No. But it just has to help.” “It’s so easy to ride a bike, you don’t need special clothes.” “I remember when they said magazines were going away because everyone was going to watch VHS.”

Takeaways: Standing-room only at this extremely non-tech panel. Bogusky spoke a little about Crispin: “A holding company for smart people,” with quirky rules like no timesheets. (Cheers when Bogusky said this.)

Bogusky talked about startling statistics related to driving and pollution, including that Al Gore told him that it rained for the first time this year in the Arctic. “Some of this stuff really bums me out,” Bogusky said. It’s easy to get frustrated, why do anything if it can’t be enough, Bogusky said. But you don’t have to solve global warming, you just have to help move it forward a little bit through innovation, he said.

Boulder used to have a bike-sharing program, he said, but the bikes kept getting stolen (similar to Austin’s Yellow Bike Project.) So Crispin started helping design a bike sharing program in Boulder. They developed a logo with a B in a circle, similar to other traffic or city signs. It’s not easy to make a bike that works for people from five foot two to six foot four, Bogusky said, but Trek made a bicycle that did this. Also developed a system for swiping a credit card for obtaining a bike from a bike station. It tells you which bike to choose and it is unlocked so you can remove it. They started testing this in Washington, D.C. and almost got the city of Minneapolis to use it. Then they redesigned the system and added benches for people to sit at the bike stations. They are also exploring using solar panels or adding covers and lighting. Bogusky said they now have 1,000 bikes going into the city of Denver. There’s a lot of momentum behind this movement and Bogusky is even having meetings on setting one up in Austin. “The larger cities are more aggressive on this,” he said.

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Is it just me or is it more crowded this year?

I’m here at SXSW Interactive and it took 45 minutes just to get my registration badge, with the line wrapping around the building.

I heard other attendees complain that the popular “How to Rawk SXSW” panel was full and had a 15-person deep line outside just to get in.

Nevertheless, I will soldier on! My first panel this afternoon is “Plan B: Can an Ad Guy Bring Bike Sharing to America?” with Alex Bogusky from the Miami-based Crispin, Porter and Bogusky agency. (Mark Taylor, the head creative director for local agency GSD&M Idea City came from Crispin.)

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Panel: My Boss Doesn't Get It ...

My Boss Doesn’t Get It: Championing Social Media to the Man

Date/Time: 2 p.m. Friday

Panelists: Christian Caldwell (American Heart Association), Miles Sims (Small World Labs) Peter Kim (Dachis Corp.), Michael Wilson (Small World Labs), Rebecca Caroe (Creative Agency Secrets)

The gist: The panel discussed how to start a social media project when you have to get it past “the man” — any gatekeeper at your company who might be resistant.

Quotes: “Anybody who brings up the word ‘control’ is going to be a problem for you from the start.” — Christian Caldwell.

Takeaways: Wilson summarized the discussion well as the panel wound up:

— Manage expectations. Your social media project doesn’t have to be Facebook to be a success.

— Decide on the measurements or metrics that matter. Track them from the beginning. And, as Kim, pointed out, the more you can show that these measures result in financial gain, the better things will go.

— Get people behind your effort. If you have adversaries, whether they’re the legal team or just the resident curmudgeons, involve them and make them allies. They’re probably just scared of what they don’t understand about social media.

We also liked Sims’ key points when you’re considering a social-media campaign:

— What can it do for customers? How does it help them?

— What can your organization handle? What resources can you put toward social media?

— Who within the organization can you get on board easily?

Pictured: Peter Kim (top) and Miles Sims

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Panel: User-Generated Content: State of the Union

Date/Time: 2 p.m. Friday

Panelists: Dean Mccall (Founder, IdeaGin), Stephen Newman (CEO, Mouth Watering Media), Todd Morrey (Mosso: The Rackspace Cloud), Wes Wilson (President, IncSpring), Chris Tolles (Moderator. CEO, Topix).

The gist: User-generated content can be a great thing — it can build community, spread news and help carry the load of content creation. But getting people to start generating content is a big challenge and dealing with those participants can be a pain and bring up lots of legal issues because, in the words of Tolles, “they suck.” Those users will figure out loopholes and that mob rule makes it a challenge to monetize user-generated content. When done right (Linked In, Threadless, IMDB), it can generate great two-way communication. Early in the panel, an applause war broke out between the adjacent Ballrooms B and C. I think Ballroom B (“My Boss Doesn’t Get It”) won.

Quotes: Instead of just taking user-generated content and making his company money, “We’re hoping that we can all get rich together” — Wilson “I heard Diddy talking on Ellen about Twitter and I thought the end times were nigh” — Tolles

Takeaways: Find ways to make good content (highly rated comments, for instance) rise to the top. Digg is a good example of a popular site that has found effective ways to create hierarchies of user content. Building a good moderator or karma system is not easy.

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SXSWi Schwag Bag: The Unschwaggening

A lot of paper, an orange sock from Adobe and some sort of giant camera bag.

Also, some Internet superstar trading cards.

These are just a few of the things you’ll find in the South by Southwest Interactive schwag bag.

Want close-ups? Check out the larger versions over on Flickr.com.

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And it begins...

… right… NOW!

I’m heading over to the Austin Convention Center in a few minutes to pick up my Interactive badge and start this crazy thing we call South by Southwest Interactive.

There are a million things left to do, and I wanted to go through all my SXSWi e-mails one last time to make sure I didn’t miss anything, but at some point you have to just let go and jump into the water. (Lots of water today; the weather outside is awful.)

Here are a few loose ends I wanted to mention before we dive into panel reviews and festival coverage:

Austin’s Radar.net just released an update to its iPhone app that allows integration with Flickr. Very handy for posting photos on the go and perfect timing for the fest.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will be on “Oprah” today. I’ll have to miss it, but hope to watch it late tonight. I wonder if people will be talking about the fest. In the newsroom, we’ve been talking a lot about the new home page design (not all of us have it yet).
My full schedule for the fest (still tweaking it) is at http://sxsw2009.sched.org/omarg.
Not related to the fest, but today is the last day of work for our editorial cartoonist Ben Sargent and TV writer Diane Holloway. To say that this makes the first day of SXSWi bittersweet would be a vast understatement.
The song (NSFW at all) “South by Girls” is taking the fest by storm (maybe).
Austin’s Powered Inc. will be putting up podcasts from the fest starting Monday. They’ve got Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Angela Benton, Chris Pirillo and Cathy Brooks lined up.
Our A-List will be all over the fest taking pictures. Smile for the camera!

Lots more to say, surely, but I think i should just head on over. See you attendees there!

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March 12, 2009

SXSWi fest-goers share their schedules

In today’s XL, we ran a story featuring four South by Southwest Interactive attendees sharing highlights from their schedules, including panels, parties and other events.

We asked them to use sxsw2009.sched.org, a tool we really like for keeping track of your events during the fest and seeing what other people are doing. There are certainly other tools like this including my.sxsw.com and Festival Genius. But Sched.org was a big hit last year and, especially for unofficial events, I’ve found it to be my go-to tool.

You can find my full schedule (subject to change) at http://sxsw2009.sched.org/omarg.

(Clockwise from above left: Cameron Houser, Jon Lebkowsky,
Patrick Nichols and Christine Lu.)

We shot videos with each of the them and you can see them talk about their festival picks below:

The Austin festival vet: Jon Lebkowsky
Jon Lebkowsky has attended every South by Southwest Interactive Festival since it began. This year, he’ll be a host at a large SXSWi party, Plutopia, at the Palmer Events Center and is also on a panel. The social Web strategist is always interested in how communities grow online as well as electronic freedom issues. You can find his full Sched.org schedule here.

The platinum badge-carrying corporate strategist by day, music freelance writer by night: Patrick Nichols
Patrick Nichols is a senior content strategist at Razorfish Inc., but for the festival he’ll also be working as a freelance music journalist for the official SXSWorld Magazine and his Web site, This Is Texas Music. He’s interested in ways companies can improve how they communicate on the Web. You can find his full Sched.org schedule here.

The job seeker: Cameron Houser
A marketing specialist pursuing an MBA at UT’s McCombs School of Business who has done projects for IC2 and C3 Presents, Cameron Houser is looking at job opportunities at SXSW Interactive. Before school he worked at Amplifier, an Austin startup that does e-commerce and fulfillment work for Web companies. He graduates in spring 2010. You can find his full Sched.org schedule here.

The jet-setting SXSW newbie: Christine Lu
Christine Lu founded soon-to-launch networking company the China Business Network to connect with those interested in doing business in China and those who have relevant China expertise. She’s an early adopter of social networks, video services and high-tech biz practices. Despite her frequent visits to tech conferences (including a recent SXSW Interactive preparty in Shanghai), this is her first South by Southwest Interactive Festival. You can find her full Sched.org schedule here.

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10 visiting festival-goers to follow on Twitter during SXSWi

Via today’s XL story, here’s our list of top 10 visiting festgoers to follow on Twitter during SXSW

Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) — Love-him-or-hate-him tech blogger with huge following and voracious appetite for news (and Salt Lick barbecue).

Charlene Li (@charleneli) — Panelist and emerging trends expert; co-author of ‘Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.’

Loren Feldman (@1938media) — Always-controversial puppeteer and social media provocateur. Do NOT get on his bad side or he might make a puppet show out of you.

Tony Hsieh (@zappos) — Zappos.com CEO and opening remarks presenter who combined online shoe selling with social media.

Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) — Charismatic wine blogger with a huge online following. Follow him to uncork the unofficial wine parties.

Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) — Keynote speaker and former Apple Fellow, now a venture capitalist and online aggregator at alltop.com.

Cali Lewis (@calilewis) — Dallas-area host of video podcast ‘GeekBriefTV’ produced by husband Neal Campbell. (Edited to add: Cali recently posted on Twitter that she will not be attending the fest because the couple wasn’t able to get a press pass for Neal. She still plans to come to Austin this weekend and is scheduled to attend the Statesman Texas Social Media Awards.)

Jonathan Coulton (@jonathancoulton) — New York musician and geek hero who’ll be a speaker and performer at the festival.

Felicia Day (@feliciaday) — Geek object of desire as star of Joss Whedon’s ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’ and writer/actress on Web show ‘The Guild.’

SXSW’s crew (@sxsw) — Official Twitter feed of the fest with updates, advice and links to good Interactive info. They’re not visiting, but it’s the official Twitter account of the fest and likely to be posting the most accurate information about scheduling changes or other vital info.

Got more suggestions? Post them in the comments.

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March 11, 2009

Six free downtown Wi-Fi hotspots to use during SXSWi

Sure, the Austin Convention Center and nearby Downtown Hilton are obvious places to hop online during South by Southwest Interactive, but if you’re not close enough to get a signal and find yourself elsewhere downtown, here’s a few other places you can expect a good, strong stream of free Internet access (click map for larger image):

Whole Foods Market, 525 N. Lamar Blvd.
Austin Public Library, 1161 Angelina St.
Jo’s Hot Coffee, 242 W. Second St.
Austin Convention Center, 500 E. Cesar Chavez St.
Freebirds, 515 S. Congress Ave.
Jo’s Hot Coffee, 1300 S. Congress Ave.

(With assistance from this A-List blog item.)

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Top 10 Austin techie hotspots

In town for South by Southwest Interactive? Here’s some of the spots of interest to techies in Austin (click the map to see a larger version):

Building 45 — Located on IBM’s North Austin campus, the ‘Rust Bucket’ dates back to the ’60s and is the birthplace of some of the company’s Power processors and Unix servers. 11301 Burnet Road.
Texas Advanced Computing Center, J.J. Pickle Research Campus — World-renowned supercomputing center. 10100 N. Burnet Road.
Austin Studios — East Austin film production facility where parts of ‘Sin City’ and the ‘Friday the 13th’ remake were shot. 1901 E. 51st St.
Dobie Center near UT — Once upon a time, Michael Dell opened PC’s Ltd. there before dropping out of school. Now he’s got fancier digs at the Dell Inc. headquarters in Round Rock. 2021 Guadalupe St.
The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum IMAX Theatre — We’ve got giant 3-D movies. 1800 N. Congress Ave.
Sullivan’s — Downtown steakhouse that was the go-to place to schmooze (and eventually lose) during the dot-com boom. 300 Colorado St.
Conjunctured — Austin’s first co-working space. 1309 E. Seventh St.
‘Office Space’ filming locations — The Alligator Grill (3003 S. Lamar Blvd.) is the real ‘Chotchkie’s’ and
4120 Freidrich Lane is home to the office building we all know as Initech.
Building 3 — Location at AMD Inc.’s old campus where many of the company’s chips (Athlon, Shanghai) were designed. 5900 E. Ben White Blvd.

Bonus (not mapped): The Garriott Estate — Game developer Richard Garriott’s West Austin home, featuring a replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

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March 9, 2009

Gabbin' with Guy Kawasaki

It’s not hard to see why Guy Kawaski has gone from Apple Fellow to Internet star and is beloved in the tech community, from Twitter to the venture capital community.

He sounds like an incredibly fun guy.

On a recent phone interview, Kawasaki, who will be interviewing Wired editor Chris Anderson in a keynote conversation 2 p.m. Tuesday, March 17, was all laughs and easygoing conversation. For someone so busy — he posts on Twitter so much that some (myself included) avoid following him for fear of a flood of posts — he is gracious with his time and didn’t rush our chat.

The keynote will be of interest to anyone who cares about how money will be made online in the future. Anderson is the author of the forthcoming book “Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price” and is renowned as the author of the book and original Wired article, “The Long Tail,” which predicted that the entertainment industry (and many others) would shift to serve increasingly niche audiences.

“In this particular role,” Kawasaki said, “I am… let’s say Barbara Walters. Chris is Chris. It’s not exactly a conversation of peers. He’s the superstar and I’m the shill.” (Followed by laughs.)

Kawasaki has more than a little interest in the topic. In addition to his work as a venture capitalist at Garage Technology Ventures, he is also the founder of Alltop.com, a site that aggregates information from the best sources for particular topics. Alltop has more than 525 subdomains, such as linux.alltop.com or sxsw.alltop.com. It’s a site that gives this information away for free, much like the businesses Anderson writes about in “Free.”

“I’m gonna ask him about… how do you take a business which is essentially giving away information and make that a viable company?” Kawasaki said.

The attendees at SXSW will most certainly care, even if others may not be obsessed with finding out when Twitter and Facebook, companies potentially worth many billions of dollars, will turn a profit.

“You and I are on Twitter too much,” Kawasaki said, “if you went to your average Starbuck’s and said, ‘hey, anybody here care how Twitter’s gonna make money?” you might get the cold shoulder (but, if you’re lucky, a hot latte).

This will be only the second time Kawasaki has been to the festival, but he already enjoys it more than much bigger conferences where you might rub shoulders with Bono, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos or Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer.

“That just doesn’t appeal to me,” he said, “I don’t think SXSW is a seen-or-be-seen conference. I have decided that SXSW is probably the most interesting conference to go to. There’s a lot fewer VPs of business development hanging around.”

Then he got even more interesting: “There’s a much lower tolerance for (bovine excrement deleted). I think it’s the conference to go to.”

We’ll be seeing Kawasaki at the fest, I hope. Does it make you a good venture capitalist when you’re so friendly that it wouldn’t be out of place for someone to ask for a few million dollars out of the blue to go start a company? For his sake, I hope it does.

Oh, man, THAT’S what I forgot to ask. Hey, Guy — when you come to Austin, please bring your checkbook.

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March 6, 2009

Pretty! SXSWi tote bag design revealed

Mike Rohde of Rohdesign has revealed the design for this year’s South by Southwest Interactive design on a great blog entry that shows how it was created. Feast your eyes on this beauty:

I know, right?! Way to go, Mike. We’ll be thrilled to carry this one around long after the fest.

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SXSWi to have early badge pick-up on Thursday

As we reported last night on Twitter, the South by Southwest Interactive festival is introducing early badge pickup for registrants Thursday evening, 7 to 10 p.m.

In an e-mail to attendees, organizers said, “Due to the surge in registrations, SXSW has arranged to open registration the evening of Thursday March 12th to accommodate our registrants.”

Pick-up will be on the fourth floor of the Austin Convention Center. Normal registration on Friday will go from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Far from dropping or staying flat from last year’s attendance, the fest seems to be unbuckled by the wildly contracting economy. In fact, Interactive is growing. How much of that is people job hunting, do ya think?

Over the next week, you’ll find stories here and in the newspaper about that very issue, as well as a Tech Monday column from me about new things at the fest and an XL Ent issue with a preview of the fest and other goodies.

For now, here’s another video from our chat with Interactive organizers Hugh Forrest and Shawn O’Keefe:

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March 5, 2009

SXSW Interactive daily picks: parties, panels and more

What to do and where to go at South by Southwest Interactive? The choices can be overwhelming and you always feel like you’re missing something.

If you’re attending, here’s our picks for the five days of the fest, as compiled by myself and by my editor Sarah Lindner:

Friday, March 13

Thom Singer writes and speaks about networking, and today he discusses how to make connections at SXSW Interactive during “Core Conversation: The Conference Networking Catalyst” (2 p.m., Room 19B). To read some of Singer’s advice, visit statesman.com/lifeguide. You can also get ready for the rest of the conference at “How to Rock SXSW: The Basics” (3:30 p.m., Room 18BCD).
“The Ecosystem of News” is the first of several panels on the future of the news business (3:30 p.m., Room 12AB).
If you’re facing career transition (and who isn’t these days?), Jonathan Fields reads from his book “Career Renegade” (4:30 p.m., Day Stage).

More panel picks: “Everything You Know About Web Design Is Wrong” (2 p.m., Room A); “Social Engineering: Scam Your Way Into Anything or From Anybody” (5 p.m., Room 18BCD); “Try Making Yourself More Interesting” (5 p.m., Room A).
Nighttime events: “Pastries and Pasties! A Burlesque Cupcake Cookoff!” 9 p.m., Emos, 603 Red River St. Free to badge-holders.

Saturday, March 14

Last year’s panel by the staff of The Onion News Network was a hit. This year’s must-see panel for comedy fans is “Comedy on Television and the Web” (5 p.m., Room A) featuring Ricky Van Veen of CollegeHumor.com and B.J. Novak, producer and Ryan Howard on “The Office.”
Tony Hsieh, the popular CEO of online shoe seller Zappos.com, presents the opening remarks (2 p.m., Room A) on how to build a massive audience for a brand.
Where is old media going in a new-media world? Call us curious. Designers at the Gray Lady explain “Designing the Future of the New York Times” (5 p.m, Hilton C).
Last year’s sudden video-game celebrity Jonathan Blow, who made the breakout downloadable game “Braid,” speaks on “Being Indie and Successful in the Video Game Industry” (3:30 p.m., Room 6). The panel also includes Ron Carmel of 2D Boy, the company that made fan fave “World of Goo.”

More panel picks:“Curating the Crowd-Sourced World” (11:30 a.m., Room C), “What Your Startup Can Learn from Barack Obama and Howard Dean” (11:30 a.m., Room 9), “Feed Me: Bite Size Info for a Hungry Internet” (3:30, Room B), “HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility!” (3:30 p.m., Room 18BCD).
Nighttime events: Dorkbot (6 p.m., East Tent, Brush Square Park across from Convention Center) is always a mix of cool gadgets and extreme geek culture. The legendary Frog Design Opening Party (8 p.m., Mexican American Cultural Center) never disappoints. Last year, it featured fire dancers and Grupo Fantasma. Free drinks for badge-holders at both events.

Sunday, March 15

Nate Silver, the numbers wiz at fivethirtyeight.com who correctly predicted much of what went down in the 2008 presidential election, is the Sunday keynote interview. (2 p.m. Room A)
Several day events deal with tech and women’s issues including “That’s Not My Name: Beating Down Online Misogyny” (10 a.m. Room 8), “Moms Who Tech” (11:30 a.m. Room 19B) and an interview with Blogher founder Elisa Camahort (3 p.m. Studio SX) by Time Out NY columnist Julia Allison.
Joss Whedon company player Felicia Day (“Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”) is on the “No Budget to Low Budget” Web video panel. (10 a.m. Room 12AB).
Singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos and Burnie Burns of Austin’s Rooster Teeth Productions lead a star-studded panel, “Marketing Meets New Media: Building Your Audience Online” (3:30 p.m. Room 12AB).

More panel picks: “From Flickr and Beyond: Lessons in Community Management” (3:30 p.m. Room A), “Your Personal Blog is Dead” (3:30 p.m., Room 5A), “Video Blogging: Turning Wine Into Gold” (5 p.m. Room A).
Nighttime events: Adobe’s 12th-Annual SXSW Web Awards Ceremony (7:30 p.m. Hilton Austin, 500 E. Fourth St.) celebrates the best of the Web, and the Facebook Friends.Get Party hits downtown. (9:30 p.m. Pangaea, 409 Colorado St.) The American-Statesman’s Texas Social Media Awards holds its first party to celebrate social media and award an overall winner. (6 p.m., Ballet Austin, Tickets $15).

Monday, March 16

This year’s lineup boasts some interesting panels about women and the Web, including “Grokking Bloggers: It’s About Love and Underpants” (10 a.m., Room C). Elisa Camahort of BlogHer talks about women’s avid adoption of Web 2.0 tools. It’s followed by “Are Women Taken More Seriously on the Web?” (11:30 a.m., Room C).
Get a double dose of perennial SXSW favorite Kathy Sierra today: She’s part of the “Presenting Straight to the Brain” panel (10 a.m., Room A), and later she presents “Change Your World in 50 Minutes: Making Breakthroughs Happen” (3:30 p.m., Room A).
The best-selling authors of “The Power of Nice” are now talking about “The Power of Small” (10 a.m., Room 10).
Virginia Heffernan of The New York Times talks with artist James Powderly in today’s keynote interview (2 p.m., Room A).
Bruce Sterling’s pronouncements are a SXSW mainstay (5 p.m., Room A).

More panel picks: “Beyond Aggregation — Finding the Web’s Best Content” (10 a.m., Hilton Room A); “Shift Happens: Moving From Words to Pictures” (10 a.m., Hilton Room C); “WhiteHouse.gov 2.0: Upgrading to Open Source Government” (3:30 p.m., Hilton Room D). Nighttime events: “Interactive at the Movies: The Two Bobs.” (7 p.m., Paramount Theatre, 713 Congress Ave.). The gaming-themed movie by Tim McCanlies (“Iron Giant” screenplay) plays for Interactive badge-holders.

Tuesday, March 17

“Ur Blog Sux and Print Is Dead” features a lineup of blogging all-stars (Ben Huh of I Can Has Cheezburger?, Christian Lander of Stuff White People Like, Kerry Miller of Passive-Aggressive Notes, Heather “Dooce” Armstrong and ex-Wonkette Ana Marie Cox) talking about, appropriately enough, blogging success (11:30 a.m. Room 18BCD).
We were charmed when the 1960s characters from “Mad Men” showed up talking with each other on Twitter. The perpetrators of it all explain how it happened at “Behind the Scenes with Mad Men on Twitter” (2 p.m. Room 18BCD).
Leaders at popular Web destinations Fark.com, Ars Technica and BlogHer talk about “Building Strong Online Communities” (11:30 a.m. Room A).
Today’s keynote interview features former Apple Fellow and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki interviewing Chris Anderson (“The Long Tail”) about “the power of free” (2 p.m. Room A).

More panel picks: “The State of the Internet Memescape: 2008-10” (10 a.m. Room 18BCD); “Photojournalism in 2009 and The Big Picture” (10 a.m. Room 10); “Digital Tsunami: Breaking News at Breakneck Speed” (11:30 a.m. Room B); “Designing Change in America”(3:30 p.m. Room 8).
Nighttime events: Media Temple Closing Party (7 p.m. La Zona Rosa, 612 W. Fourth St

Got more suggestions for what to check out at Interactive? Post them in the comments.

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March 4, 2009

South by Southwest Interactive on the Web

We plan to do quite a lot of work during South by Southwest Interactive (in fact, it’s already started; I’m swamped!). But, far be it from us to make you think we’re the only ones hard at work. While you’ll be able to find videos, photo galleries, panel and keynote updates, breaking news and other information right here (and on the rest of Austin360), there are plenty of other sites who will be offering their own takes on the fest.

It’s a big fest, with lots of news and coverage to go around.

Here’s my list of top 10 Web resources for SXSW Interactive:

From last year’s fest.

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February 27, 2009

'Rock Band' adds Stevie Ray album, plans for SXSW

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble’s legendary “Texas Flood” album is coming to “Rock Band” and the publisher of the game will be hosting a South by Southwest music showcase.

All 10 songs from “Texas Flood” will be available Tuesday on the Live Marketplace for Xbox 360 and Thursday on the PlayStation Network for the PlayStation 3. No release date has been set for the Nintendo Wii version of the game.

The songs will cost $1.99 each or $15.99 for the complete album.

MTV Games, the publisher of “Rock Band” also announced Thursday an official South by Southwest showcase, March 18 at Vice on Sixth Street. MTV Games will also host a Rock Band Lounge March 19 to March 21 behind the Marriott/Residence Inn.

“Texas Flood” joins other downloadable albums on the Rock Band Store including Foo Fighters’ “The Colour and the Shape,” Rush’s “Moving Pictures” and The Pixies’ “Doolittle.”

Edited to add: The Wii console will also get the songs Tuesday. Each will cost 200 Wii points ($2 each).

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February 18, 2009

Statesman announces Texas Social Media Award winners

At midnight last night, the results of the first-ever Texas Social Media Awards were posted. Of more than 100 nominees from the public, 25 were chosen. I was one of the judges, along with food writer Addie Broyles and TSMA mastermind (and Statesman Twitter wrangler) Rob Quigley.

At a Statesman event on March 15, an overall winner will be announced. There will be drinks.

Without getting too deep into the mysterious dark arts that went into the actual judging (all right, the scoop: we used lots of dry ice and a crystal ball), I can say that there was no shortage of amazing people on the list and the most difficult part was whittling it to a mere 25.

You can see the complete list of winners and judges’ comments on this page.

I’ve been lucky enough on my beat to get to know many of the 25 on this list (and many more who were on the list of nominees) and it was gratifying to read comments from supporters that confirmed much of what I’ve thought and written about some of them. We have some pretty amazing people doing some fascinating things with their blogs, Twitter feeds, with video, out in the community, and in thousands of personal interactions with others.

This award was about those who are most affecting change using these tools. I’m pleased we were able to highlight some of their tireless work.

The only disappointment for me, personally, is that my nickname for the awards, the “T’SMAckies” (silent T, remember) doesn’t seem to be taking off. Come on, people! If you really want to impress me, you’ll use social media to make “T’SMAckies” a reality. Don’t let it be 2009’s version of “Fetch.” (See “Mean Girls” for reference.)

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February 13, 2009

Alert: South by Southwest panel schedules are up

Panel schedules for Interactive, Music Talks, film screenings and and music festival showcases are now up at the SXSW.com Web site.

Hoping we’ll see these go up on Sched.org soon, too.

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February 11, 2009

Tomorrow night: Austin gets Twestival'd

Like everyone else attending South by Southwest Interactive, I am quivering beyond words at the just-released party schedule. Monday night looks to be an absolute party disaster of epic proportions.

I mean that in a good way. Too many parties is a great problem to have.

On the way to SXSW, however, we’ve got some pretty great lead-up events like tomorrow night’s Austin Twestival (or as I’m calling it, “Like Water for Charity.”) The event, which costs $5-$15 depending on what you’d like to give, is raising money for “charity: water,” a group that brings wells for clean water to poor areas.

More than 175 cities are expected to participate in the worldwide fest.

Austin Twestival is being organized by Michelle Greer, a social media powerhouse whose specialty of late seems to be getting people off their heinies and into action for good causes. Good on her.

Austin Twestival will feature music by T-Bird and the Breaks as well as sumo suit wrestling, tech giveaways and lots of Twitter talk. It’ll be at 8 p.m., Aces Lounge, 222 E. Sixth St.

I’ll definitely be there for as long as I can — come say hi and help the world.

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February 10, 2009

More Interactive updates: SXSW Web Award, Screenburn nominees

More updates from South by Southwest Interactive, which is only a month away! (Start catching up on sleep NOW, attendees.)

The 12th Annual South by Southwest Interactive Web Award finalists have been announced for 18 categories including “Art,” “Blog” and “Mobile” (plus “Best of Show” and “People’s Choice”). Go check ‘em out. The awards will be presented Sunday, March 15 and hosted by Baratunde Thurston, an Onion editor who specializes in political commentary.

I’m still bitter about missing Eugene Mirman, one of my favorite comics, at last year’s ceremony. But duty called and I… called in for duty. The good news is that Mirman will be in down Feb. 17 at BookPeople to promote his new book, “The Will to Whatevs.” And he’ll be back in Austin in May to open the Flight of the Conchords show. I WILL NOT MISS MIRMAN THIS TIME!

In other SXSWi news, finalists for the Screeburn game design competition have been announced as well. Screenburn is one of SXSW’s best-kept secrets, a free game festival open to the public. It grows every year and if you’re not able to register for the festival itself, it’s a great way to get a taste of Interactive.

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February 9, 2009

SXSWi brings numbers whiz Silver; Amazon Kindle 2 introduced

On Friday evening I posted on Twitter that South by Southwest Interactive has finally announced its Sunday keynote speaker. It’s a doozy. (“Doozy” is still a thing, right?)

Nate Silver, the numbers whiz at fivethirtyeight.com, will be filling the Sunday Interactive keynote hole. Interviewing him will be BusinessWeek reporter Stephen Baker, whom we hope will do a better job keeping the audience satisfied than his colleague Sarah Lacy did last year in the same slot. Silver made headlines last year with his tight science, using his skills at baseball predictions to make eerily accurate projections of last year’s election.

He joins artist James Powderly (interviewed by Virginia Heffernan of the New York Times), tech guru and Apple vet Guy Kawasaki (interviewed by Wired chief Chris Anderson) on the keynote schedule. Tony Hsieh of shoe seller Zappos will deliver the opening remarks on March 14.

After our speculation on who the Sunday keynoter should be, I’m pleased; Silver seems like the perfect choice.

Also announced recently: B.J. Novak, a producer and star of “The Office” will be on a comedy-on-the-Web panel. Can’t wait.

I have a novelist friend who e-mailed me a few weeks ago asking if I’d heard anything about a revamped version of Amazon’s Kindle e-book device. Well, the company has answered his prayers: today, it announced Kindle 2, a sleeker version of its clunky beige device. The new Kindle is only 1/3rd of an inch thick, has a longer battery life and more storage than the original Kindle. It costs $359 and is available for pre-order for release on Feb. 24th.

Like the original Kindle, it can download content over a nationwide high-speed wireless network without monthly fees. It also purports to have an improved display in 16 shades of gray.

Most intriguing is a new text-to-speech feature; it will read, out loud, any content it downloads, from books to newspapers and blogs.

Amazon is also introducing a $2.99 bonus for Kindle buyers: a new story by Stephen King called “UR,” written exclusively for the device.

Amazon introduced the original Kindle in late 2007 and despite lots of skepticism about it, they may have sold as many as a half million of the e-book readers, according to some analyst reports.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Gadgets, Internet, SXSW 2009

February 2, 2009

SXSW Interactive site gets more interactive; full schedule pre-released

Late this afternoon, the South by Southwest Interactive Web site began shifting into high gear with new features and an updated conference schedule, available only to registered attendees. The full schedule won’t be available to the public in final form until mid-February.

The new feature is a Web site platform is called “my.SXSW” and it’s an application that allows attendees to create a profile, make a calendar, find others who are attending the festival and share their personal schedule. You’ll also be able to get notifications on schedule changes and the site promises to integrate with Twitter, Flickr and Facebook.

As of this moment, I’m not able to log in to the site to tell you more about it, but I’ll keep updating when I make it in. If you’re able to access the site, let me know and tell me your thoughts.

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January 26, 2009

SXSW's mystery Sunday keynote spot: who will it be?

A few weeks ago, I had a morning coffee with our biz reporter Lilly Rockwell and two representatives handling PR for the South by Southwest Interactive festival. It was soon after the day-by-day panel list appeared and one of my big questions was what was up with that big hole on the schedule for the Sunday morning keynote.

All the schedule said was, “Keynote TBA,” and when I asked them about it, I was figuring that it was a big name and that logistics were still being worked out.

Instead, I was told that as of that point, there was no Sunday keynote. It wasn’t a big surprise or something being kept under wraps. That person simply wasn’t known yet. They asked me if I had suggestions.

By now, things are probably much further along in the process and I expect we’ll find out who’s in that slot when the more fleshed-out list of panelists goes public in early February. (No, I haven’t seen it. I’ve asked.)

The Sunday keynote slot is a good one because of where it falls during the festival. Out-of-towners have arrived and settled in. People aren’t yet burned out on going to panels (as they tend to be by late Monday and Tuesday), skipping them for a road trips to The Salt Lick or sleeping out the revelry of the night before.

Last year’s Sunday keynote featured the biggest name of the festival, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and it was, well… eventful.

The year before, the keynote was a mid-afternoon “Keynote Conversation” with Limor Fried and Make magazine’s Phil Torrone about open source and the DIY movement. Prescient, right? Those were good picks.

Based on what’s already on the schedule, we can speculate on where the festival might go if they have their druthers. Here are three theories I have on who that Sunday speaker will be:

The Twitter approach: I’m sure most who don’t use Twitter are absolutely sick of hearing about it (I spotted the word “Twittering” on the front page of today’s New York Times, which is happening with increasing frequency). But it is, by far, the most significant technology to launch out of the South by Southwest Interactive festival since, probably, Blogger. Given how tied the fest was to the birth of Twitter, it wouldn’t surprise me to see company founders Jack Dorsey and/or Biz Stone on stage. One or both of them could be paired up with a power-user interviewer (loveable Leo Laporte, perhaps, or the love-him-or-hate-him Robert Scoble). Based on the other keynotes already announced, it makes sense. Saturday is about marketing and business, Monday is about art and Tuesday’s keynote is likely focused on RSS and Guy Kawasaki’s past with Apple. It makes sense that the Sunday slot would be about social networking.

The tech legend approach: Given Kawasaki’s history, it might be too much Apple, but I bet one of the names being tossed around as a keynote speaker is Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The Woz is still outspoken about Apple and has a unique perspective on the company’s recent hot streak and its travails with Steve Jobs’ health. Woz is never not interesting; he’d be a great draw and there is never a lack of interest in what Apple is doing, how it is evolving and what the inside scoop might be. Short of that, another interesting tech legend would be HP’s ex-CEO Carly Fiorina to talk about the intersection of technology and politics. If nothing else, it would great to hear some of her war stories from her involvement with the McCain campaign last year from a techie’s perspective.

Bring on the game God: Another keynote subject missing is something about video games. I hate to beat the drum again about how significant the games industry has become (last year, it outsold movie and DVD sales). That being said, most game industry types are not fantastic speakers for conferences like this. “Sims” creator Will Wright spoke two years ago and was riveting. Richard Garriott is always entertaining, but his last gaming venture was not a huge success. The best speaker (with a translator) would be Nintendo’s legendary Shigeru Miyamoto. The Mario maven and Wii wizard is beloved, intelligent beyond belief and riding a wave of success unparalleled in the games world right now. He was instrumental in the shift to making games more mainstream. It would be incredible to hear where he thinks Nintendo can go from here.

So, there you go, South by Southwest. My consulting fee is waived. Go get ‘em.

Readers — what do you think? Who do you think should be the Sunday keynote speaker?

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January 12, 2009

Day-by-day panel list released for SXSWi '09

It’s hard to believe South by Southwest Interactive 2009 is only two months away. But the reality sinks in when you look at the day-by-day lineup of panels and keynotes: SXSW has released a list today and says it will have a finalized schedule of timeslots and descriptions by early February. (The festival runs March 13-March 17.)

Aside from panels we see variations of every year (“How to Rawk SXSW,” “Building and Maintaining Strong Communities Online”) there are some interesting trends. Staffers from The New York Times, which was recently pre-obitted by Atlantic in a piece that imagined its demise, are on the schedule, including a Monday keynote interview by Virginia Herffernan of Graffiti Research Lab founder James Powderly. There’s also a panel called “Designing the Future of The New York Times” and “Get Me Rewrite! Developing APIs and the Changing Face of News,” featuring Times staffers.

The keynote slot for Sunday is still TBA, but the opening remarks on Saturday will be from Tony Hsieh, CEO of shoe seller Zappos.com, which has made a big splash on Twitter.

Tuesday’s keynote is a conversation between Chris Anderson of Wired and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki of alltop.com (who made his name as an Apple evangelist).

Many locals are heading up panels and, as usual, there’s a good mix of business-focused panels, panels about design and Web interfaces and, not surprisingly, a lot about social networking.

What panels are you most looking forward to checking out if you’re going to SXSW?

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December 19, 2008

The Linkdown for Friday, Dec. 19

Ah, we have arrived. It’s the end of my week and the end of my year at the Statesman (at least until Dec. 31 when I make a brief appearance and then disappear again until Jan. 2).

It’s been a pretty incredible year and I owe much of it to you readers who have been nothing short of awesome. (I’m not always as curmudgeonly as yesterday, I assure you). Thanks for a great year — I wish you all a lovely holiday, no matter where you’ll be or what you’re doing.

Here’s the last Linkdown for 2008, your list of happy-happy, joy-joy links you should check out before you head to the airport or cuddle around a pot of hot cocoa:

Hey, it’s Postmaster Santa! I didn’t even know he got promoted!
Konami is bring “Metal Gear Solid,” “Frogger,” “Hellboy” and other hot properties to the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Slacker.com has introduced a budget $3.99-a-month pricing option called Slacker Radio Plus.
You can now mix together your own NPR Podcast. Make sure to include their Technology podcast. I hear that one is absolutely awesome.
Speaking of which, this week’s All Tech Considered segment was a holiday tech gift guide. I seem to have worked on quite a few of those this year for someone who hasn’t yet bought any Christmas gifts.
I made these cookies last night. They’re pretty awesome.
You can now shop directly for some items from Yellowpages.com and see other new features in the site’s redesign. Ever wanted to see streaming video for “MAIL SERVICES - MATTRESS?” Now may be your chance.
I got a lot of questions about MagicJack, which I included in our holiday gift guide. Now another service, Calling America, promises Web-based calling without any software or extra hardware to install. Skeptical? Try it out and let me know what you think
A new online magazine for nerds like you and me, EnlightenNext. They tell me it’s for “Early adapters.” Quick! Adapt!
Wanna know how 3G service stacks up in Austin? Gizmodo is on the case.
Of course it had to happen: the presidential shoe-throwing incident is now a fun Flash game.
NCSoft (oh, NCSoft; don’t go!) is rolling out “City of Heroes” for the Mac. You can read about the beta..
The Statesman is launching its Texas Social Media Awards and you can nominate someone (Texans only). Much to the annoyance of my co-workers, I am dubbing it the “TSmackies” (with a silent “T”). Come on, TSmackies! Let’s make this thing happen! The winning will culminate in a big bash during South by Southwest Interactive.
AOL presents yet another Web award: The URLies!
UT alum Felicia Day of “Dr. Horrible” and “The Guild” has had her show added to Xbox Live. Yay, Felicia!

And that’s it! Be safe. Talk to you very soon.

Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Austin, Internet, Phones, SXSW 2009, Shopping, Videogames

August 8, 2008

Pick a peck of panels with Picker (for SXSW Interactive)

The famed Panel Picker, the tool by which the South by Southwest Interactive attendees can help choose the panels for 2009’s festival (or at least have a 30 percent say in it), is now live.

The list of possible panels is so enormous that, on my last day before vacation, it just makes me want to go take a long nap in anticipation of next March.

Almost as soon as the Panel Picker went live this morning, the lobbying began in earnest with folks who’d submitted panel ideas weeks ago asking for votes. (A panel submitted by the Statesman on how Old Media is using Twitter was no exception.)

What am I voting for? Well… heh… little problem there. I registered over an hour ago and still haven’t received the confirmation e-mail that allows me to log in and start assigning star-based ratings.

I’ve received messages saying other people are having similar issues. I’m just hoping it arrived in the next two and a half hours before I go into official Vacation Mode and stop caring about anything related to technology. If I talk about anything more digital than a toaster next week, please remind me that I’m off the clock.

Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Austin, Internet, SXSW 2009