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March 11, 2008
What I learned at SXSW
Whew! It's been a whirlwind five days at my first SXSW Interactive.
I'm exhausted, but my head is buzzing with ideas. Here's my list of top panels, cool people and new technology I wanted to share:
Panels
- Opening Remarks with Henry Jenkins. Jenkins is the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program. He smartly dissected the misperception that today's kids are the dumbest generation. Because of technology, kids today know how to collaborate online with peers better than adults, but the education system hasn't caught up with their skills. More from his talk here and here.
- The Worst Ten Social Media Campaigns of 2007. All 10 are here. The #1 worst campaign as voted by the audience was nominated by Jeff Jarvis: HP and PayPerPost. PayPerPost is a service that pays bloggers to write positive posts about companies. For the HP campaign, a PayPerPost blogger filmed her kids smashing up a camera with an hammer because it wasn't an HP. Shilling one's kids may be buzzworthy, but it's not loyalty-worthy.
- 10 Easy Ways to Piss of a Blogger. Rohit moderated this open forum session and asked the crowd to compile the list. All 10 are here. My favorite: adding a blogger to a PR database without their permission and not letting them unsubscribe. Doh! More here.
- True Stories from Social Media Sites. Besides the Zuckerberg interview, this session was clearly the most entertaining. Guy Kawasaki hilariously moderated this panel of entrepreneurs who run social media sites. Guy gets extra points for assembling a panel of 6 women (and 1 guy.) Main take-away: the site is not about you. Cater to the community that participates and find more ways for them to engage with each other.
People
The best part of the conference: meeting people you know online but haven't met in person. Here's a few we ran into at SXSW:
- Mack Collier. He rawked as the moderator of the Corporate Blogging Panel, and And he'd never moderated a panel ever! Made it look easy.
- CC Chapman. His new gig is The Advance Guard. CC is one of those people that you just hug at first meeting.
- Jason Falls. Dude is a straight-up social media expert and works at the fifth oldest advertising agency in the U.S.
We met up with many more people; here's a few to follow on Twitter: @davedelaney, @lionel_menchaca, @jakemckee, @khaynes, @kamichat, @scottmonty, @afterthelaunch, @rohitbhargava, @richardatdell, @astrout
Technology
- Twitter. Last year, Twitter was the breakout star of SXSW. It was again this year. I'm a Twitter n00b, so SXSW this year was my chance to discover its utility; I started following a number of fellow attendees. Suddenly I knew the location of the cool panels and parties. Twitter immediately proved its value as a beacon of real-time word of mouth. Can I continue the Twitter lifestyle in everyday life? Possibly, if addiction is a good thing. BTW, my Twitter address is jackiehuba.
- Flip video cameras. These compact video cameras were everywhere. A Flip is simple to use and fits in your pocket. Its USB arm plugs directly into a laptop where the videos can be published to YouTube immediately. Virginia used her new Flip to document how she and three other bloggers on their way to SXSW were bumped unceremoniously from a United flight because the airline oversold. Sadly, Virginia never made it to SXSW : (
Would I recommend SXSW and go again next year? Absolutely.
UPDATE: You can hear podcasts that Ben and I did with Jim and Aaron from Mzinga at SXSW.
UPDATE: You can see interviews we did with the Daily Idea Show here. It was great to meet Nikki and Todd who are the masterminds behind this fun online show.
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What a head-spinning, mind-stretching and liver-challenging week it was!
I'm so grateful for the soon-to-come podcasts and the people who are sharing their notes on the panels they attended since it was impossible to attend every single panel of interest. At some points, I was torn between four concurrent ones I wanted to see.
SXSW is a definite go for me as well next year!
Cheers,
Vero
Great to meet you too Jackie and Ben. You are right, the people made the conference, and I agree, Jason was great and CC did an amazing job on the How to Rawk SXSW Staying Inspired panel, it was a blast!
Anyone that hasn't been, simply must go, the people are absolutely amazing!
BTW for me everyone was using Twitter to schedule meetups instead of emails, did you see the same?
No one I was conversing with at SXSW was using email to connect with others. It was all Twitter all the time.
Jackie, I got to see you at the last panel before lunch on Tuesday, where you asked the crowd for ideas on making a cool business conference like SXSW. It was nice to see you up there, I should have said hello again (we met in Milwaukee at your book presentation and we talked Twitter too!).
I learned that SXSW is all about the people. Panels were cool, but meeting such a variety of people who were friends or those I admired was way cooler. I liked that I could walk up to someone I knew or though was cool and say hello.
As a first timer to SXSW I had a great time. I think it helped that I had 2 friends from MKE with me to experience it. Going alone would have been hard. In fact, I'm wondering if for 09 there could be some movement for the vets to look for newbies and just bring them along as apprentices to SXSW.
Anyway, just posted up my sketchnotes from the week of panels I attended and thought you might get a kick out of them. They're up on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rohdesign/sets/72157604109069527/
Thanks for your lessons learned and for coming to SXSW, I appreciated the contribution I saw you making very much. :-)
It was SOOOO much fun to finally get to meet with you and then spend so much time chatting and getting to know one another. Then on top of that you got to be part of my panel. Thanks for your participation on that one.
Keep doing what your doing and I can't wait to cross paths again real soon.
Oh, Pshaw! Thank you, so much, for the gratuitous mention. I was thrilled to meet both you and Ben and can't wait to get you down to the distillery for fun with Bill. I'm organizing my agency on Swom today! (And I returned to my office to find both of your books returned to me by people who had borrowed them to read. I'm going to read them again, just 'cause.
Hah thats great. I love the comments about the liver killing adventures. I have heard some news of SXSW being a nerds paradise, but I guess some people can confirm that! haha!
Jackie,
It was great to see you and Ben too ... thanks for the mention! I managed to get my photo of the two of you with your SWOM turbans up on Flickr too:
http://flickr.com/photos/rohitbhargava/2328395009/in/set-72157604104842251/
Hi Jackie,
It was great to meet you at SXSW. You look just like your picture-a good thing! = )
I hope our paths cross again soon.
Hey Jackie
I am glad we got to have dinner at SXSW!
Speak to you soon.
Great seeing you both in Austin! We'll have to make it more of a habit since we're (relatively) close!
