Got up and made my way down to the convention centre just before 9am to take in as much SXSWi as I could on the last day. The sessions/events I attended over the course of the day included, 14,000 Songs in 28 Days, Social Business, Keynote: The Future of Business Delivery, Cracking the Books: User Generated Content Management in Education, 140 Conference (Twitter) and the very fun Interactive Closing Party Hosted by (mt) Media Temple at the Mohawk.
I was a both sad and relieved to have the conference wrap up - with all the activity I was starting to feel a bit frayed around the edges - but part of me wished it wasn’t over. Or rather, part of me wished I had made plans to stick around for SXSW Music. Next time ;)
It wasn’t a perfect experience, there were a few bumps along the way, but the issues were relatively minor and not out of the ordinary for a large-scale conference (long line-ups for registration, occasional long waits for shuttles, and the false alarm evacuation come to mind). I attended one or two sessions (out of the 20+ total sessions I took in) that were disappointing or not what I expected, but the solution was simply to move onto another panel discussion or event.
As a whole I had a fabulous ‘noobie’ experience at SXSWi. The opportunity to listen to, and sometimes even speak with, the creators and developers of the tools I work with was priceless. The conference was well organized and I found the content to be extremely useful. On the networking side, I made a lot of great contacts and more importantly, some new friends.
SXSWi 2010 was one of the best professional development experiences I’ve had and I’d definitely love to come back for SXSWi 2011. Thanks Austin and SXSW!
Additional resources:
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
SXSWi 2010, March 15, 2010 - Day 4
I'm guessing most people in the attendance at Dries Buytaert’s session, RIP Content Management System, myself included, don’t require a Drupal pitch to understand the benefits of going open source. That said, it didn’t detract from the geek thrill of listening to Buytaert, creator of Drupal, plead it’s case. The room - one of the ballrooms on the main level of the convention centre - was packed to capacity and despite complaints on Twitter about the lack of content and new information, nobody left. Buytaert took us through the ever expanding list of government organizations, corporations, and institutions who build their sites using Drupal. Upgrades introduced with Drupal 6, Drupal’s scalability, and the upcoming release of Drupal 7 were also touched upon. I was very pleased to get the opportunity to speak with Buytaert afterwards and came away with some useful information that will be of great help with a project I’m currently involved with at UVic.
Too bad about Monday’s keynote address! I think we learned at this keynote that a popular interviewer and a brilliant, visionary mind do not necessarily make for a great presentation. I’m not exactly sure what happened but of the 3,000 people who packed the main exhibit hall to listen to Evan Williams discuss Twitter, the majority had vacated by the time the address hit the half-way point. Things did start off with a bang with Williams announcing the new Twitter’s new ‘@’ platform - integration for websites called @Anywhere. The rest of the interview went pretty smoothly with Williams talking about his involvement in Twitter’s continuing development and strategy; his thoughts on building the company both externally and internally; his view of the Internet as a facilitator of the democratization of information and the role he expects Twitter will play.
Finished off my day at the Adobe All-Access Happy Hour with some yummy food, free drinks, tons of give-aways and a team of Adobe experts on hand to demo the latest updates and new products. Updates and new products included Flash Mobile development tool and Browser Lab which allow you to overlay opaque renderings of web pages in different browsers. How awesome is that?
What happened at the end of the day was probably the highlight of my entire SXSW experience, and similar to our trip to the Olympics, it had nothing to do with the core focus of the event, but with music. Half way through the day I noticed on Facebook that Billy Bragg was playing a surprise show at the British Music Embassy that night! Unfortunately I already knew I was too pooped to make it to the late hour of midnight when he would be taking the stage. That said after the Adobe Happy Hour wrapped up, I headed over to the BME on the off chance that I might catch a sound check and guess who was there, hanging out! Now that I think about it, perhaps running into Billy Bragg is appropriate to the conference…in addition to being one of my fave musicians he is also my social media hero. Check out his NoBonus4RBS Facebook page for an example of his handiwork.
He may not be a techie but he’s got the social part down pat.
Too bad about Monday’s keynote address! I think we learned at this keynote that a popular interviewer and a brilliant, visionary mind do not necessarily make for a great presentation. I’m not exactly sure what happened but of the 3,000 people who packed the main exhibit hall to listen to Evan Williams discuss Twitter, the majority had vacated by the time the address hit the half-way point. Things did start off with a bang with Williams announcing the new Twitter’s new ‘@’ platform - integration for websites called @Anywhere. The rest of the interview went pretty smoothly with Williams talking about his involvement in Twitter’s continuing development and strategy; his thoughts on building the company both externally and internally; his view of the Internet as a facilitator of the democratization of information and the role he expects Twitter will play.
Finished off my day at the Adobe All-Access Happy Hour with some yummy food, free drinks, tons of give-aways and a team of Adobe experts on hand to demo the latest updates and new products. Updates and new products included Flash Mobile development tool and Browser Lab which allow you to overlay opaque renderings of web pages in different browsers. How awesome is that?
What happened at the end of the day was probably the highlight of my entire SXSW experience, and similar to our trip to the Olympics, it had nothing to do with the core focus of the event, but with music. Half way through the day I noticed on Facebook that Billy Bragg was playing a surprise show at the British Music Embassy that night! Unfortunately I already knew I was too pooped to make it to the late hour of midnight when he would be taking the stage. That said after the Adobe Happy Hour wrapped up, I headed over to the BME on the off chance that I might catch a sound check and guess who was there, hanging out! Now that I think about it, perhaps running into Billy Bragg is appropriate to the conference…in addition to being one of my fave musicians he is also my social media hero. Check out his NoBonus4RBS Facebook page for an example of his handiwork.
He may not be a techie but he’s got the social part down pat.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
SXSWi 2010, March 14, 2010 - Day 3
When I arrived at the convention centre at the late hour of 10am things were relatively quiet. I spent the morning checking out some of the sponsor lounges and then hit the exhibition floor. The exhibits for the film and interactive portions of the conference share the same space, which makes for a neat mix of exhibitors some of whom you might not normally see at an interactive and web trade show, but whose products and services are still relevant.
The theme of the day - for me at least - was social change. Of the keynotes so far, Valerie Casey’s address, “Systems Design Inspiration” has by far been my favourite. Casey’s presentation focused on fostering sustainable practices through systems design and included specific tactics of implementing change. Casey’s approach included, examining issues in a larger context, creating the right measurement of success and acknowledgment of the concept that it is necessary to change the purpose/goal in order to effect change. In closing Casey observed that the Interactive community has to be the leader in making change and called for audience member to step up to the plate.
I followed up the key note with the very well attended Crowd Sourcing Innovative Social Change. The session was held in a packed room with a very enthusiastic audience who were given the opportunity to participate in some real-time crowd sourcing. Joining the in-person attendees were a fair number of followers participating in the discussion from around the world.
The HTML 5 Accessibility panel included presenters Cynthia Shelly from Microsoft and John Foliot from Stanford. Along with the Designing for CMS and Objective C Crash Course for Developers this was amongst the more technical presentations I’ve attended. Shelly and Foliot demo-ed the still in development HTML 5 and provided a fairly detailed tour of the new document semantics. The discussion branched into the idea that these technical updates should be accompanied by a shift in attitude towards providing a better quality browsing experience for the disabled.
I finished up the day at the 13th Annual SXSWi web awards - a semi-swanky night of fun held at the Hiton. Our host for the evening, Doug Benson, did a fantastic (occasionally abrasive) job on the mic.
The theme of the day - for me at least - was social change. Of the keynotes so far, Valerie Casey’s address, “Systems Design Inspiration” has by far been my favourite. Casey’s presentation focused on fostering sustainable practices through systems design and included specific tactics of implementing change. Casey’s approach included, examining issues in a larger context, creating the right measurement of success and acknowledgment of the concept that it is necessary to change the purpose/goal in order to effect change. In closing Casey observed that the Interactive community has to be the leader in making change and called for audience member to step up to the plate.
I followed up the key note with the very well attended Crowd Sourcing Innovative Social Change. The session was held in a packed room with a very enthusiastic audience who were given the opportunity to participate in some real-time crowd sourcing. Joining the in-person attendees were a fair number of followers participating in the discussion from around the world.
The HTML 5 Accessibility panel included presenters Cynthia Shelly from Microsoft and John Foliot from Stanford. Along with the Designing for CMS and Objective C Crash Course for Developers this was amongst the more technical presentations I’ve attended. Shelly and Foliot demo-ed the still in development HTML 5 and provided a fairly detailed tour of the new document semantics. The discussion branched into the idea that these technical updates should be accompanied by a shift in attitude towards providing a better quality browsing experience for the disabled.
I finished up the day at the 13th Annual SXSWi web awards - a semi-swanky night of fun held at the Hiton. Our host for the evening, Doug Benson, did a fantastic (occasionally abrasive) job on the mic.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
SXSWi 2010, March 13, 2010 - Day 2
I’ve noticed some whining on Twitter about the caliber of the SXSWi panel discussions this year, but I have no complaints. True, they haven’t all been mind-blowing, some have been a little slow, and/or not what I expected, but so far I’ve found the experience to be pretty impressive. After all, with such an expansive selection, you really can't expect them to all be stellar.
Here’s a little rundown of the panels I attended today:
Web Content Management Systems from a Designer'sPerspective
Scott Fegette – Adobe
Chris Charlton - xtnd.us
I expect this will turn out to be the most useful of the panel discussions I will attend at the conference, mainly because it was of it’s relevancy to a project I am currently involved in and a particular problem we’ve been struggling to solve for weeks. Scott Fegette started things off by going over specific concerns to be addressed when designing for CMS. His talk included tips on handy Dreamweaver functions that are specific to the process - I’m particularly excited about trying out the ‘Use Generated Markup’ option.
Chris Charlton concluded the session with the more technical details, focusing specifically on designing for Drupal. He shared information about a slew of very useful tools including a free program called Drupal Theme Starter, available on xtnd.us (a quick GUI for generating .info files for Drupal) and a list of the specific Drupal files connected to the theming process. For additional details, check out the back channel.
How to Create Viral Video
Jonathan Wells - Flux
Margaret Gould Steward, User Experience Manager - YouTube
Jason Wishnow, Director of Film and Video - TED
Damian Kulash - OK Go
With memories of how flakey less-seasoned ‘experts’ can get when they start talking about what makes a video go viral, I have to admit had some reservations about this one. Thankfully they turned out to be unfounded. The session was full of simple, straight-to-the-point steps to take to ensure your content has the opportunity to go viral. The discussion by-passed low-brow ‘viral by accident’ content (e.g. Charlie bit my finger) and delved into the much broader market driven by people who ‘do viral video on purpose’. Tactics included: building your audience; enabling embed; using metadata; distributing on multiple fronts; leveraging ‘Superspreaders’; and exclusivity.
Damian Kulash of OK Go kept it cool by sharing his experiences producing music videos with his band. To finish off the session everyone was invited to participate in the shooting of a rip on the ‘Surprised Kitty’ viral video, ‘Surprised Audience.’ “Everyone remember, there are five, ‘Koochie, koochie koo!’s before, ‘You look like a little monkey’. Ready?”
Media Armageddon: What Happens Whenthe New York Times Dies
Greg Beato – Reason Magazine
Markos Moulitsas – Daily Kos
Amy Langfield – NewYorkology LLC
David Carr – NY Times
Henry Copeland – Blogads.com
I was looking forward to this session as I’d attended a fabulous similar offering at a SIGGRAPH conference a few years back. When all is said and done, however, I don’t have much to say about this particular panel so I’m going to leave it there (it just didn’t have much to offer in the way of content). For information about traditional publishing media outlets transitioning to digital formats see remarks on, “New Publishing and Web Content” panel below.
Keynote address Danah Boyd - Privacy and Publicity
Danah Boyd is an eloquent and passionate speaker who really knows her stuff and I’m sure her presentation was more than appropriate for the majority in attendance. That said, I drifted a little during this one. Working in external relations in higher ed I am well acquainted with the multitude of privacy and ownership issues associated with publishing user-generated content. I hear about it every day, and I mean, every day.
New Publishing and Web Content
Erin Kissane – Incisive.nu
Jeffrey Zeldman – Happy Cog Studios
Lisa Holton – Fourth Story Media
Mandy Brown – Etsy
Paul Ford – Harper's Magazine
Someone on the back channel remarked that Jeffrey Zeldman should moderate every session at SXSWi. Agreed! Zeldman somehow managed to ensure this end of the day panel was paced for worn out conference goers. Quick and sharp enough to keep everyone engaged and relaxed enough to give tired brains a chance to process yet more information.
Most importantly, the discussion seemed to address all the right questions. Where the presenters in the ‘Media Armageddon’ discussion asked, ‘How many of you would pay to access the NYTimes online?’ and received a show of hesitant hands (in what appeared to be a room full of journalists). The presenters here asked, ‘How many of you would pay $3 to access the NYTimes online?' and were answered by a confident and positive response from those in attendance.
In this discussion the pros and cons of media publishing today basically stacked up like this:
Pro: It's a good time to start a publishing company. When you have an industry in the midst of change, opportunities for new models emerge.
Con: ‘It’s a terrible time to try to shoehorn existing content models into the web’. For existing models to exist they need to be open change. Paul Ford’s specific recommendation went a bit further to suggest, that publishers must first ask, ‘How do I serve and interact with people?’, then build publishing and editorial above the conclusions reached.
While I had witnessed the defensive side of this discussion earlier on in the day with one panelist simply seeming to insist traditional publishing models must be allowed to survive or accountability would be in retreat. The discussion here ended on a more pragmatic note to say that if everyone working at a newspaper looses their jobs because someone hasn’t figured it out yet, they will just go work for someone else who has. We don’t know what the future of publishing will look like, but it will come.
All in all, a pretty good day.
Here’s a little rundown of the panels I attended today:
Web Content Management Systems from a Designer's
Scott Fegette – Adobe
Chris Charlton - xtnd.us
I expect this will turn out to be the most useful of the panel discussions I will attend at the conference, mainly because it was of it’s relevancy to a project I am currently involved in and a particular problem we’ve been struggling to solve for weeks. Scott Fegette started things off by going over specific concerns to be addressed when designing for CMS. His talk included tips on handy Dreamweaver functions that are specific to the process - I’m particularly excited about trying out the ‘Use Generated Markup’ option.
Chris Charlton concluded the session with the more technical details, focusing specifically on designing for Drupal. He shared information about a slew of very useful tools including a free program called Drupal Theme Starter, available on xtnd.us (a quick GUI for generating .info files for Drupal) and a list of the specific Drupal files connected to the theming process. For additional details, check out the back channel.
How to Create Viral Video
Jonathan Wells - Flux
Margaret Gould Steward, User Experience Manager - YouTube
Jason Wishnow, Director of Film and Video - TED
Damian Kulash - OK Go
With memories of how flakey less-seasoned ‘experts’ can get when they start talking about what makes a video go viral, I have to admit had some reservations about this one. Thankfully they turned out to be unfounded. The session was full of simple, straight-to-the-point steps to take to ensure your content has the opportunity to go viral. The discussion by-passed low-brow ‘viral by accident’ content (e.g. Charlie bit my finger) and delved into the much broader market driven by people who ‘do viral video on purpose’. Tactics included: building your audience; enabling embed; using metadata; distributing on multiple fronts; leveraging ‘Superspreaders’; and exclusivity.
Damian Kulash of OK Go kept it cool by sharing his experiences producing music videos with his band. To finish off the session everyone was invited to participate in the shooting of a rip on the ‘Surprised Kitty’ viral video, ‘Surprised Audience.’ “Everyone remember, there are five, ‘Koochie, koochie koo!’s before, ‘You look like a little monkey’. Ready?”
Media Armageddon: What Happens When
Greg Beato – Reason Magazine
Markos Moulitsas – Daily Kos
Amy Langfield – NewYorkology LLC
David Carr – NY Times
Henry Copeland – Blogads.com
I was looking forward to this session as I’d attended a fabulous similar offering at a SIGGRAPH conference a few years back. When all is said and done, however, I don’t have much to say about this particular panel so I’m going to leave it there (it just didn’t have much to offer in the way of content). For information about traditional publishing media outlets transitioning to digital formats see remarks on, “New Publishing and Web Content” panel below.
Keynote address Danah Boyd - Privacy and Publicity
Danah Boyd is an eloquent and passionate speaker who really knows her stuff and I’m sure her presentation was more than appropriate for the majority in attendance. That said, I drifted a little during this one. Working in external relations in higher ed I am well acquainted with the multitude of privacy and ownership issues associated with publishing user-generated content. I hear about it every day, and I mean, every day.
New Publishing and Web Content
Erin Kissane – Incisive.nu
Jeffrey Zeldman – Happy Cog Studios
Lisa Holton – Fourth Story Media
Mandy Brown – Etsy
Paul Ford – Harper's Magazine
Someone on the back channel remarked that Jeffrey Zeldman should moderate every session at SXSWi. Agreed! Zeldman somehow managed to ensure this end of the day panel was paced for worn out conference goers. Quick and sharp enough to keep everyone engaged and relaxed enough to give tired brains a chance to process yet more information.
Most importantly, the discussion seemed to address all the right questions. Where the presenters in the ‘Media Armageddon’ discussion asked, ‘How many of you would pay to access the NYTimes online?’ and received a show of hesitant hands (in what appeared to be a room full of journalists). The presenters here asked, ‘How many of you would pay $3 to access the NYTimes online?' and were answered by a confident and positive response from those in attendance.
In this discussion the pros and cons of media publishing today basically stacked up like this:
Pro: It's a good time to start a publishing company. When you have an industry in the midst of change, opportunities for new models emerge.
Con: ‘It’s a terrible time to try to shoehorn existing content models into the web’. For existing models to exist they need to be open change. Paul Ford’s specific recommendation went a bit further to suggest, that publishers must first ask, ‘How do I serve and interact with people?’, then build publishing and editorial above the conclusions reached.
While I had witnessed the defensive side of this discussion earlier on in the day with one panelist simply seeming to insist traditional publishing models must be allowed to survive or accountability would be in retreat. The discussion here ended on a more pragmatic note to say that if everyone working at a newspaper looses their jobs because someone hasn’t figured it out yet, they will just go work for someone else who has. We don’t know what the future of publishing will look like, but it will come.
All in all, a pretty good day.
Friday, March 12, 2010
SXSWi 2010, March 12, 2010 - Day 1
Today was just a half-day as things didn't officially start rolling until 2pm. That said, I attended four hours of fantastic panels including Josh Williams', CEO and co-founder of Gowalla “Chasing Virtual Good (not Goods) in the Real World” and Mark Cuban, HD Net/Dallas Mavericks and Avner Ronen of Boxee’s “Pay TV vs Internet - The Battle for Your TV”.
I enjoyed listening to Williams’ take on geo-location technology and game mechanics. Through discussing his experiences developing PackRat and Gowalla, and sharing some of his observations on user behaviour, Williams provided great insight into what compels people to participate in game type activities online. Williams went on to point out that game play mechanics are not just limited to location based services. These dynamics are becoming more and more prevalent in behaviour all over the web, and in the real world too.
“Pay TV vs Internet - The Battle for Your TV” was an epic, David and Goliath contest between corporate utilitarian, Cuban, arguing for pay TV and our man of the people, Ronen, presenting the case for Internet video. I’d like to say that Ronen won, or at least that the fight went undecided (especially considering the level of support for Ronen from the audience). To be honest, Cuban won the day, hands down. The discussion was intense and temperatures ran high - not just between Cuban and Ronen but, even more so, between Cuban and the audience. To get a full idea of how the battle unfolded I’d encourage you to check out the back channel on Twitter.
I was also pleased to be able to take in part of Christian Crumlish's “Ukulele for Geeks” session at which I learned how to jam on the Ukulele.
I enjoyed listening to Williams’ take on geo-location technology and game mechanics. Through discussing his experiences developing PackRat and Gowalla, and sharing some of his observations on user behaviour, Williams provided great insight into what compels people to participate in game type activities online. Williams went on to point out that game play mechanics are not just limited to location based services. These dynamics are becoming more and more prevalent in behaviour all over the web, and in the real world too.
“Pay TV vs Internet - The Battle for Your TV” was an epic, David and Goliath contest between corporate utilitarian, Cuban, arguing for pay TV and our man of the people, Ronen, presenting the case for Internet video. I’d like to say that Ronen won, or at least that the fight went undecided (especially considering the level of support for Ronen from the audience). To be honest, Cuban won the day, hands down. The discussion was intense and temperatures ran high - not just between Cuban and Ronen but, even more so, between Cuban and the audience. To get a full idea of how the battle unfolded I’d encourage you to check out the back channel on Twitter.
I was also pleased to be able to take in part of Christian Crumlish's “Ukulele for Geeks” session at which I learned how to jam on the Ukulele.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
SSXSWi 2010, March 10, 2010 - Day -2
Just thought I’d share a little of my noobie experience at SXSW Interactive (and Austin, Texas - and Texas in general). The arrangements were made in the 11th hour, so I expect my experience from a logistics perspective will be a bit outside average. My conference registration, flight and accommodations were booked yesterday (March 9, three days before the start of SXSW 2010)… from what I’ve heard the city is pretty much booked up and the accomplishment of the trip being organized at such a late hour is by all accounts a testament to the miraculous abilities of our admin officer and her travel agent husband.
So here I am in the midst of a twelve hour travel day which will take me from Victoria to Calgary to Chicago and, finally, Austin. I’m going to arrive two days before the conference and will have all day tomorrow to make my way down to the conference space to check in. Which is great if you don’t consider the two days work I had to cram into one day before leaving the office. Anyway, I'm hoping to get some sightseeing and a bit of rest in. Judging from the schedule on the SXSW website I'm going to need all the rest I can get - the next few days are going to be busy!
So here I am in the midst of a twelve hour travel day which will take me from Victoria to Calgary to Chicago and, finally, Austin. I’m going to arrive two days before the conference and will have all day tomorrow to make my way down to the conference space to check in. Which is great if you don’t consider the two days work I had to cram into one day before leaving the office. Anyway, I'm hoping to get some sightseeing and a bit of rest in. Judging from the schedule on the SXSW website I'm going to need all the rest I can get - the next few days are going to be busy!
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