Fast, Cheap and Out of Control: An Errol Morris Inspired Take on Hot Topics at SXSWi 2011

SXSWi Display Screen. Photo originally
posted in my SXSWi 2011 Flickr set.

South by Southwest (SXSW) is a set of film, interactive and music festivals and conferences that take place every spring in Austin, Texas. In 2011, SXSW commemorated it’s 25th year and was held  March 11 to the 20th.

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Hot Topics at SXSWi 2011

There were three main ideas I took away from SXSWi this year. Themes which are coincidentally paralleled in the title of my favourite Errol Morris documentary, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control:

1. Fast: Publishing content to multiple platforms
   
   Many sessions this year focused on methods and best practices for designing for multiple platforms and devices. Of the talks I attended, the folks who seemed to have the best grip on the situation were the technology design team at NPR, their basic approach summed up in a handy acronym for their content publishing strategy: C.O.P.E., Create Once Publish Everywhere
   
   
2. Cheap: The benefits of giving it away for free
   
   From Julie Cohen's polished and info packed presentation, Radical Openness: Growing TED by Giving it Away to Blake Mycoskie’s keynote address to the many discussions regarding new models of education, it seemed everyone was up for promoting 'free' as a worthy business strategy this year.
   
   
3. Out of Control (kind of): Curating content
   
   A fair portion of the sessions at SXSWi 2011 focused on the ins and outs of curating online content. Notable sessions I attended included:
   

• NYT reporters, Brian Stelter and Jennifer Preston's core conversation on social media and the Middle East
• Margo Bloomstein's presentation, Creation, Curation, and the Ethics of Content Strategy
• Social Ranking: Finding Interesting User-Generated Content

I’d be remiss not to mention what appeared to be this year’s catch phrase du jour, ‘The Game Layer’, huge in the spotlight of hot topics at SXSWi this year and subject of Seth Priebatsch's March 12th keynote address . That said, I can’t realistically list it as one of my take away highlights as I work in an industry where we’ll probably guffaw over this one until the 11th hour is upon us.

As a surface summary, I'll also offer that my second year at SXSW Interactive was way less overwhelming, and subsequently a bit more illuminating, than my deer-in-the-headlights initiation last year. I should point out that I’m still every bit as worn out - any energy I saved through planning and foresight was quickly folded into a ramped up social schedule centered around reconnecting with people I’d met last year.  Well, I've got plenty of time to recover before SXSW2012. Can't wait!

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart performed a set so smokin' hot at Sapient Nitro's Mix at Six, SXSWi 2011, one of the stage monitors caught fire during the finale. Photo originally posted in my SXSWi 2011 Flickr set.