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SXSW 2010 Primer

2010-02-19T04:03:13Z

We are less than a month away from the big conference down south known as SXSW — the 2010 edition. This will be my 5th year making the trip to Austin and I hear that this year will have the highest attendance to-date. I’d like to share some misc. tips for attending the conference and feel free to look through our SXSW archives containing hundreds of posts, images and videos. I’ve posted some of my favorite pictures from the last few years below with some bonus commentary on each photo.

If you are new to SXSW, you might also check out the guide created by Jeremy Wright and the video commentary by C.C. Chapman. SXSW has put together a basic overview that’s also worth checking out.

You won’t do everything you planned to and you will do more than you expected – after you have gone through the hundreds of sessions, circled the ones you are interested in and hit the convention center, you won’t make it to all of them. You will meet people and wind up walking off for side meetups and networking along with attending sessions that aren’t on your list. It’s ok, SXSW is all about relaxing and just going with the flow and being flexible.
You can call the conference “south by southwest” or “sxsw” – never “south by” – thank you for your adherence to this important notice
Bring sneakers or some sort of comfortable shoes - the amount of walking you will do is just immense.
If you are attending SXSW and representing your startup, be ready to talk about said startup. Have your pitch down – practice, practice, practice. Have a 30 second, 2-minute and longer versions ready.
Another startup request – I want you to say “hello” or “hi” at least 10,000 times while you are at the conference. Your goal should be to walk away with meeting as many people as possible.
People attending SXSW are very approachable. If there’s someone you really want to meet and you see the person sitting on the floor or working on their laptop, just walk up and say “hi”. SXSW is the best place to meet the people you really want to meet because of the vibe. Make sure not to hang out with the same couple of people for the entire conference. I know it’s hard to meet new people – but the environment in Austin is seriously the best place to do it.
The convention center is oddly-configured – apparently the designer thought it would be cool to make it near impossible to find the “3rd floor” so make sure you have the floor plan as many of the sessions are located on the third floor.
The location for registration has changed this year. No longer will you have to wait in line for the long escalator ride upstairs – this year the registration will take place in one of the expo halls.
Parties – there are a TON of parties throughout the SXSW conference. SXSW has a list (look at the bottom of the page for the full listing). There’s also an unofficial party list on Facebook. I believe Mashable has the biggest number of registrants for their party on Saturday late night.
C.C. suggests that if you are planning to setup meetings, do it over breakfast. I very much agree with him – as the days wear on, it’s harder to keep scheduled appointment times.
Don’t worry so much about updating the social networks or sitting heads down working on your laptop. Get out and meet people – and meet some new people! If you spend all of your days and nights in the blogger room, you won’t get the full value out of SXSW.
Most importantly, have a good time, smile a lot and get ready to meet lots of new people!

Just like in previous years, I will be there and ready to shoot short videos about your startup or chat about my startup.

So there are some tips – please leave your tips in the coments and I will add them to the post.

Here are ten of my favorite photos from SXSW over the past three years:

I still have no idea wtf this is:

From the hotel – Apple is the company of the month!

The man formerly with AOL – Frank Gruber pimps the CN goods:

What developers really do when they “work from home”:

8 billion bags of crap:

See how happy Jolie O’Dell looks with that CN sticker – now she is with that so-called RWW blog:

Sean Percival from MySpace can’t see any evil (bloggers):

Here’s Tamar and Matt Cutts talking SEO – I tried to offer Matt an endless supply of CN stickers for a pagerank 9 but he wouldn’t do it!

The British are coming…The British are coming – the guy in the gray suit jacket top left is Mike Butcher from Techcrunch Europe – the others are from UK-based startups:

Here’s Louis Gray from Louis Gray and Marshall Kirkpatrick from ReadWriteWeb discussing how to get a front-page digg, a techmeme lead and a re-tweet from Scoble.

See you at SXSW!

CenterNetworks Partner: Get your business cards scanned and transcribed with CloudContacts.

Highlights of SxSWi: Susan Bratton (part 4) Gadgets, Location, Conversation

2009-03-24T18:41:56Z

We have asked some of our friends and colleagues who attended technology and new media conference South By Southwest Interactive (SxSWi) to share their highlights and takeaways from the conference, which wrapped up last week.

Today we share the fourth installment by guest correspondent Susan Bratton:

I came away from these interviews with an appreciation for the long list of brands who are “doing it right” in the social space. I asked all 14 of my interview subjects this question:

“When you think of brands/companies who have a well-executed social media strategy, who comes to mind — and why?”

Guy [Kawasaki] liked Tony Hseih’s work on Twitter for Zappos. Angela [Benton] gave kudos to H&R Block on Twitter, to Kodak’s blogger and influencer outreach, and marveled at the high-speed scale IamDiddy (Sean Combs) is seeing on Twitter [over 200,000 followers and counting].

Aaron Strout of Powered has amassed an impressive collection of brands to which he gives high marks, which you may want to check out for yourself:
·         Beinggirl/Procter & Gamble
·         Nike+
·         HP
·         Sears SK-You
·         Atkins
·         Dell’s Ideastorm
·         Intuit
·         Edmunds
·         Sony Backstage 101
·         Microsoft Windows

The Advance Guard, C.C. Chapman’s organization, has created a free white paper (downloadable eBook), “About Face,” on Facebook’s new Fan Pages, now just called “Pages.” It is a must read for every podcaster - every entrepreneur - who wants to grow his or her audience. This eBook is chock full of examples of how brands are connecting with fans and the opportunities to do so via Facebook.

Gadgets

Because it is a huge draw for people on the leading edge of new technology, South by Southwest interactive is a great venue for getting an advance peek at all the shiny gadgets and upcoming applications, long before they make it into the mainstream marketplace.

C.C. Chapman, co-founder of The Advance Guard got a super cool device called the Poken, on the show exhibit floor. He was wearing it during our interview. (Note: I’m jealous and covet one.) The Poken (pictured, right) is a little USB drive in the shape of a Manga-type character that has RF [radio frequency], which allows you to ethereally trade your social media contact information with anyone else sporting a Poken.

You match the Pokens’ “hands” together and they exchange contact info for you. No messing up the silhouette of your derriere with a wad of business cards in your back pocket. Later, you import the data and Poken automatically “[be]friends” your new contacts on social networking sites. I love my Cardscan scanner, but Poken makes collecting contact information at shows fun, immediate and easy. Sign me up!

Location + Conversation

Let’s take RF and mobile applications further…

The intersection of GPS and socnets has Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs, lit up. He calls it “the secret of the annotated world.” Now we can [share updates on] Twitter in real time, and apps like BrightKite will show our location. The next level of this merging of location+ conversation will allow us to annotate or leave comments, anywhere we go, for others to read.

Another [excellent] application would be one that sends out placed-based, threaded conversations.

Here’s a rich excerpt from my interview with Chris:

“So, we could be at the South By Southwest conference and looking for the party that doesn’t have the line 700 people long. And I could push a button and say, “I am here.” I’d give you my GPS coordinates and send you a picture and type, “No lines here. Come and visit.” Within 20 minutes we’d have margaritas!

“The extension of that could be that you and I are standing next to a statue in the middle of the square, and it’s some guy on a horse like every other of these statues. Who is it and what do we know about them? What if, when you turn on your phone, you could see who else left a note there, or that someone’s left us a URL? So we can now go to a website and read more about the person on the statue.”

In another twist on creating and measuring the value of “being in the conversation,” Lee Odden, CEO, Top Rank, has an emphasis on real-time data. He is closely watching for examples of the integration of web analytics with social media analytics.

He believes the impact that social media has on site traffic will soon be monitored through some kind of tool that mashes up Buzz Logic, Collective Intellect, Radiant Six or such, married with web analytics like Google Analytics, Web Trends or similar. Lee says, “Twitter’s bringing us kicking and screaming into the real-time analytics world, right?”

Perhaps kicking and screaming, perhaps gleefully skipping, hand-in-hand we go into this new era of connected, trackable mobility. Take my hand and let’s go.

Parting Thoughts: Facilitating & Integrating Conversations

Attending my second SXSW conference was a breakthrough for me professionally. Last year, I was new to the SXSW scene and just building my social reputation in that crowd.

This year, what a change (!) - I couldn’t keep up with the number of people who were sending messages about connecting! I found it really helpful to “broadcast” my location through Twitter, inviting friends nearby to come find me. It worked pretty well… But now I know I need BrightKite, Foursquare or any of the burgeoning companies in the “API-sphere.”

Oh, and one Poken too, please.

The number one reason most people attend this event is to see in person – love the phrase “meat space” — those with whom they have an online relationship. The panels are tertiary to the hallway networking and the parties. The idea exchange, and the ability to connect with others who will retweet your work or comment on your posts is paramount here.

Become the facilitator, if not the integrator, of conversations. Talk with other experts, and then promote those conversations and podcasts, instead of trying to make yourself the focal point of discussion.

By being the catalyst, you raise the reputation for yourself (your brand) and put yourself squarely in the thick of the brand/community discussion.

Guest correspondent Susan Bratton is the CEO of the Personal Life Media network. I know her through the time I spent on the board of the Association for Downloadable Media (ADM), where Susan is Vice-President of the organization. She was also instrumental in setting internet advertising standards in helping create the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Susan’s interviews will also be blogged by Aaron Strout, CMO of Powered here.

Photo: Social Networks by 10ch

Missed Talks at SXSW? Learn Visually With Sketchnotes

2009-03-23T18:08:51Z

Mike Rohde was named the official "sketchnoter" of the South by Southwest Interactive conference this month in Austin and his sketches are the only form of note taking we've ever wanted to spend time going through after an event. Panel discussions at conferences are notoriously disappointing, but Rohde has done the dirty work and made it easy and fun for all of us to learn the lessons that speakers like Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, web standards guru Jeffrey Zeldman and many others came to Austin to share.

Sponsor

We love this way of learning from sessions we didn't attend and can imagine any conference having people offer visually grounded summaries of talks. Who wants to read through pages and pages of plain text notes? Check out the highlights of SXSW, according to Mike Rohde's pen.

It's really hard to create content while at a conference. Doing it in real time, artistically, is very impressive.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR. Discuss

SXSW: Presenting Straight to the Brain

2009-03-16T15:42:49Z

10:41 - I’m here for the end of this. Great breakfast at Cisco’s and the Louis Gray panel at the Hilton was oversubscribed. They’re talking about effective PowerPoint, and if rapid fire visuals are the right away to go.
10:42 - The listing / bulletpoint approach does not hold a candle to the storytelling approach in presentations.
10:51 - They did a yoga exercise– touch your toes. Okay….
10:51 - “Don’t make a better presentation on X… make a user better on X…”
10:52 - Lawyer presenter: I have failed when audience goes into “Blackberry prayer mode.” If you are engaging with social networks instead of the panel you aren’t learning. Other panelist says notetaking OK (like I am now). General question is if backchannels are okay.
10:54 - Kathy Sierra likes backchannels. Live-tweeting ok. If people want to have a conversation about a panel, fine.
10:56 - PowerPoint is a bad word processor. Tap into popular culture. Plays a Star Wars themed slide.
10:56 - Slide: “Also, puppies.” Does every slide have a pulse? -Sierra. Displays cute puppy slide.
10:57 - Tip: Figure out your three most important points and build everything around it.
10:59 - Questioner: How do you deal with rigid cultures, like NIH, in which all presentations have to have heavy science? A: Have to educate internally that what you’re doing has no basis in research.

SXSW: Startup Management

2009-03-16T16:48:13Z

11:45 - In the Dogster panel on startup management on the Hilton. Talks about how to do layoffs. First, look objectively at the money situation. Then look at which departments need to be cut. When you get down to individuals, it’s hard. They were open about communicating, doing a preso on why they did it, the overall economic situation, given to all employees.
11:47 - Economic times have made things more focused and intense. Attitude of “Okay, let’s f-ing do this.” Taking on the economy and beating it. I like this.
11:47 - I can’t believe people in tech are so left. This is total capitalism!
11:57 - Once again I have been sucked into e-mail. Complete ADD.
12:00 - The upteenth question about how to balance the initial startup mode where everyone does everything with a more hierarchical mode. Sales vs. tech guys.
12:16 - When to take VC money. Only when I have an opportunity I can’t execute on without it.

SXSW Panel: Beyond Aggregation

2009-03-18T00:57:31Z

One of the more popular panels at SXSW Interactive this year was one called Beyond Aggregation. The panel included our very own Marshall Kirkpatrick, as well as Gabe Rivera (Techmeme), Louis Gray (LouisGray.com), Melanie Baker (PostRank) and Micah Baldwin (Lijit). The topics revolved around information gathering and management.

From the panel, Marshall and Louis had new sources and gathering tips, Gabe and Melanie weighed in heavily on how to manage information and Micah had some great suggestions on discovery of new information sources.

Sponsor

Here are some highlights from the panel. I have grouped all the comments together by panelist.

Marshall Kirkpatrick

Twitter - FriendFeed

Marshall focused on using tools like FriendFeed, combined RSS feeds and Google Custom Search Engines (CSEs) to find the news he needs.
He highlighted a post he wrote entitled How to Find the Weirdest Stuff on the Internet that describes how to use free tools to create a mashup that finds unique content. It uses tag clouds in Delicious, finds culture blogs, filters that output through PostRank, then finally pushes it through Feedburner.
Finally, Marshall returned to how CSEs can work in conjunction with drag and drop zones to quickly search for content online.

Louis Gray

Twitter - FriendFeed

He uses Google Reader as his primary info-gathering tool.
He shares his content from Google Reader to other resource sites such as Delicious, Friendfeed, and Twitter.
Louis uses FriendFeed to find trusted sources for news and content.
He pointed out the DailyRadar network of sites like MacBlips and GadgetBlips that aggregate more niche content for discovery.
Finally, Louis mentioned that in order to blog about new content, often the top priority is good old fashioned networking.

Gabe Rivera

Twitter - FriendFeed

Gabe Rivera uses Techmeme for selecting the best of what is out there.
He described that Techmeme is based on an automated system that relies primarily on links between clustered stories to determine how much a story should be ranked, but has recently introduced a 'human element' in the form of Megan McCarthy, the new editor for the site.
Marshall added that Gabe has some non-tech Techeme-style link blogs, like Memeorandum and Ballbug.
Gabe says entering new content areas is often difficult because an aggregator needs both fresh content and good metadata to be able to aggregate effectively.

Micah Baldwin

Twitter - FriendFeed

Micah says he often starts searching for new content by going to one of his favorite, most trusted bloggers, and then searching outward from there. He mentioned that there are a lot of tools to help with this, and Lijit is just one of them.
As an example, he highlighted a Lijit-powered blog aggregator called Securitybloggers, but he also stresses that influence of a blogger is important. Take recommendation + expertise and you will find new content.
He said that the I Can Has Cheezburger (ICHC) folks are always looking for the next big meme. A natural place to find new memes is applications like Friendfeed.
Micah mentioned that ICHC just acquired Twittypic to create Son of a Tweet, a tool that leverages Twitter for finding funny pictures.

Melanie Baker

Work Twitter - Personal Twitter - FriendFeed

Melanie, in her role as community manager, gets her information from many sources but uses her company's product PostRank to filter stories by buzz and popularity.
PostRank (formerly called AideRSS) is a system that measures engagement surrounding blog posts by tracking references on over 15 different social media sites, including site comments, Digg, FriendFeed, Furl, Twitter and more.
Melanie says there are plenty of communities out there to draw from, from her perspective of blogs that use PostRank and Lijit.

Wrap Up

The audience asked what this process of discovering and collecting new sources of content online might be called. After a bit of discussion, the panelists decided the term curation works well, followed by trusted discovery and trusted recommendations.

Overall, we thought the panel exposed those listening to tips and techniques that, while part of a seasoned social media worker's toolkit, may not be leveraged as effectively by newcomers or light social media users.

Discuss

SXSW - where everybody knows your Twitter name

2009-03-18T00:39:46Z

“In the last two days I’ve had better conversations about the technology we’ve developed than I’ve had in the past 2 years in London.” So said one of the UK entrepreneurs on the Digital Mission to me while we shared beers in a bar at one of the myriad events to happen at South By South West Interactive (SXSWi) in Austin Texas. But that doesn’t mean everyone there was firing on all cylinders.

SXSW is fairly unique. The majority of content at the event is created by the people attending. You submit an idea for a panel (plus your suggested panelists) and if it’s accepted by organisers you get to go to the event for free. Even then it only costs about $300 for the festival, and you can also get day passes. There are formal speeches as well - such as Facebook’s launch of its Facebook Connect API. But the the crowd-sourced nature of this content means that panels can be hit and miss. This is especially true of panels organised by friends and colleagues who have a tendency to agree with each other, rather than entering into vigorous debate.

Frustrated by the apparent lack of dissent on many panels, some renegage Brits - Richard Pope of FixMyStreet and the guys from the School of Everything - decided to run what was rapidly dubbed an ad-hoc “un-panel” titled “Not another social Media panel?!”. It started out serious - forget trying to monetise Facebook/Twitter and start trying to work out if social media can affect real change in the world, like fix problems on your local street for instance.

Of course, with Brits in charge (and I cannot tell a lie, I helped) the whole thing started to descend into good-natured farce, with panelists being voted on and off by the crowd and at one point an American panel volunteer declaring that she’d clearly been born in the wrong country.

Appropriately, the random hashtag of #kebab was applied an thus ended up trending on Twitter (check out the ongoing twitterstream here).

But the serious point of SXSW Interactive was more, well serious. The Brits were there as part of Digital Mission, a trade mission organised by Chinwag for UK Trade & Investment, designed to enable digital companies to expand into overseas markets and attract investment outside the UK. Check out the official pictures, the blog and the companies exhibiting. You should also check out the daily TechFluff episodes.

That’s the official story. For what it’s worth, here’s my 2 cents on why the Brits were there. SXSW is a chance to see Silicon Valley and US tech culture at play. And I mean at play. Some even call it “Spring Break for Geeks”. Whatever the case, it’s a great opportunity to arrange to see Valley people, if they’re in town, for a fraction of the price of other Silicon Valley events, and in a more casual environment.

There is of course the assessment of the ever cynical ValleyWag, that the difference between SXSW Interactive 10 years ago and now is that “Thanks to the delusions of public-market investors, there was actually money to be made from what Internet insiders admitted were inanities. Now there’s no money and no hope of making it. There’s just the frivolity left.” They were of course referring to the myriad parties around the event such as a well-oiled Facebook party, which featured bands, DJs and breakdancers, and even Valleywag’s own event. However, there is still clearly money of some description to be made if the swathes of consultants and ’social media marketers’ were anything to go by.

In truth the real point about SXSW is the sheer randomness of the event - advancing your thinking, making contacts and seeing another side to Silicon Valley and tech culture in the US. You had to be seriously dull not to get anything at all out of it.

And conversely, we were in a position to give something back. It became clear on day one that US tech people could use more educating about the tech scene outside the US. I was on the Saturday morning panel about starting up in Europe. It it quickly became apparent that although there was a smattering of knowledge, most questioners during the Q&A were largely unaware of any startup scene in Europe other than the high profile success stories behind Skype, for instance.

In a panel the next day, title “Ditch the Valley, run for the Hills” the conversation revolved largely around starting up outside the Valley - but still within the US. When others ventured that there might be some interesting companies and startup clusters outside the US - as Beijing-based renaissance man Kaiser Kuo did - the majority of the panel - including Robert Scoble who has notably toured Israel and China recently - roundly scoffed at the idea. Although there are incredibly sound reasons for doing a startup in the Valley - 50 years of innovation, huge numbers of VCs and tech people, need I say more - the panel discussion could have used a little more context to their discussion.

At least SXSWi did offer one vision of the future which could well go global - the trashing of the local mobile reception by thousands of mobile users, probably the majority of whom were on iPhones. For most of the five-day digital conference, AT&T subscribers - which has the iPhone contract - had sluggish service, dropped calls and outright outages. A missed opportunity for the cellphone network to put in more bandwidth. Instead it was being roundly trashed on Twitter by SXSW attendees. But then you haven’t really arrived until you’re trashed on Twitter have you?

SXSW 2009: A Recap Of Marketing Secrets

2009-03-18T21:49:40Z

Secrets in marketing work. We all know it intuitively, each time we see a mystery URL we can't help but click on, or hear about a secret VIP deal or special event that most people don't know about. There is a powerful human impulse that makes us want to be part of the exclusive group that knows a secret. So on Monday at SXSW 2009, Kaitlyn and I hosted a discussion all about using secrets for marketing (called Curiosity Marketing). In our packed room (we had about 100 people spread out across the chairs on the wall and sitting on the floor). In case you were one of the ones that made it (or one of the 20 or so I heard were stuck outside), please Rate The Session: http://rate.sxsw.com/sessions/?date=2009-03-16 (and whether you liked it or hated it, at least tell them we need a bigger room next year!)

Our conversation, though, was a great collection of thoughts from people in the room of secrets they have seen out there, ideas for using secrets, and some necessary conversation about the role of authenticity and potential for misleading people with this approach. It is tough to capture a session as interactive as that in a blog post, but we spent most of our time sharing a long list of examples we have all seen of secrets in marketing So, without further ado, here is the list:

SecretSXSW: We talked about the story behind this secret site launched before the panel to demonstrate the idea of using secrets for marketing - it's a compilation of all the special offers, discounts and freebies from SXSW.
Konami Code: A secret code used in several video games to allow cheating or extra lives.
Google's Gmail Launch: Created exclusivity by limiting the number of invites that were available.
Toy Makers: Manufacturered scarcity, like Tickle Me Elmo. Doing this around the holiday will drive up sales for the rest of the year for birthday and special occasions.
Cadbury Cream Eggs: Are only offered around Easter, they tried making them available year round and net sales actually dropped.
AmEx Black: Offered only to those who charge a certain amount each month, it's exclusive and was secret before the internet made knowledge of it more widely available.
Repressed Knowledge: Used commonly in broadcast, "What ____ doesn't want you to know, at 11:00pm"
Cracker Jack: There's a secret inside every box, and you know it - but you don't know WHAT it is.
Apple: Uses secrecy around new product launches that generates a frenzy.
Intel: Has included inside jokes just for IT managers in communications
Mini Roboticist: Web videos making robots out of Mini parts, wasn't clear "if this is real" lead to curiosity.
Rolling Rock: Has "33" under cap, no one really knows what it is.
Tootsie Pop: Star on your wrapper and you got a free lollipop.
In and Out Burger: Order Animal Style...
www.twitter.com/kogibbq: a traveling taco truck in LA that tweets its location
Cold Tea in Chinese Restaurants: Order "cold tea" after bars close and they will bring you beer in a tea pot
PTD = Please Don't Tell Restaurant: You enter through a phone booth in a hot dog restaurant to access a throw back speakeasy
BMW Easter Egg Campaign: TV ad contained secret information and you were in the know to find a reward
LOST Easter Eggs
How I Met Your Mother: Incorporates URLs into the show that actually exist like www.slapbetcountdown.com and www.tedmosbyisajerk.com that evolve and give die hard fans more content
Moo.com: HIdes a secret message in the 200 pack of business cards packaging - the secret is not "out" yet
Reverse Secrets: You don't know the brand up front, but it becomes clear over time - like Halo3 and Blair Witch Project promos
Failed Secret: Blackberry Storm - "Secret" online, but reveal was product of dubious reputation
Failed Secret: Dr. Pepper - Offering free coupons if Guns N Roses put out album in 2008
Failed/Or Not? Secret: Aqua Teen Hunger Force (Cartoon Network) - Placed lightboards in Boston that came under fire for sparking terrorism fears (but we had a great discussion on this and most people felt like it was not a failed secret)
Accidental Secrets: Secrets that get out via sites like FatWallet

If I missed anything from this post or you have another secret to share, please share it in a comment.

SXSW Panel: Beyond Aggregation

2009-03-18T00:57:31Z

One of the more popular panels at SXSW Interactive this year was one called Beyond Aggregation. The panel included our very own Marshall Kirkpatrick, as well as Gabe Rivera (Techmeme), Louis Gray (LouisGray.com), Melanie Baker (PostRank) and Michah Baldwin (Lijit). The topics revolved around information gathering and management.

From the panel, Marshall and Louis had new sources and gathering tips, Gabe and Melanie weighed heavily on how to manage information and Micah had some great suggestions on discovery of new information sources.

Sponsor

Here are some highlights from the panel. I have gathered all the comments together by panelist.

Marshall Kirkpatrick

Marshall focused on using tools like FriendFeed, combined RSS feeds and Google Custom Search Engines (CSEs) to find the news he needs.
He highlighted a post he wrote entitled How to Find the Weirdest Stuff on the Internet that describes how to use free tools to create a mashup that finds unique content. It uses tag clouds in Delicious, finds culture blogs, filters that output through postrank, then finally pushed through Feedburner.
Finally, Marshall returned to how CSEs can work in conjunction with drag and drop zones to quickly search for content online.

Louis Gray

He uses Google Reader as his primary info-gathering tool.
He shares his content from Google Reader to other resource sites such as Delicious, Friendfeed, and Twitter.
Louis uses FriendFeed to find trusted sources for news and content.
He pointed out the DailyRadar network of sites like MacBlips and GadgetBlips that aggregate more niche content for discovery.
Finally, Louis mentioned that in order to blog about new content, often the top priority is good old fashioned networking.

Gabe Rivera

Gabe Rivera uses Techmeme for selecting the best of what is out there.
He described that Techmeme is based on an automated system that relies primarily on links between clustered stories to determine how much a story should be ranked, but has recently introduced a 'human element' in the form of Megan McCarthy, the new editor for the site.
Marshall added that Gabe has some non-tech Techeme-style link blogs, like Memeorandum and Ballbug.
Gabe says entering new content areas is often difficult because an aggregator needs both fresh content and good metadata to be able to aggregate effectively.

Michah Baldwin

Micah says he often starts searching for new content by going to one of his favorite, most trusted bloggers, and then searching outward from there. He mentioned that there are a lot of tools to help with this, and Lijit is just one of them.
As an example, he highlighted a Lijit-powered blog aggregate called Securitybloggers, but he also stresses that influence of a blogger is important. Take recommendation + expertise and you will find new content.
He said that the I Can Has Cheezburger (ICHC) folks are always looking for the next big meme. A natural place to find new memes are applications like Friendfeed.
Micah mentioned that ICHC just acquired Twittypic to create Son of a Tweet, a tool that leverages twitter for finding funny pictures.

Melanie Baker

Melanie, in her role as community manager, gets her information from many sources but uses her company's product PostRank to filter stories by buzz and popularity.
PostRank (formerly called AideRSS) is a system that measures engagement surrounding blog posts by tracking references on over 15 different social media sites, including site comments, Digg, FriendFeed, Furl, Twitter and more.
Melanie says there are plenty of communities out there to draw from, from her perspective of blogs that use PostRank and Lijit.

Wrap Up

Discuss

SXSWi Parties Monday Night: Mashableicious | Digital Savant

2009-03-18T17:12:26Z

Reports from a wireless hotspot., If Sunday night was the return to party form after a dismal Saturday night social performance, Monday night was riding even further into the storm to put a triumphant end to my evening events I rode into that storm, people....

Loic Lemeur Explains the Future of Seesmic [sxsw]

2009-03-17T06:20:44Z

I was actually on my way to the blogger lounge to go catch up on the news yesterday, and fresh from his announcement with Facebook regarding the Seesmic application happened to be Loic Lemeur, founder of the company, sitting in the hallway catching up on his email.

He was gracious enough to sit down with me and chat on camera a bit about his news regarding the new Twhirl-like client for monitoring and updating Facebook status updates.

He covered a lot of the news and information you saw already in many of the reports about the product, including:

Twhirl will be rebranding itself as Seesmic (they have a hard time as a small company maintaining two brands).
That means you won’t be a Twhirl user any more, you’ll be a Seesmic user.
They’re focusing almost half their staff on integrating the new Facebook client into the rest of the site experience.

In addition, he talked a bit about his expectations of how this might transform the usage of Facebook entirely. He hinted here and off-camera that this is the thrust of their focus, and they really want to position themselves as one of the primary ways to access Facebook.

I think, given the addictiveness of Twhirl and Twitter, I think it’s a safe bet.

We also caught up a bit, since the last time we spoke, he was on his way to go visit then-President Bush. He’s since steered clear of politics, but commented on the bit of disappointment he feels when politicians engage greatly with social media tools during campaigns, but not during the governance.

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Mark Rizzn Hopkins blogs a Rizzn.com and Silicon Angle.

Six To Start wins big at SXSW

2009-03-17T09:21:09Z

Congratulations to Dan Hon and his team at Six To Start, one of the surprise winners at this year’s SXSW Interactive Web Awards, not least to themselves, apparently. The alternative reality gaming startup based in London won both the Experimental and Best of Show awards for its digital story-telling mashup with Penguin Books, We Tell Stories, which, at almost exactly this time last year, was launched as one of the most entertaining time-wasters around.

The 21 Steps by Charles Cumming

The site experiments with creating new forms of story designed especially for the internet, with Penguin commissioning six of its popular award-winning writers to retell some literary classics using story-telling elements that take advantage of immediacy, connectivity and interactivity.

Penguin UK’s marketing of the project included this immortal line: “These stories could not have been written 200, 20 or even 2 years ago.” Which perhaps verges on the superlative, especially when one of the stories — Mohsin Hamid’s The (Former) General In His Labyrinth bears a close resemblance to a Choose Your Own Adventure (remember those?) in digital form.

On the whole, though, it was a bold and pioneering experiment for a publisher in an industry that is very much still working on the problem of building a bridge to the future of profitable and sustainable content distribution - in whatever form or shape that content happens to be take.

Six To Start won £100k in funding from NESTA in February last year. NESTA has a 2008 interview with Dan about We Tell Stories here.

SxSWi: A Festival, Not a Conference

2009-03-17T14:00:53Z

Despite having been a native Texan for most of my life, this year is the first I’ve been in attendance at SxSW, and I must say it’s been an entirely worthwhile experience (even taking into account the fact that this is the longest stretch of time I’ve ever been apart from my wife and I miss her dearly). Going to conferences and putting names to faces is always fun, but the whole atmosphere of festivity combined with bringing the brightest minds from a lot of often disparate worlds together really does create a unique atmosphere of learning and discovery.

When I planned my trip, I marked down on my calendar sixteen panels that I wanted to attend and learn from while I was here. Generally, I’ve attended only a few in totality, a fraction of what I had intended to do. Part of that was due to the demanding schedule with the live stream put on by UStream, and part of that is me not bending to the overpowering will of the event as a whole.

It really is a festival, and not your typical conference. I’m sure someone tried to tell me this here, but it must not have registered with me.

Not to take anything from the interesting and often amazing panels I have attended, some of the most memorable and valuable parts of this I’ve gleaned from the hallway track. Today, I gave in and threw my schedule out the window and spent the day just meeting with people and recording it in the hallways and smoking decks.

Take for instance, this conversation I had with Liz Strauss today; we kept crossing paths, and we’ve met before at other events, but I was so single-minded in my efforts to get from Point A to Point B, we hadn’t really had a chance to sit down, catch up, and have a talk.

You Can’t Get Where I Got the Way I Got Here: Twitter Changed the Game

If you’re not familiar with Liz, she’s the author behind successful-blog.com, and the curator of SOBcon. She’s known for her community building ability and uncanny knack for getting upwards of 60 comments on nearly every post.

One thing that’s generally acknowledged as accepted fact by everyone here – microblogging has changed the game. Liz and I started off our conversation, as bloggers who’ve been around before and after the advent of Twitter. One of her niches is blogging about blogging, and a frequent question she gets was: “Can I do what you do and get big?”

The answer is no, and that topic spurred a conversation that delved deep into why that is, and it has a lot to do with Twitter and other similar services. Simply put, it’s a different, but related set of skills required to get there from here.

It’s a twenty minute conversation, but it will seem like a lot less.

Download the MP4 here.

Mark Rizzn Hopkins writes at Rizzn.com and Silicon Angle.

No Related Post

The weather is now perfect.

2009-03-16T18:53:31Z

40 degree temperature increase in 2 days!

Is the New Foursquare Too Much Like the Old Dodgeball for Google?

2009-03-16T18:01:31Z

Even though Google killed Dodgeball, Dennis Crowley reassured the socially inept that they'd still be able to find their friends at bars with his newly launched Foursquare. One problem: it may not be his.

Foursquare bears an unmistakable resemblance to Dodgeball, a cell-phone-based friend-finding service Crowley launched in 2004 and sold to Google in 2005 for an estimated $40 million. Crowley worked at Google for two years afterwards. And his former employer may be getting ready to take legal action, if a tipster is right:

The GOOG has reason to believe that the recently launched location-based service startup Foursquare went live using server code that originally powered Dodgeball. A cease and desist order might be sent out to the service as early as this week. An engineer named Harry could also face some additional discipline.

Dodgeball worked by having users check in via text message when they arrived at a location like a bar or restaurant, and broadcast the user's whereabouts to friends — a precursor of Twitter, in some ways, but focused on people's whereabouts. Google ended up killing Dodgeball (a smart move) but launching a similar service called Google Latitude.

Foursquare's added twist: It turns hanging out with friends into an interactive game, with users racking up points for going out. It also has some au courant features, like an iPhone app and integration with Twitter — the kind of thing any Web app needs to be hip these days. But according to an engineer familiar with Foursquare, its back end appears to bear a strong resemblance to Dodgeball's.

Crowley quit Google in 2007, complaining that Google had stifled Dodgeball. One rumor floating around has it that he tried to buy it back from Google, without success. So it makes sense that he would want to relaunch it, and might feel entitled to use the code he wrote, since Google abandoned it.

It also makes sense that he would have help from the inside. The "Harry" the tipster mentioned is almost certainly Harry Heyman, a Google engineer. Heyman was caught by surprise by his employer's announcement of Dodgeball's shutdown. In January, Heyman wrote on his LiveJournal:

Don't fret too much about not having a tool like this to use when dodgeball gets turned off. Like you, I'm pretty unimpressed with most of the other current offerings, but I know of a couple soon-to-be-released things in the works. Keep an eye out, and we'll all find a new home that suits our needs just fine.

But that's the hitch: Google already paid Crowley for the code, and even though it's not being used, Google's lawyers would reasonably want to disabuse startup founders of the notion that they can sell their startup and have it too.

Crowley and Heyman have not yet responded to emails asking for their side of the story. A Google spokeman promised to look into the matter but has not yet offered comment.

Now would be the perfect time to strike, with Crowley at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, surrounded by his friends and fans, many of whom have signed up for Foursquare.

Thank You Austin

2009-03-16T18:46:37Z

We just landed back home here in lalaland from an amazing weekend in Austin, Texas. We were there of course for the SXSW show and it certainly did not disappoint.

We are gathering up our photos, videos, favorite overheards and memories from the trip. In the meantime we wanted to send out a big thanks to everyone we had the pleasure of connecting with.

Stay tuned for our recap and of course much much more.

(Photo (CC) Brian Solis. www.briansolis.com)

South By Southwest Is a Pointless Party

2009-03-16T20:45:53Z

Why does the tech world get a throwdown in Austin when the banks have had to cancel their bashes? The news out of South By Southwest shows that Web hipsters are every bit as bankrupt.

Intellectually, that is, as opposed to financially. Most people attending South By Southwest Interactive admit that they're there for the chance to hang out in Austin with the same Internet buddies they hang out with in San Francisco and Brooklyn. Without the parties, what's the point? That's always been the case with South By Southwest. It's just that with the economy prostrate and the social-networking bubble thoroughly popped, there's not even money to skim from the froth.

There's still enough money to pay for tickets to Austin, of course. But in good times and bad, SXSW has always suffered from a lack of purpose. The music and film festival which gave birth to it has real songs and real movies to talk about. The attendees of SXSW Interactive have nothing to look at but each other, and nothing to listen to but their own kind. Surely that explains why it ends up being a group grope of self-congratulation over little at all.

Ah yes, the bubbly parties. Facebook threw a party celebrating the launch of a tool for linking Facebook friends to iPhone apps, completing the circle of two recent technological fads. And Dennis Crowley's Foursquare — which may be based on code he sold to Google, his former employer — facilitated so-called "flash parties" at bars for those who couldn't get on the official party invite lists, or didn't care to wait in line. Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, launched Wefollow.com, a directory of users for Twitter, to help navigate the mess of messages broadcast on the service.

In other words, the best and brightest of Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley are working on iterations of existing software for the most frivolous of purposes. There's not even a fundamental innovation in this round of tweaks meant to help you waste time more efficiently. (Gawker Media, the publisher of Gawker and Valleywag, threw a party of its own — but at least my colleagues were open about their intentions, which seemed to involve getting a bunch of geeks liquored up.)

It all reminds me of Camp Cyprus — the group of 20 Web cognoscenti, a gaggle of Facebookers and startuppers and wantrepreneurs who flew to a rich kid's dad's vacation home on the Mediterranean last fall and created a video of them cavorting in swimsuits to celebrate their own brilliance to the tune of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'." It was an incredibly tone-deaf gesture at a time when Wall Street was imploding and people were losing their jobs.

Except the economy hasn't gotten any better. And South By Southwest Interactive has more than 10,000 attendees. So doesn't that make its excesses 500 times worse?

A few people had the sense to avoid this particular trainwreck. Ev Williams, the CEO of Twitter, gave it a pass — even though the tech crowd at SXSW did so much to popularize his status-updating service. That the likes of Rose and Crowley are the stars of this year's South By speaks to how far it has fallen.

I first attended South By Southwest a decade ago, when the dotcom boom had 12 months left to run. Mark Cuban, then the head of Broadcast.com, gave a keynote speech about Internet video; he sold his Web-video startup, Broadcast.com, to Yahoo a month later for $5.7 billion. Under Yahoo's ownership, Broadcast.com went on to not be YouTube.

The difference between then and now: Thanks to the delusions of public-market investors, there was actually money to be made from what Internet insiders admitted were inanities. Now there's no money and no hope of making it. There's just the frivolity left.

Videographer Richard Blakeley quizzed bloggers on the highlights and lowlights of this year's South By Southwest.

Scenes from South By Southwest: (photos by Scott Kidder and James Del)

Tumblr founder David Karp has a new Tumblrette, Stephanie Wei! Update: Okay, we've gotten this whole who's-David-Karp-dating thing straight. Stephanie Wei was recently spotted with Karp at a birthday party for Briana Swanson. A tipster explains:

Karp is most definitely dating Stephanie Wei though, to the annoyance of many. Her friends were calling and emailing me asking if he was gay or not a couple of weeks ago, and now they complain that she's always with him.

Karp's sex life sure is confusing!
Pop17's Sarah Austin shows off her intellectual property.

Former Valleywag editor Nick Douglas puckers up to Laughing Squid's Scott Beale.

Lifehacker editor Adam Pash demonstrates how to open a beer bottle with a piece of paper.

Wine Library TV's Gary Vaynerchuk and ~~"friend," which is caption-writer code for "we don't know who this is"~~ very important person Becca Camp.

Facebook employees pop champagne with sparklers, just in case you missed the point that they were drinking champagne.

CollegeHumor's Ricky Van Veen and Tumblr's David Karp attempt to locate South By Southwest's point.

SXSW: Twitter Police Blotter

2009-03-17T06:00:12Z

The SXSW event isn’t even over yet but the official Twitter police blotter is already full of incidents. When you interlace quasi-employed new media kids and so many open bars this is bound to happen. Thanks to the nature of social media as a platform for oversharing, we have found some of the torrid tweets from the event.

Let’s survey the evidence:

Theft

Sarah Townsend was guilty of looking incredible hot in her geek glasses (white tape included), however she was also the victim of theft that same night at the Social Media Club Pool 2.0 event.

Disorderly Conduct

Paige Craig is the type of guy who likes to push the envelope, and by envelope we mean bar bouncers. This night an incident occurred when a bottle magically flew across the room. The bouncers were quick to blame Paige, who was even quicker to sit on the couch and encourage them to call the cops.

Drunken Tweets and Auto Correct Violations

Francisco Dao was in rare form the entire trip. This tweet may or may not be related to the prior night when he gave at least a dozen lap dances to the lucky ladies of SXSW.

Even yours truly is not immune to the effects of the drunken tweet. In case you’re wondering, gay bats only come out at night and always accessorize.

Public Intoxication

Local photographer and SEO guru Jonathan Dingman was one of the few confirmed arrests at SXSW. Normally a mellow guy, we understand Johnathan was egged on by others, encouraged to take a shot for every one of his Twitter followers.

Statutory Rape

Mashable events director Brett Petersel had a mashup of his own at Club Rain one night. Additional evidence supports that his assailant had incredibly hot caterpillar lips and at least some inclusion of leopard print in her outfit.

Assault

lalawag photographer Wm. Marc Salsberry was assaulted outside a Gary Vaynerchuk inspired flash mob. Normally the Vayner Nation is better behaved, perhaps the cases of free wine Gary brought had something to do with this incident.

Did we miss any? Post your favorites in the comments below.

SXSW Sneak Peek: Brüno

2009-03-17T09:19:41Z

Shared by Webomatica
Sounds hilarious.

Universal previewed three full scenes last night from Sacha Baron Cohen’s upcoming follow-up to Borat with video introductions from the man himself. If you’re a Borat fan and were worried that Cohen had lost the anonymity necessary to dupe stereotypical Americans with humorous results, rest assured Bruno is fucking hilarious. And if you’re someone (like me) who thought Borat wasn’t nearly as good as the hype led you to believe, again, rest assured that Bruno is still fucking hilarious.

Cohen as Bruno, the gay, Austrian, fashion designer, is obviously center stage here, but most of the comedy comes from the situations he creates and the people who unknowingly expose themselves as complete and utter tools. Cohen greeted the SXSW audience with a jaunty version of his own British accent, and introduces each segment with a brief description. The film’s plot follows Brüno’s attempt to become the “biggest Austrian celebrity since Hitler” which requires adopting a black baby from Africa and pretending to be the straightest man in the US. Synopses for each of the three scenes are below.

First up is a casting session for the baby’s celebrity photo shoot with actual mothers and fathers trying to get their infants or toddlers into the spread. He discusses the details of the shoot with them and asks if they and their children are okay with certain things… like loud noises, music with no rhythm, bees, komodo dragons, and being thrown from a four story building. The parents all say yes with only a couple hesitating before eventually agreeing. He tells one woman her child will be dressed like a Nazi pushing a wheelbarrow with a Jewish child inside. She says yes of course, it’s for dramatic purposes. Bruno asks another parent how much her child weighs, and they reply “about 30 lbs.” He replies that they’re looking for the next Nicole Richie, not the next Scarlett Johanssen, so can her daughter lose ten pounds in the next week? I’ll let you guess the mother’s reply…

Next up is Brüno’s guest appearance on The Richard Bey Show (think low-rent Jerry Springer) as a single parent in search of a mate. The crowd of mostly black audience members accepts his entrance with applause, but he starts to lose them almost immediately with the revelation that he’s looking for a black man to be his partner. Things go downhill from there as his adopted African baby is brought out wearing a half-shirt with the word “Gayby” on it. And then photos appear on screens in front of the audience including pictures of the child crucified like Christ and hanging out in a hot tub with four naked, adult men…

The final scene focuses on Brüno’s attempt to present a heterosexual persona to the American public. He becomes “Straight Dave”, the camouflage and cowboy hat-wearing host of “Straight Dave’s Man Slamming Max Out.” Think MFC ultimate fighting and you’ll have a sense of what the audience around the caged-in ring are expecting. Brüno (as Straight Dave) enters the ring with a series of testosterone-induced statements, and riles up the crowd with pro American and pro heterosexual chants. Brüno ends up in a fight reminiscent of his epic and fleshy battle from Borat, except this time the combatants are dressed… until they start kissing and the clothes start coming off. It’s absolutely magical to watch the crowd move from drunken glee to shock, disgust, anger, and rage in a matter of seconds. The various reaction shots are priceless.

Brüno deserves to have an even bigger and better reception than Borat did at the box office when it opens this summer. Cohen once again shines a light on average Americans, and once again he’ll be criticized for doing so. But there’s no denying the power or importance of that light. These are real people (with possibly a couple exceptions) and there’s no excuse for their behavior. It is what it is… Hilarious. Eye-opening. Depressing. And at the very least, expect to see people walking around this summer with T-shirts proclaiming that “My asshole’s just for shitting.” Americans are a proud people…

Report: Social Media Marketing Up During Recession

2009-03-16T14:57:27Z

I’m sitting across the street from the SXSW convention center, yesterday the organizer Hugh Forrest told me that attendees to the Interactive portion (a great deal with a focus on social) was up aprox 20% (just an approximation). I’ve seen many social media strategists (see list) here at the conference that are here to network with the influencers, get educated at the sessions, and to soak in what community really means.

During a recession, marketers are often forced to reduce budgets, in fact, it’s often one of the first buckets to get trimmed. In our latest research: Social Media Playtime is Over, we found that 53% of marketers are determined to increase their social media budget during a recession, and 42% will keep it the same, a total of 95% of marketers bullish on social media marketing. Why? The reasons are obvious to some, it’s inexpensive and the opportunity to benefit from cost-effective word-of-mouth, are promising.

Now this doesn’t mean that budgets are expanding immensely, since this is a ‘new’ media, these are small budgets. How small? I say minuscule. Three-quarters of marketers have $100,000 of less budgeted for social media marketing.

Even though the budgets are small and growing, we recommend to our clients, in order to be successful, not to approach social media marketing as experimental, but to put the right roles, process, and measurement capabilities in place to be effective. Remember, the most expensive cost isn’t the tools, the most expensive part is the soft costs: strategy, education, process, roles, measurement).

Key Takeaway? Social media budgets are small, but are growing during a recession, yet brands shouldn’t approach this as an experiment, and should have a proper strategy complete with objectives, roles, processes, and measurement.

I’d like to thank Tom Cummings who lead the survey effort and data cleansing, Emily Bowen who kept us on track, and Josh Bernoff for his insight and editing for the collaborative effort on this report –without them, this report would not have published, it’s great to work with a top-notch research team.

Related Voices

Adweek’s Brian Morrissey: Notes that the budgets are quite small, in his piece Social Media Outlay Still Small

Read Write Web: Despite Recession, More Than 50% of Marketers Increase Spending on Social Media

Marketing Pilgrim: Forrester Report Suggests Marketers Still Spend Peanuts on Social Media, But Increases Planned

BL suggests there are still going to be internal challenges to strategy, objective, and roles.

Colleague Josh Bernoff reinforces: Recession resistant: 95% of social media marketers will maintain or increase social media spending

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The weather is now perfect.

Is the New Foursquare Too Much Like the Old Dodgeball for Google?

Thank You Austin

South By Southwest Is a Pointless Party

SXSW: Twitter Police Blotter

Theft

Disorderly Conduct

Drunken Tweets and Auto Correct Violations

Public Intoxication

Statutory Rape

Assault

SXSW Sneak Peek: Brüno

Report: Social Media Marketing Up During Recession