Panel: Keynote with Mark Zuckerberg My notes: “Sucked” All I remember from this talk was Zuckerberg saying “platform, efficient, community” and Lacy just crossing and uncrossing her legs while twirling her hair. I left 15 minutes before the end. Apparently, the crowd went a bit crazy when it was Q&A time towards the end. The best part was when it as mob rule and they gave her a lashing. Ah well.
Panel: Human Rights in Virtual Worlds: discussion about whether or not you own what you make in a virtual game - there is no such thing as group rights as of now. There’s still work being done for individual rights online - ULAs (User Licence Agreements) are not always as liberal as marketed
Should you own what you make? If it’s on their server, perhaps it doesn’t fall into “your” possession. Curious what the gamers in the audience think of this one.
Panel: Icanhascheezburger We were promised free burgers. While we were inside the room, passersby ate our burgers :( I still can’t believe the company staffs 9 full time employees – all off ad-based revenue from funny cat pictures!
Sunday was the most partied out night of all of them. Went to a pre-party for the Adobe Web Awards. Then the awards show hosted by Eugene Mirman. Lots of laughs. The ‘ask a ninja’ guy came out to receive awards for participants not present. Went to the Etsy/Threadless/Moo party – which sucked. It was crowded, hot and no movement space since there were 3 pool tables with active games going on at the time. Gawker party at Emo’s: Met John Coulton who sings “Code Monkey”. Bumped into Eugene Mirman there who let us know of his comedy show the following night. Then went to Blogger party and met Cheeseburger from Icanhascheezburger. Partied hard.
Most memorable moment at the Blogger party: Met an Irishman and asked where I should go when I visit Ireland some day. Instead of the usual way of making a list, he drew out an accurate map of Ireland’s coastline and pin pointed the cities I should see. I love the geek way and not the ‘normal’ way :)
All in all, it was a great set of panels. Learned quite a bit here and there. Oh and there was Bloghaus which housed free beer, brownies, fruits and veggies all day at the conference. That may have been my favorite room there.
I don’t want to bore you with all the details and I’m sure you can find long, well written explanations of the panels on professional blogs. Here, I’ll just note what I found interesting from the ones I attended.
In true slacker fashion, I will write up the first day. More to come.
Panel: Horrible Ads: A panel with Jeff Jarvis and others discussing last year’s worst advertising campaigns - Rules #101 : When making an ad, make sure your audience can remember your brand name - Don’t mess with Wikipedia because you will be found out - Don’t make up socialibility where it doesn’t exist (The Cisco “human networking” example) - Vespa: Started a blog and let it die after a few entries. If you start it, finish it! - Whole Foods CEO: Don’t lie about your competition - Whatever you do, don’t insult your audience’s intelligence
Panel: Steven Johnson & Henry Jenkins:An optimistic view on collective intelligence - How is it that people find the time and devotion to fan sites? - Most pink collar workers need high levels of expertise to get the job. Once they have it, they are only required to use a small portion of their knowledge at work. They then seek out respect and a reputation outside of the office – this is possible in an online space. Hence, the motivation for hours spent creating online communities - Harry Potter has enabled kids to seek out larger text to read as well as learn about the legal process and fair trade when they try to publish their own works. - There’s a shift from “I” to “We” - A large reason why Barack Obama is popular amongst younger voters: he is the stub in the Wikipedia entry and we are all filling out the entry together (interesting wording that caught my attention)
Panel: Voting - “miracle of aggregation” - In a betting market, there is a cost to be wrong. If there’s something at stake, does a voter with a ‘wrong’ vote stay quiet? - If you don’t know enough about a subject, don’t vote! (brings up the question of how informed are we as a society about the current issues and our presidential candidates’ take on them)
Panel: Worst. Website. Ever: A complete riot. Some of the most hilarious moments at SXSW. Loved it. - What makes a horrible website? It is: Inane. Derivative. Evil. (derivative example: Facebook for Senior Citizens. Threadless for Pants – Pantless) Sites presented: Presca.st, Flockd Up, HappyNetBox, Sickr, Mmomerce, PeopleIPO.
After this, we’d gone to Spaghetti warehouse. Because where do you eat the best Italian food? In Texas, of course. And how do you know it’s the best? Your food has a tiny plastic Italian flag on it to remind you of the cuisine in case you’d forgotten.
Good times on 6th street afterwards. Got a cowgirl hat. :)
Since these posts are coming in very slowly… I’ve decided to rename them as “Slacker Reviews”. Very appropriate.
In any case, it seems that SXSW is following me even at the entrance of my workplace. I walked out this morning to get some late morning coffee and I see two girls handing out fliers for Animoto. I had seen their presentation at SXSW’s Trade Show. I grabbed a few dozen fliers of theirs and decided to join the site. Here’s my little experiment -
It’s not a bad process. Takes about 15 minutes total and is much quicker if you have your photos hosted on Flickr or another hosting site. I may use it later in the future. If you make your own slideshow, let me know. Mine was kinda a starter :)
Okay, so the comedians weren’t even part of the official line up for SXSW. And their performances weren’t necessarily tech related.. although, they are geeks and we love them even more for it :)
I got to see 2 great comedians, Eugene Mirman and Mike Birbiglia, on Monday night at Emo’s on Red River Street in Austin. They were so funny that I nearly peed myself and my friend laughed so hard that he felt his dinner coming up. Such great times.
This was a clip Mirman showed the crowd:
And after much chanting for it, Birbiglia did the “Cracka” skit:
Notes on the panels, parties and sites coming next! :)
I hadn’t thought this day would come so soon. I just checked the Google Analytics account I have set up for this website and learned that I have visitors from 13 countries! What took me by an even bigger surprise is that I have readership from over half of the U.S. states! I also have 4 GoogleReader subscribers.. Now I’m *really* curious who these lurkers are. So come out, come out, will ya?
I did wonder how updating the blog more often had created a larger conversation with more readers. I just had *no* idea it was this many more. I’m shocked and very flattered :) So thank you for reading!
I now have just that much more motivation to get inspired and write some meaningful and hopefully interesting content. I’m hoping to get my SXSW notes typed up before the weekend is over..
I’m back from SXSW Interactive – it was a blast! I had such a great time with my friends Ben and Josh as well as catching up with ITP classmates.
This is what was waiting for me when I got back to my desk Wednesday morning… thanks Ulina for the cute welcome :)
Upcoming posts: - A “best moments of Austin SXSW 2008″ - Podcasts review - Lifehacking: cutting down on time spent online. (in response to Haasome’s latest post) - who knows what else.. stay tuned!
(photo from Wired.com)
