Video From My First Few Days of SXSW 2011

Flipboard T-Shirt

Named Apple’s iPad App of the Year and one of TIME’s top 50 innovations of 2010, Flipboard is a free, fast, beautiful way to flip through the news, photos and updates your friends are sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Flickr and Instagram. See your social media in a magazine layout that is easy to scan and fun to read. Share articles and photos, comment on posts, and like or favorite anything. Customize your Flipboard with sections created from your favorite news, people, blogs and topics.

I saw a great presentation with one of their founders –Handheld Media Revolution: Insights on Tablet Development – and was able to score one of their limited edition Flipboard SXSW T-shirts, seen here.  As with all the swag I’m getting… I’m giving it away.  Comment on this post and I’ll give the shirt away to one lucky commenter.  BTW, the shirt is a XXL.

Kicking off SXSW

It took me a bit to get this put together, but I wanted to give you a quick update, kicking off SXSW…

Banking on Big Brands/Celebs for the Web

Panel: Amber J Lawson – Head of Original Programming, AOL, David Tochterman – Head of Digital Media, Innovative Artists, Rick Fox – NBA All star/Entertainer, Kevin Pollak – Actor, Paul Kontonis – Digitals
Hashtag: #sxswbigbrands

This panel discussed how traditional media is changing and how brands can get involved to take advantage of this shift.  In particular, two celebrities on the panel are taking slightly different approaches to this.

Actor Kevin Pollak, created Kevin Pollak’s Chat show – http://kevinpollakschatshow.com – because he said, “If you’re not creating your waiting.”  As an actor, you wait for the phone to ring for the next thing.  He felt that new media provided a tremendous opportunity to create his own content.  He used Felicia Day as another example of someone who created their own show to take their future and potential in their own hands.  He simply tries to create interesting content to draw an audience, as he said, “If you can earn an audience you can earn a living.”

Pollak gets brands involved from a very traditional perspective, through pre-roll advertising, display ads around the content, etc.  He feels that this helps big brands who may not be comfortable jumping into this area, get involved.  Therefore, they primarily use impressions as a way to sell the show to brands.

NBA all-star, and now entertainer, Rick Fox, takes a slightly different approach.  What’s important to him is telling a good story, and he looks for opportunities to integrate brands into the story.  For example, on one of his shows, you may see a basketball player having a Gatorade after a game.  It’s a bit like celebrity endorsements, but extends it by showing how the product is used and its benefits.  This takes cooperation between the celebrity/producer and the brand.

Working through partnerships like VuGuru/AOL, he can offer these product integrations, as well as non-traditional promotions.  He believes you are not only bring on a celebrity to use/endorse your product, but you’re also utilizing their Twitter followers and other social media “klout” to influence their fans.  And it’s not just the celebrities’ followers, but their personal networks.  For example, when Rick Fox was on Dancing with the Stars, he was able to get friends (Kobe Bryant and Shaq) to post messages to their followers asking for support.  This can get a little muddy when you’ve got multiple projects going on at the same time.

Debating Brands’ Role as Publishers

Panel: Tom Ashbrook – NPR, Lora Kolodny – TechCrunch, Pawan Deshpande – Hivefire, Gary Kim – Carrier Evolution, Joe Pulizzi – Junta42
Hashtag: #curatedebate

The purpose of journalism is to inform or educate, while the purpose of brands is to drive profitable customer action. The Internet allows for the democratization of information, but we’re also starting to see the corporatization of information.

People will make time for a good, relevant story, no matter who tells it. If brands can tell compelling, interesting stories on a regular basis, they can cut through the clutter (those 30 billion messages a day, as Shiv Singh discussed here). The more money that comes in from doing this, the more money there is to do this.

We are all media publishers, and all brands need to think of themselves as publishers.  They need to take a viewer/reader/listener centric approach that asks: What are their painpoints?  What keeps them up at night?  You have the ability to tell a story that shows how your brand can solve this issue. Content will be successful if it targets those customers painpoints. We now have the ability to communicate directly to consumers without having to go through another channel – advertising.

Even media companies are realizing a decrease in advertising and rise in “advertiser services” which essentially teach brand advertisers how to be content publishers.  One company on the panel – Hivefire – aggregates and curates content for brands on industry topics.  This allows these brands to continually publish information, and be a resource on industry topics.  Another example is P&G’s Home Made Simple.  It’s tremendously similar to Real Simple – providing nearly identical types of information, but Home Made Simple highlights their own products as examples within stories.

Brands need to make sure they are seen to be the trusted authority, and they need to be straightforward and honest about their perspective and motives.  As hard as it tries, journalism is not objective. Everyone has a perspective – and brands need to be up front about their motives.  Consumers get to decide who they pay attention to – journalists or branded content.  More importantly, social media allows for a broader application of the “Fourth Estate” among corporations, so they also need to be honest, or they’ll get called out on it.

O’Reilly/Calacanis Fireside Chat

The O’Reilly/Calacanis fireside chat today was a great session to kick-off my SXSW experience. O’Reilly covered topics from brands to discussing his knack for using pattern recognition to predict the future.

Key Takeaways:

• Great brands have a core; they mean something. Brands belong to anyone who uses it.  Create a barrier to entry. Create an identity.
• Hardware used to be the source of value. Microsoft realized the value in software and then open source commoditized it. Value has now moved to user contribution.
• If there was a “Web 3.0”, it would not be user data but sensor data; whatever harnesses collective intelligence.
• Chase the idea. Innovation requires fun. “They don’t think it will make them rich, they think it’s fun”

O’Reilly also discussed Government and shared an analogy regarding government as a vending machine. We put money in (taxes) and expect it to spit out something (services). We shake the machine when we don’t get what we want. O’Reilly proposes that government needs to act like a platform. He called Reagan the founder of Foursquare. The government undertook the difficult development of GPS and opened it up for commerce.

Giveaways

As you’ve already seen, I’ve gotten a couple extra Delivering Happiness Books, as well as a couple copies of Eyeballs Out that I’m giving away here on the blog.  I’ve gotten a few more things here that I’m planning on giving away to readers of the blog.  Keep an eye out for a few more things to come!

Meeting with Josh Bernoff

After getting a chance to see Josh Bernoff from Forrester speak at the Social Business Summit yesterday, we got a chance to sit down with him this morning to dig a little deeper into a few topics.  It was really a special opportunity to pick his brain about social media applications and organizational structures to deal with empowered consumers.  He shared some great insights and advice regarding the use of Facebook and organizing to be able to respond in real-time to consumers.

I was really interested in what could be done to collaborate in an environment which might be fractured into various silos with slightly overlapping responsibilities. We discussed the need to bring these groups together on a very regular basis to have discussions regarding monitoring, strategies, and execution. He brought forward a case study from Dell, mentioning how they bring together all of their social media folks for a weekly phone call to discuss these issues. Further, he mentioned the importance of challenging each other on these topics as well – making sure strategies are in place and metrics are being monitored. All areas need to be aware of what each other are seeing and doing in order to most effectively execute in this space.

Unfortunately, and understandably, he wasn’t very excited for me to video record parts of our meeting, but thanks again to Josh for taking the time out of his busy schedule to talk with us!

Dachis Group Social Business Summit

At the iMedia Brand Summit, several of us were talking about whether or not we were going to be attending SXSW. A few of us are, and I found out that Robert Freeman, from Michaels was staying at the same hotel as well. As we got to talking, he mentioned that he and his boss were planning to attend the Dachis Group Social Business Summit. Well, as it turns out, Robert’s boss wasn’t able to make it into town in time for the Social Business Summit, and since they aren’t able to refund his fee, Robert invited me to attend.

I had seen this earlier, but after iMedia and SXSW, there was no way I was going to be able to talk to my boss about footing the tab for yet another conference on this trip. I’m really excited about being able to attend this, particularly because one of the speakers will be Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, and I just finished his book Delivering Happiness.  There are some other tremendous speakers on the agenda, including Josh Bernoff of Forrester, Shiv Shingh of Pepsi (got to see him speak last year at work when he was with Razorfish), and Jesse Thomas of JESS3, a data visualization group.  I’m certain the other speakers will be great, and the topics on the agenda look awesome.  As you would expect, I’ll be tweeting and blogging from there as well.

Foursquare at SXSW

Foursquare had been a bit coy these last couple weeks regarding their plans for SXSW, simply tweeting, “SXSW IS LESS THAN THREE WEEKS AWAY! NEW APP + NEW BADGES + PARTIES + CONCERT + MOAR FOURSQUARE. DETAILS COMING. OKTHXBAI.”

A few hours ago, they started to let us all in (a little) on what is to come. Their site – http://foursquare.com/sxsw – has been updated, and what we know is this:

• They’re releasing a new version of the app – Foursquare 3.0
• They’re hosting a party on 3/12 at the Cedar Street Courtyard
• They’re hosting a concert on 3/14
• They’re introducing 18 new badges (not sure if they’ll be exclusive to SXSW or not)
• They’ve partnered with American Express

I’m really excited and interested to see what becomes of the American Express partnership.  When I saw American Express’ own version of Foursquare built on Foursquare’s API – Social Currency – I was immediately impressed.  Not only did they add photo capabilities before Foursquare did, but they added a feature which allowed you to enter in how much you had spent at that venue.

With the partnership, any purchases made with an Amex card would not only check you in via Foursquare, but could provide incredible individual and aggregate data to retailers.  For example, with Best Buy’s Rewards card, they know how much you’ve spent with them – and provide you rewards based on how much you’ve spent.  They also know who you are, along with when and where you made the purchase.  That’s incredible data for targeted marketing and predictive modeling.

Now, every retailer (who accepts Amex), even the small business down the street could have this type of data on their customers, thanks to Foursquare and Amex.  It has the potential to be the retail version of Google analytics for businesses.  When you add the gaming incentives that Foursquare provides, you’ve got something that people want to do and are willing to give up this data for gaming and loyalty incentives.

How to be South by South Best

This is from the IFC Crossroads house folks. I thought it was pretty good. Despite the sarcasm, it’s scarily on target (not sure about the tent though).

Gearing Up for SXSW

I’ve only got a week to go before I leave for Austin.  As I mentioned, I’ve got the iMedia Brand Summit for a few days prior to the SXSW activities starting up.  That means I’ll be spending this weekend tracking down last minute items for my trip.  I’ve already purchased a few things, but here’s my list of gear and gadgets I’m prepping for my marathon of technology and social media:

Extended laptop battery – I recently replaced the battery on my laptop, and surprisingly, the cost wasn’t too bad. However, the 6-cell battery would only get me about 2.5 hours of power before I had to plug in.  So, I managed to find a 12-cell battery that would fit my laptop that can get me through a couple SXSW sessions before I need to plug in.

Griffin TuneJuice 2 Battery Backup for iPod – Even though I’ll use my laptop quite a bit, my iPhone will get a ton of use as well.  Especially since it’ll probably spend 1/3 of its time searching for a signal with the 15,000 other iPhones within a half mile radius.  It takes 4 AAA batteries, which should be easy to find should I run out of juice.

Dual Power Strip – I actually brought this with me last year, and I can’t tell you the number of friends I would make in each session when I pulled it out.  In every ballroom people were gathered around the outlets.  Most people didn’t mind letting me plug in so we could all share the power.  The only bad thing is when I would get set up and realize about 5 minutes into the session that it sucked and I wanted to bail.  Unfortunately, I’d have to literally pull the plug on 6-7 people. However, most seemed to understand and were just happy to get 5 minutes worth of recharging time.

Verizon Air Card – While the wifi wasn’t bad last year, it would go in and out on me sporatically, so I learned not to count on it.  At least with the air card, I pretty much knew I could get a signal, even if it was a little slower than the wifi.  I’m just hoping that all those new Verizon iPhones won’t bog down the network too bad.

Joby Gorillamobile for iPhone 4 – I’m planning to shoot a whole lot more photos and video this year, now that I’ve got the iPhone 4.  However, when I have shot video, I’ve noticed how shakey the video has been.  I just got this little device which can sit and grip while holding my phone will help me produce some decent video from SXSW.

Not necessarily gear, but necessary in your gear – Here’s a list of a few things I’d recommend having on hand in your backpack or slingbag: asprin, bottle for water, snacks (granola bars), 5 Hour Energy, business cards, power cords, pen & paper, a mouse, sunglasses, and memory cards.

Let me know in the comments what other gear you are bringing or recommend for SXSW.