sxsWINNING*

If I needed extra luggage for all of the ideas I’ve been trying to upload into my brain over the last 5 days, next month’s VISA bill would not be pretty. On the other hand, I might not feel like my head is filled with Silly Putty.

So, in an effort to organize, store for later, and, of course, share – here’s a shortlist** of what I found interesting*** over the weekend. When I’m finally done**** this post will hopefully serve as a book list, idea board and twitter suggestion list all in one.

there were some other people there, too. (there were some other pictures, as well.)

What’s that? You think the panels I found interesting sound like poo? Check out Paul Soupiset’s panel sketchnotes. They. Are. Awesome. And they include enough Twitter handles, hashtags and breakout quotes to send you spiraling down the internet rabbit hole for days.

Without further adieu…

Future of Social Photography
Sam Odio, Facebook Photos & Video – @sodio
Yan-David Erlich, founder of Mopho.to – @yanda
#futureofsocialphotos

Nothing like kicking off the weekend with a massive sxsw fail. Like missing the one panel you***** really (really!) wanted to see. Luckily, hashtags exist to save us from ourselves and I was able to collect a small amount of information from whatever people thought was quotable enough to tweet. Here’s what I learned:

It was q&a only. This seems to be a trend, and while I get that it is designed to help the audience to maximize the time, in practice it often results in a heavy percentage spent on very specific or very basic queries and not enough on the expertise of the panel – which is why I walked all the way over to your panel in the first place.****** I am not the only one who feels this way.

The cost of storing photos and videos is about the same as storing text 5 years ago.

People like to hate on the photo skillz of Instagram users. This was by far the most RTed.

The volume of photos uploaded to Facebook matches the total volume on Flickr – every month.

Photo sharing services get your photos – and also lots of your data.

There is room for innovation for an app that makes sharing video as easy as the plethora of photosharing apps make iphoneography.

How Print Design Is The Future of Interaction
Mike Kruzeniski, Creative Director, Windows Phone – @mkruzeniski
#inspiredbyprint
Slides

This session hit my love of history – and it hit it hard. What I learned: the first vision of a computer was published in Atlantic Monthly in 1945 – called a Memex, it was literally a huge desk that would have a catalog of everything you owned – books, writings, even stuff like scissors – inside it that could be accessed through two screens.

So, while I think we can agree that this idea was impressively visionary for it’s time, the fact that we still work with “files” that are in “folders” and discard them into a “trash can”******* is perhaps a bit outdated 6 and a half decades later. Which leads to my favorite quote from this panel:

“I don’t need to look at a picture of a book to understand it’s bookness.”********

Basically, Kruzeniski’s point seemed to be that anything you present in digital form is both more and less than its corresponding “real” version – and the digital presentation should reflect that. As he said, “the content is interactive, instead of a recreation of a physical artifact.” So – we should be working with the information as the artifact, not the physical form. And this is why print design – which is all about information – should be where online designers look for inspiration during this transition.

In his words, “print may be dead – but print design is not.”

Chicken or the Egg? What Search Activity Actually Conveys
Brian Theodore, Yahoo Director of Search
Vera Chan, Yahoo Sr. Editor
@YahooSearchData | #yahoo
Slides

The immediacy of the internet has affected the 5Ws – when? is often assumed to be NOW and where? is incredibly important to people – which is why maps now commonly show alongside queries. This session talked a lot about using search data in forecasting – which is interesting, but limited. You can forecast what movies will open big at the box office, because that variable is determined by consumer interest. But you can’t predict contests that are based on small-pool opinions or abilities, like the Oscars or the Super Bowl.

As an editor for Yahoo content, Vera brought an interesting perspective on search data in determining the angle a story takes. For example – a lot of the searches on the Jon and Kate TBS divorce debacle were preteens. Which is really interesting, and perhaps indicative that at least part of that story should have been focused on how kids deal with divorce – instead of Jon’s unfortunate Ed Hardy addiction.

brain break! the #etsyaustin house was a crafty oasis.

SCVNGR Keynote
Seth Priebatsch | @sethpriebatsch
#GameLayer
Coverage: TechCrunch | CNET | SXTXState

Seth talked a lot about the “game layer” that’s coming over the next decade. By far the most interesting part to me, though – especially in light of the enormous anticipated cuts to the Texas education budget – was about how education is failing because it’s a game with a faulty rewards system.

The basic idea: grades are not an actual reward. They are a stand-in for the real reward: actually learning something. And as long as we focus on the false reward – we’ll see problems like a lack of engagement and cheating.

Seth’s idea: instead of individual grades, we should have a “level up” mentality – “create a grading dynamic based on progressions, instead of a weighted average based on each individual event.” So, you progress through the various levels to a coveted end status, with its own inherent rewards. Students may take different amounts of time to progress between levels, but no one fails (definitely a more useful paradigm) and the motivation to progress is always in place, no matter what performance on individual tasks is like.

Very, very interesting. This was a great talk, and I’ll update this post with the video, if/when it’s posted.

Metrics-Driven Design
Joshua Bowman | @bokardo
#metricsdrivendesign
Session Resources

There are two ways to make design decisions – based on data and based on intuition. Bowman made a very powerful point – that while data-driven decisions should be used to optimize an existing design – data will only take you to the top of the mountain you are on. Unless you make a core change to your design every so often – unless you shoot for that next mountaintop – you will necessarily see diminishing returns from your optimization efforts.

Optimization asks: what works best in the current model?
Design innovation asks: what is the best possible model?

Find out what your most active users are doing. Replicate that. #metricsdrivendesign #SxSW

March 12, 2011 6:46 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@dianecherie

diane

Want more? Notes from: @sherylyulin | @ctomlin

Measuring Social Media – Let’s Get Serious
Christina Warren, Mashable writer | @film_girl
Jason Falls, Social Media Explorer | @JasonFalls
Kevin Weil, Twitter | @kevinweil
Raj Kadam, CEO, Viral Heat | @raj_kadam
#SMAROI

Thanks to the huge amount of investment in social media – and the fact that it is “infinitely measurable” – there is a lot of energy around getting at the ROI.

Unfortunately, most of the information available boils down to, “Yeah! You should be measuring that stuff. Yeah.”

So, I was really looking forward to some specific advice. Unfortunately, the specifics offered basically boiled down to recommendations of some measurement tools that are available (for a price.) The best point about the issue was made by Jason, and it boils down to this:

ROI is a monetary measure. But of the benefits of social media – increasing branding, building community, protecting reputation, facilitating customer service, collecting insights for r&d, and generating sales/leads – only one has a direct line to generating cash. They all have value, they all grow your business – but they can’t all be specifically accounted for on the balance sheet, especially not immediately.

And even if they were all generating cash – you can’t measure one marketing activity in isolation, because it’s not the only way (hopefully) that you are communicating with customers. What’s the ROI of your billboard?

#SMROI panel was packed.

There are basically only three things the boss cares about: how much money did we make? How much money did we save? Are our customers happy? Social media hits the last one really hard – and this is the one you should seek to quantify, however you can. Socialogue has a great summary and response to the ideas presented on the panel – that actually is pretty specific.

There was also a lot of interest in this question: how do we get access to the full stream of tweets? According to Kevin, no matter what your metrics account rep might tell you, access to everything is granted only through a business deal with Twitter – a la Google or Yahoo, both of which provide tweets in search results. Alternatively, the Library of Congress will provide access to researchers, but as far as I am aware (and Kevin did not address it specifically) – that resource is not yet available publicly. More on data access in moderator Christina Warren’s writeup on Mashable.

Viral Marketing with The Oatmeal
Matthew Inman, aka The Oatmeal | @oatmeal
Panel Summary
Book List: 5 Very Good Reasons To Punch A Dolphin In The Mouth

It was amazing. That is all.

The Oatmeal, taking a video of us taking pictures of him. Meta.

How To Hire and Manage A Software Developer
Steve Zehngut, CTO, Zeek Interactive | @zengy
#hiringadeveloper

Developers: they have their own language(s). And it’s no surprise to anyone who’s ever worked with one that the panel immediately after this was called Your Web Developer Thinks You’re An Idiot. This room was packed, and everyone was taking furious notes of the great specifics Steve was serving up – but it all boiled down to one thing: communication.

#hiringadeveloper is feeling like a management group therapy session #sxswi

March 14, 2011 11:04 am via txtReplyRetweetFavorite

@EONpr

EONpr

He started by asking the audience to list problems they have had managing developers – and the answers were sadly, hilariously similar to my own experiences. And going back through my notes now, a lot of the advice would apply to hiring any kind of agency to do work for you. For example:

Best way to ruin your relationship with a developer? Try to tell him how to do something technical. (See also: no one likes it when you tell them how to do their job.)

Still the back and forth between the project managers and the developers in the room was illuminating, and I left with some good strategies that would be hard to get into without doing a dedicated post. If you’re going through something similar, email me and I will share the notes.

Unbelievable ecommerce: Increase Sales by 10,000%
Paul Boag | @boagworld
Presentation Video
Book recommendation: Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug

How can you resist a title like that? Or a statement like this?

Boag: “You are NOT Amazon” (and that’s OK – your business and customers are unique) #sxsw #sxswi #unbelievable ^JP

March 14, 2011 9:39 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@aweber

AWeber

Basically, they sold a lot of made-ahead meals to people 80+. On the internet. And they did it not by copying the “standards” for modern web design, but by focusing on the user – by making the experience of the web site match the needs and expectations of people who are 80 years old and those who care for them. It seems mind-numbingly obvious, but the implications of this strategy had wide-ranging effects on the entire business. They had the commitment/guts to implement, and it paid off.

In other words: they made it simple, useful, and helpful – and they didn’t insist on driving purchases through the site. Grandma could reorder with her deliveryman if she preferred. Because customer service is more important than analytics.

You can see all the specifics in the presentation video linked above, but my favorite was “turn your weaknesses into strengths.” The business was a franchise model, meaning that pricing was all over the place. So – they listed the price as the highest price any of the franchisees charged – and then everyone not in that area got a “discount” on checkout. Simple – as the best solutions are. Love it.

Felicia Day Keynote
@feliciaday | Session Links
Coverage: Fast Company | VentureBeat
Book List: If You Want To Write | Bird By Bird

This lady is my hero. She took a web series about online gamers from a two-episode run shot in her house to a multi-season internet hit with more views than most cable networks. She was valedictorian of her class at UT, where she gave a speech called “Putting Art In Your Science.”  And, she turned the too-cool-for-anyone uber-tech dudes at the conference into puddles of goo.

She’s brilliant.

And here are the lessons she shared from making and marketing her first web series, The Guild:

Scarcity can work. Episodes of The Guild were released only once a month, so each episode was an event – which prompted people to talk/post about it more because it was relatively unusual.

Personalization. Felicia emailed literally everyone she thought would be interested, every time an episode came out. She personally posted about it in all the gamer forums she could find – and she still does.

Specific audience. Doing something with a niche audience has a built in benefit – you know who they are, you know were they hang out. Much easier to reach every person who will be interested than something with broader appeal. My favorite quote from her (and it was hard to choose): “

“Mainstream is nothing anymore. What is mainstream? It’s whatever you’re interested in.”

Personality drives people. Emotional involvement is poweful. The Internet is more psychological than people give it credit for.

Timing. A tweet has a shelf life of about 10 minutes, so you have to repeat yourself a lot. And, you have to balance between reminding and spamming. It’s instinctual – which is again why emotional involvement matters.

My favorite quote I made up for the keynote: On Twitter audience: “A campaign is not a booty call, it’s a long term commitment.” – #sxswi

March 14, 2011 3:44 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@feliciaday

Felicia Day

There was a lot more to love, but Fast Company has an interesting article on what she left out.

The Thank You Economy
Gary Vaynerchuk | @garyvee
Book List: The Thank You Economy | A review

Every person who has asked me about sxsw – I’ve ended up talking about this session for half an hour. Methinks it deserves a full post of it’s own. The man killed it.

@garyvee No bullshit, thanks for the inspiration and the verbal bitchslap (speaking as a sn mktr) Shocked at how much I needed it. #truth

March 14, 2011 4:47 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@btruax

Brian Truax

What did I miss? This post was a first stab at organizing a million different threads into something coherent – so I’d love to hear what stood out to you – whether you were at the conference or following along online.

*best. hashtag. ever. Courtesy of (I think – these things can be hard to pin down) @eschipul
**ha!
***definitely not everything I did – ratio of “did it” to “found it worthwhile” was about 1 to 3 this time.
****hopefully, sometime before next year’s conference. The digital detritus that’s accumulated is massive and somewhat cluttered at the moment I write this.
*****And other people, some of the few who actually read these ramblings, wanted to hear about.
******Another trend: holding panels in Siberia. There were sessions I was really psyched about – until I realized they were being held on the UT campus. Literally.
*******OK, “Recycle Bin.”
********While I found this panel fascinating, the fact that the designer for the Windows phone was hating on artifact-based design – turned the “page” in an iPad “magazine” lately? – was not lost on me.