SXSW Interactive Community Blog

While we’ve all been hitting up the panels and parties, I’ve spotted some cool apps that apply to Interactive at the Trade Show.

If you’re around during the Music Conference, you might want to check out imeem at the Trade Show. A peer to peer network, they have a killer UI that handles various media. You can post private or public podcasts in addition to photos. They’re also hosting a party tonight, so all you Gold and Platinum Badge holders can check out the party and app tonight if you missed it at the trade show. Also, they’ll be around for SXSW Music this week.

Another cool app that invidkllr tipped me off about is eyespot. Here you can upload, share, and EDIT your videos all on a browser based app.

Has anyone else seen any apps that really caught their attention during the festival? I’m really curious about all the GoogleMaps apps. I missed the panel because I was attending an e-Learning panel.

Click here to find out how:

 http://www.nodrugtesting.com/

Enjoy the rest of the Fest!

-shannon batson

This panel defined folksonomy and the current state of tagging. During the course of the conversation there were a few suggestions on ways to improve upon the current state of affairs, which is what the panel was really about. I wanted to expand on that part of the conversation.

It seems to me that every time a cool new technology or idea comes around, we jump on the bandwagon with such enthusiasm that we leave behind everything that came before. When the discussion repeatedly turned to letting non-power-users rely on or draw from the knowledge of the group, either in the form of automatic tagging or keyword suggestions, people questioned how any one person could rely on the opinions of another. While I agree that no system is perfect (systems are, after all, created by imperfect humans), it seems to me that we’ve been developing methods of quantifying trust for a long time.

When I buy something on eBay I’m reasonably assured that I’m buying from a reputable seller. The same goes for opinions on Epinions. Does anybody remember when Epinions was the cool new kid that would empower the masses? I still use the site when making purchasing decisions. For that matter, look at any peer-to-peer network.

Simple ideas tend to be the best ideas. That’s my corollary to Occum’s Razor. Simple methods of user ranking can create a trust mechanism that would allow novice users to rely on the wisdom of experts. This could easily allow for experts in specific areas (Jazz was mentioned during the panel).

I want to repeat one suggestion that was brought up during the panel: tagging should be incorporated directly into the browser (and operating systems). Regular bookmarking should take advantage of tags. This should not replace categorization but rather be offered as an option to it. Just because you think it is better doesn’t mean it has to replace something people have already learned to use. There is something to be said for the efficiency of knowledge already learned.

That suggestion led directly to something that I have not heard mentioned by anyone despite it being extremely obvious. In fact, it hadn’t occurred to me until the panel. Tagging has been around since the early days of the web. It has been done by the experts in each subject area and it has been done to a vast quantity of what is out there. I’m talking about keywords. Remember meta-tags?

Why has nobody created a bookmark plugin or web utility bookmarklet that automatically includes meta-data with the link URL? This should be automated in every browser and bookmarking website and, at the very least, include the two most common meta-tags: description and keywords. Relying on past lessons learned: bookmark searching should be able to very easily include or exclude metadata in order to deal with keyword spamming (there we go re-using past knowledge to enhance the trust of the system…).

I’ll leave off there. Hopefully other attendees (and the panelists themselves) can offer more suggestions or point out the flaws in mine. The evolution of ideas is best accomplished through collaboration.

I was checking out the Podcasting 2.0 Panel this morning. Did anyone check out the XML panel this morning? I currently use it for work. Aside from not being the killer single source content bullet, not being a formal markup language, and being less user friendly than expected, did they offer any gems of advice. I’m very curious? I ask, because we’re making decisions on using it again at work. Can anyone chat with me offline about it or post an outline on here?

Hey there. I’m kicking myself for not getting into Austin today to see this weekend’s jammin’ Interactive panels. This year I wanted to get a taste of the Music Fest, so not getting in till Sunday.

Hope many of you will turn out for the darknets panel at 11:30 am Monday morning. I’m no fan of panels where they line up two Official Spokespersons from one side to face off against two Official Spokespersons from the other side. So you’ll forgive us if we try to move beyond the way this question is usually framed — file-sharing pirates vs. digital anarchists — and tackle more interesting questions, about the limits (if any) of online privacy, whether “lightnet” values can work in a secure private network, whether freenets can serve as a bulwark against corporate interests, and whether artists can benefit from enclosed or public p2p networks.

We have some cool panelists, including Ian Clarke, in town all the way from Edinburgh, Scotland, and Kori Bernards from the MPAA.

Catch me in between sessions this week and ask me about the latest goings-on with Ourmedia.org, the nonprofit grassroots media community.

I’m Paul Chaney and I’ll be moderating the How to Make $$ With YOur Blog Design Skills session featuring four of the best blog designers on the planet. (In fact, they may be the ONLY blog designers on the planet, not sure.) Their names are Joelle Reeder of Moxie Design Studios, Lisa Sabin or E. Webscapes, Peter Flaschner of The Blog Studio and last, but certainly not least, Susie Gardner, of Hop Studios and author of the book Buzz Marketing with Blogs For Dummies.

If you are a web designer who has ever considered designing blogs, we’d like to invite you to attend this event. These people are all terribly overworked and want to see some more blog designers join the party. The session is Saturday, March 11, from 3:30 - 4:30 in room 18D. We’ll see you there.

Earlier this week, I interviewed Shawn O’Keefe of SXSW Interactive. Listen to him discuss the upcoming festival and various issues in our interactive world.

Hey All,

You may remember my earlier post, but if not, my name is David Neff and I work for the American Cancer Society. We are having a great presentation about what it means to foster change and innovation in a non-profit enviroment. And what you can do to help. Anyway we now have our mini-site up and running and our presentation will be held on the Adobe Stage on Monday, March 13th. So be sure to drop by and check us out.  

 MONDAY, MARCH 13
11:00 am - Noon: Futuring & Innovation - the American Cancer Society Coffee Break
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm: Bloggie Awards
2:15 pm - 2:45 pm: SXSW Film Fest Trailers
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm: Adobe Creative Suite 2: The complete design environment for print, web, and mobile publishing
4:45 pm - 6:00 pm: Spout Reception

Coming off the back of our experiences with podcasting our web design conference, WE05 last year, my business partner John Allsopp and I decided to organize a panel for this year’s SXSWi called How (and Why) to Podcast an Event. Eric Meyer, most recently of An Event Apart fame, but who also spoke at WE05 is helping us out with the public speaker and educator’s point of view. But we’re relatively new (albeit enthusiastic!) hands to podcasting. The panel’s also going to feature the experience of Matt May, the creator of the CC music podcast, Staccato, as well as Alex Williams of Corante Events, who’ll be keen to talk about his most recent project Podcast Hotel.

Everyone’s heard of podcasting, but many people who organize events are going to have reservations about using it. There are practical/technical concerns, and then we had much deeper, and harder to resolve, business and strategic issues.

While our Sydney based conference last year grew into a reasonably large event, with almost 450 people over three days, we continue to take what we call “the professional grass roots approach”. This means we solve problems with inexpensive solutions which are “good enough”. Our podcasting program was a great example of this. At the panel we’ll explain just how straightforward it is to make good quality content available. Budget constraints are your friend here: they will encourage you to create solutions which are simple and appropriate to the task.

What I really like about podcasting is that it is a fine example of the simplest rule for success of any web enterprise: create benefits for your business by giving away high quality content for free. There’s two parts to that sentence. You must give away something of genuine value. It’s hard to believe this still has to be said in 2006, but if you try to generate interest by giving away nothing more than thinly disguised advertisements for your event, no matter how slickly produced they are, you will fail. And then you also need to think through what the benefits to your business might be. Traffic is great, we all love traffic, but turning traffic which is listening to audio content into direct, accountable financial return is a real challenge.

To be honest though that isn’t really what we focussed on with the WE05 podcasts: we just saw them as a simple and inexpensive means of “giving back”, and we were so delighted that all of our speakers agreed to this in a heartbeat. Our conference is all about overcoming the tyranny of distance and bringing geographically dispersed Aussie developers together. Receiving notes of thank you from developers all over the world, many of whom could never hope to travel to Australia, but who were able to get a taste of our event via the podcasts, really was extremely important to us.

No matter what size event you’re thinking about podcasting, we’d love to see you on Sunday morning at 10am for How (and Why) to Podcast an Event.

Update: Hugh just informed me that this panel is free and open to the general public, even without an If! pass, so if you’re in Austin, spread the word to friends, teens and parents who think might be interested.

Hi everyone. It’s my first trip to SXSW Interactive and therefore also my first time moderating a SXSW panel. I have been blogging about youth culture for almost two years over at Ypulse.com and working as the director of viewer created content at Current TV for over a year. If you’re not booked Sunday at 11 a.m., come over to the Day Stage and meet two amazing teen bloggers and fellow trendspotter (just added to the panel!) Dianne McGunigle from trendcentral. Here’s a preview of what we’ll be talking about:

Generation Y or the “Net Generation” has grown up wired. These teens use the Internet and other technologies as naturally as Gen Xers used the three-way phone call. This panel offers perspectives from teens on how they use technologies such as SMS, blogs, social networking sites and IM in their daily lives. We will focus on how these technologies are used to do what teens have always done (write diaries and poetry, gossip, bully, hook-up, cheat) and the difference – or lack thereof – from doing this offline.

–Are there any secrets online (aka what does it mean to be public online)?
 –What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made online (online being code for interactive media)? Do you think about this before you post, text, IM? Do your friends?
 –What’s the best/worst thing that’s ever happened to you online?
 –Are cliques harsher/more closed online or kinder/more open? How are teens using different technologies (SMS, blogs, social networks, etc.)?
 –Are there any major differences between the way girls use tech vs. boys?

 –Biggest complaint about tech? What is used the most/least?

–What don’t the institutions in your life understand about your use of technology (schools, college apps, tests, homework, etc.)
 –Let’s apply that last question to parents and other adults: What don’t they get?

–And yes, we’ll probably end up talking about MySpace, too.

The panel will feature:

Elaheh “Lili” Farmand (bluebirdescape.com)

Casey Lewis, (Teenfashionista)

Dianne McGunigle, (trendcentral)

And will be moderated by me, Anastasia Goodstein…Hopefully see you there!