What did you learn at SXSW this year?

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Permalink Reply by Jeb Banner on March 16, 2010 at 2:51pm

Hey Pat, thanks for setting up this thread. I'm actually working on a blog right now around an experiment I did here at SXSWi. I'll give a quick summary here and and a link later when it's done.

The first thing I noticed was everyone walking around looking at their phones. Mostly iPhones as you might expect. Legions of geeks bumping into each other and random objects while trying to walk and check in on Twitter, Facebook FourSquare, GoWalla, Email, etc.

Of course I've been one of those people as well and you can follow me @jebbanner if you want.

Seeing all these tech zombies woke me a up a little to how fast we are adopting new technology and related gadgets without any consideration for their impact on our lives including relationships, mental and physical health, etc.

So I decided to go a day without my iPhone or computer for 24 hours. I wanted to see how a day at SXSWi without technology (at least personal technology) would compare with being constantly connected. Connectivity versus Serendipity. That's the working title of my blog.

This experiment started on Sunday. I decided I need to get back to basics and try a day at SXSWi off the grid. One of the main themes to the conference has been mobile devices and location based apps (FourSquare for instance). Being something of a contrarian I began to think maybe all this stuff wasn't that great. Why not take a breather and go "old school" for a day c.2000 which isn't that long ago really. Throw myself on the waves and see where they took me.

So I checked in with my family, posted a notice to some friends via Twitter and SMS, turned off the phone and then gave my phone to John Wechsler from FormSpring (FormStack now I think) who I was hanging out with at the Exact Target/CoTweet event at WholeFood's headquarters. I was off the grid. It felt a little like a trust fall and I was pretty nervous at first.

The day turned out really well, I won't go into it all of it here but I had the best day, so far, at SXSWi that day. It wasn't all good. I felt lonely and disconnected at times. I had phantom vibrations in my legs and would reach for my phone. I would have seconds of panic thinking I'd lost it. I kept reaching for it when uncomfortable, lost, curious to look something up or just needed to know the time.

Not knowing the time was the most unexpected byproduct of not having my phone. Since everyone has a phone now there are fewer public clocks, like fewer pay phones- it would be interesting to do a study to see if they have declined at a similar rate- on top of that I started this right after DST had taken place and many clocks (the hotel clock for instance) hadn't been changed. I missed a panel on company culture, showing up right on time, at least according to the hotel clock, to see it was wrapping up.

The general take away from the experiment was that we don't need all these gadgets and services to communicate, congregate and experience life. Sure, they add value but maybe not as much as we think. Sometimes I think they take more than they give. We need to embrace constraints and value quality of experiences over quantity.

I will expand on this later in the blog I'm working on. I wanted to jot down some initial thoughts to share inbetween sessions.

SXSWi is a completely unique and amazing experience. I highly recommend anyone with an interest in web/interactive/social media etc check it out next year. I consider it a life changing experience.

The Indiana crew here has been a complete blast and loads of fun to hang out with. Big shout outs to Kristian Andersen Associates (the reason I went in the first place, lunch with Kristian), Blue Lock, Sprout Box, Exact Target/CoTweet, PocketTales, CauseLab/Scott Henderson (awesome roomie), MediaSauce/Mitch Maxson (also awesome roomie), FAWM.org/Burr Settles, James Paden/Vibrant Solutions, Blast Media, FormSpring and I'm sure I'm missing some others. Would love to see an even bigger presence next year. Indiana is definitely on the map here and people know it. I love that.

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Permalink Reply by Pat Coyle on March 16, 2010 at 5:16pm

Looks like I picked the wrong year to skip SXSW. Rats!

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Permalink Reply by Kristian Andersen on March 16, 2010 at 7:16pm

I'm typing this post from an Admirals Club in Dallas with ample time to synthesize my impressions from SXSW due to the 4 hour layover we're being subjected to. Someone asked me what my biggest take away from SXSW was this year and I told them that it was the realization that the Indianapolis tech scene is coming on strong and people are starting to notice.

Kristian Andersen + Associates has been making the trip down to Austin for SXSW for several years now, and every year we'd see one or two more Indy folks. This year the lid popped off. I won't try to give a shout out to everyone that came from the Indianapolis-area, but I can tell you that we hosted the first annual Indy Invasion Crawfish Dinner on Friday night and there were 40 Indianapolis folks that showed up and all week long I kept bumping into other Indianapolites.

Several Indy companies, such as ExactTarget/Co-Tweet and FormSpring sponsored events, parties, meet-ups, etc.and Indy-based start-up PocketTales was named a finalist at the Microsoft BizSpark start-up competition.

I can't tell you how many people I connected with that commented on Indy's foot print at SXSW this year.

Below are just a few of the Indianapolis companies that were at SXSW this year:

- Apparel Media Group
- FormSpring
- ExactTarget / CoTweet
- BlueLock
- Kristian Andersen + Associates
- SmallBox Consulting
- Graphite
- Pocket Tales
- SproutBox (via Bloomington)
- Trendy Minds
- and lots of other individuals and solo acts from the Indy area.

We'll have several follow-up posts on our time in Austin at SXSW - so check out our blog or follow-us on Twitter at @kristianindy and @kaplusa

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Permalink Reply by Janneane Blevins on March 18, 2010 at 2:50pm

Hi Pat,

Thanks for providing this forum! We're happy to share our experiences from SXSW in hopes that the knowledge continues to pass on. As Kristian mentioned below - Indy was definitely representing down in sunny Austin, so I look forward to seeing the numbers grow in the coming years!

I took particular interest in a panel that focused on news & media, and the "Future of Context". At the 2009 SXSWi, much of the conversation was centered around the demise of journalism and whether or not the news industry would survive. I enjoyed the progression into this 2010 conversation about the news and identifying that by providing better context, the news industry may indeed survive. I look forward to the upcoming years of SXSWi and discovering what solutions have been developed to make the news a richer and more informative experience.

Here's a brief overview of the panel. For more SXSW related findings from 2010 and 2009, KA+A has written about in our blog.

OVERVIEW
Conventional wisdom calls us attention-deprived, constantly seeking the next scrap of info. But Google reveals our true desire: Context. (Wikipedia entries, This American Life's financial crisis explainer, Gizmodo's definitive guide to smartphones, etc.) An exploration of how journalism and media must adapt to meet our insatiable hunger for the bigger picture.

PRESENTERS
* Jay Rosen – New York University

* Matt Thompson - NPR

* Staci D Kramer – ContentNext Media /paidContent

* Tristan Harris – Apture

RECAP
The news is more constant and torrential than it's ever been. We think that all these articles, TV stories, radio blurbs, and other news medium will somehow cohere into real knowledge if we absorp enough of it. This sort of works, but evidence indicates that when you're faced with headlines of an ever increasing variety, you tune out and start focusing on the things you don't need to know much about to understand (e.g. celebrity gossip, sports, etc.).

Most news requires some understanding of systemic knowledge, and not just the episodic news knowledge. In order to fully appreciate and understand the buzz on, let's say the financial crisis, we need context. We need to have a working knowledge about how financial systems works - ours and those abroad. It wouldn't take long for journalists to provide this context, and it's actually pretty easy to explain, and would make the episodic news make a lot more sense. Yet in the current model, episodic "breaking news" sells - not the systemic background information.

So how can journalists provide both systemic and episodic news? The web is a good place to start.

Even online journalism though, will take some work. We like to wedge together systemic and episodic knowledge into one story, by breaking the news and the putting a link at the end with "more info" (the context you may need to understand the article). But this more info link isn't very useful at the end of the article; you need the context at the beginning so you can fully understand what you are about to read. Some good examples of sites innovating in this space include The Giant Pool of Money; ExplainThis.org; and The Money Meltdown.

The big takeaway for me was readers like you and me, don't necessarily want "more" information - we want the minimum context to understand the subject.

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Permalink Reply by Pat Coyle on March 19, 2010 at 8:14am

Thanks, Janneane. Interesting post.

My first thought is that sites like Wikipedia already provide much of the context (or background) for the stories in headlines today (i.e. how our financial system works). Perhaps media could leverage user gen content to make up for their own limitations?

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Permalink Reply by R. Brennan Knotts on March 18, 2010 at 3:46pm

I learned that sometimes you have to get out of Indiana to meet people from Indiana. Kristian Andersen + Associates hosted an amazing crawfish dinner which was really the highlight of my trip.

I also learned that Indiana can make a lot of noise. Pocket Tales was in the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator Competition and a ton of Indiana folks came out to support us. We had the loudest and biggest cheering section by far.

I will say, the panels were largely a disappointment. It was my first year at SXSW, but a lot of the regulars I talked to said the same thing. I think it was just an off year and I think a lot of people were a little "hungover" from the years where Twitter and Foursquare launched. As far as I could tell there weren't any major announcements or launches (Twitter's "at everywhere" announcement didn't really cause much of a stir).

Also, SXSW is becoming more popular, "mainstream" if you will, and I could tell a lot of people at SXSW were reacting negatively to that, casting a pessimistic vibe over a lot of the events.

All of this just makes me more anxious to return next year. I think SXSW is still the place to hear from some of the tech scene's greatest experts and to see innovation from all over the country. You're not going to have a phenomenon like Twitter launch every year, and people just need to realize that.

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Permalink Reply by Pat Coyle on March 19, 2010 at 8:16am

Brennan,
Sorry the panels were disappointing, but really glad to hear that Indiana represented at SXSW. That's great! Perhaps our very own Indy Partnership should have a presence there next year. Ron? What say ye?

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Permalink Reply by Ron Gifford on March 19, 2010 at 5:13pm

Hey, we're always looking for the happening place to be -- maybe we'll grab our cousins at TechPoint and make it a party!

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Permalink Reply by Kristian Andersen on March 20, 2010 at 12:52am

That's exactly what does not need to happen. It's already a party. What would be really cool is if the Indy Partnership sponsored a handful of young, dangerously-dressed, Indianapolis entrepreneurs to be able to make the trip. That would be a killer way to rep the city.

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Permalink Reply by Pat Coyle on March 20, 2010 at 9:03am

I'm 44 (years old, not suit size). Will I qualify?
:-)

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Permalink Reply by Kristian Andersen on March 20, 2010 at 10:31am

Yes - as I age my definition of "youth" is changing.

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