Oh the joys of Austin and the fabled SXSW interactive conference. Several folks from the AIM design team were there expanding our minds (and bellies).

The Panels and Presos
I’ve learned a little about navigating SXSW to find the best panels in my second year. My satisfaction ratio skewed much higher to satisfied this year by following a few simple rules:

• Don’t go by the titles of the panels. They are conceived 9 months in advance with provocative titles and often do not fully come together until days before they take place.
• Pick panels that include people, companies or products that interest you.
• If you don’t know where to go try one of the bigger venues. They’re in big rooms for a reason. The more popular speakers will occupy larger rooms.

I’m not one who likes to carry a laptop faced with the fight for bandwidth and electricity so rather than exhaustive notes on any one topic here’s some bits and pieces from panels, presentations and events that I attended.

SAT MAR 8

10 Things We’ve Learned at 37signals w/ Jason Fried (37signals)
Jason Fried is a great speaker and was quick to answer any question asked. Its no wonder 37 Signals is as successful as they are. A couple of points offered that resonated: ‘make money by helping people make money’, ‘get 3 things done in 1 week rather than 1 thing done in 3 weeks’ and I can’t help but be intrigued by the 37 Signals 4 day work week. (rating: 5 stars)

Worst Website Ever: That’s So Crazy, It Just Might Work w/ Andy Baio (Programmer/Journalis, Waxy.org), Lane Becker (Pres, Get Satisfaction), Jeffery Bennett (Clever Name), Michael Buffington (Cofounder, Grockit Inc), Lia Bulaong (Jarvis Heavy Industr…), David Friedman (Ironic Sans), David Hornik (General Partner, August Capital), Merlin Mann (43 Folders), Katie Spence (Crowd Control, Mule Design Studio), Ben Brown (XOXCO.com)
From a purely entertainment stand point this was the best panel of the week. Several entrepreneurs pitched their wacked ideas for venture capital. Ideas included human generated image descriptions for sight impaired, allowing people to IPO themselves to raise capital, a social networking sight to follow whose sick and how to avoid them. Merlin Mann from 43 Folders took home the prize with his creation titled FlockdUP. This was the perfect way to end day one. (5 stars)

Frog Design / SXSWi Opening Party (8-11pm) (Mexican American)
The green beer was great in concept but hard to acquire and a little on the skunky side. Fortunately Grupo Fantasmo and the fire people made for a good time. (4 stars)

SUN MAR 9

Magic and Mental Models: Using Illusion to Simplify Designs w/ Jared Spool (Founding Principal, User Interface Engin…)
Jared Spool’s presentations rarely disappoint. He used magic tricks to show how user experience and magic are both methods of delight for people. This presentation had more spectacle than substance but it was still enjoyable and the points were easy to digest. All in all a fun way to spend the morning. (4 stars)

Keynote Interview with Mark Zuckerberg w/ Sarah Lacy (Author/Journalist, BusinessWeek/Yahoo!), Mark Zuckerberg (CEO, Facebook Inc)
Oh boy, where to start? Much has been said about this interview. In short, most of Sarah Lacy’s talk centered on her first and then to Mark Zuckerberg. At one point Zuckerberg stated that ‘You have to ask a question’ to get an answer from him. Due to the power of Twitter a mob mentality turned against Lacy’s interview style and the crowd really leaned into her. Lacy certainly brought on the instant feedback but the mob mentality left me feeling awkward. I had to walk out once the audience questions started. Still it was captivating to see what a young entrepreneur had to say. (4 stars)

Does Tomorrow’s World Need Designers? w/ Alonzo Canada (Jump Associates), David Merkoski (Creative Dir, Frog Design Inc), Helen Walters (Editor of Innovation, BusinessWeek.com), Johanna Blakley (Deputy Dir, The Norman Lear Cent…)
Much talk about getting people to empathize with customers through design and moving from a consumer culture to a producer culture. It seemed to be agreed upon that design sensibilities are increasing in first world countries where access to media is prevalent. The answer to the topic question seemed to be yes that tomorrow’s world will need designers but that design sensibilities will be more widespread as time passes and we’ll find more do-it-yourselfers. Note: there was a request from one panelist for Adobe to add messaging and buddy lists to their products. (4 stars)

Data as Art: Musical, Visual Web APIs w/ Peter Kirn (cdm: Create Digital…), Joy Mountford (VP Design Innovation, joymountford.com)
Another perfect way to end the day. The visuals provided by panelist Joy Mountford were stunning. She’s found a way to present data in meaningful ways through visual language. At one point the moderator was asked a question and so taken by the visuals just had to respond with ‘Well, I was just watching the data.” (4 stars)

Geeks Love Bowling
Special thanks to all the sponsors of the Geeks Love Bowling event at the Austin 300 Bowling Lanes. It seemed like a good time was had by all. Thanks to Chris Dargis, Mike Cummings, Greg Cypes, Andy Wick, George Fletcher, Cindy Aserkoff and Greg Keegstra for letting me bowl on their team. Its apparent that we shouldn’t quit our day job anytime soon. We’re pretty good at designing, coding and managing products but bowlers we are not (though Mike Cummings might be an exception). One hilarious moment involved some folks in the lanes to our left who decided to toss the bowling ball into each other’s opposing lanes. Safe to say both of those rolls were gutterballs. (4 stars)

MON MAR 10

The Care and Feeding of Your Startup w/ Stacey Zuniga (Product Strategist, UnWired Nation Inc), Eric Hellweg (Editor & Managing Di, Harvard Business Onl…), Blair Garrou (Managing Dir, DFJ Mercury), Bill Flitter (CEO, Pheedo Inc), Chere Heintzmann (Central/ South Texas, AT&T Wireless), C. Eric Smith (Pres, UnWired Nation Inc)
A couple of takeaways from this panel were ‘if you’re going to fail, fail fast’ and ‘don’t throw out a feature without thinking about where it is going to go’. In other words, iterate rapidly and always plan your next steps thinking about the big picture. (3 stars)

Startup Metrics for Pirates: AARRR! w/ Dave McClure (Master of, 500 Hats), Ted Rheingold (Top Dog, Dogster Inc), Jia Shen (CTO, RockYou), Hiten Shah (Crazy Egg Inc), Todd Vernon (CEO, Lijit Networks, Inc)
When the panelists showed up in pirate garb I wasn’t sure where this one was going to go but I’m a sucka for anything that includes Ted Rheingold. At first the presentation by Dave McClure seemed contrived to the pirate theme but in actuality it was well put toghether and as it turns out the theme worked out nicely as an added benefit. Audience participants were asked to begin questions with ‘AARRR’ and given beads as rewards. One person asked ‘AARRR you gonna post the presentation online?’ and ‘What’s the URRRRL?’ to which the audience erupted in laughter. (4 stars)

Browser Wars: Deja Vu All Over Again? w/ Arun Ranganathan (System Architect), Chris Wilson (Platform Architect, Microsoft), Brendan Eich (CTO, firefox), Charles McCathieNevile (Chief of Standards, Opera)
I went to this panel on recommendation by co-worker Kevin Lawver. Most of the technical discussion went over my head but it was good to see some of the faces behind the browsers. Moderator Arun Ranganathan was among the best prepared and was top notch at shooting from the hip and rolling with the discussion (4 stars on the strengths of Arun Ranganathan)

10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment w/ Bryan Mason (Chief Operating Offi, Adaptive Path), Sarah Nelson (Design Strategist, Adaptive Path)
Like 37 Signals, folks at Adaptive Path rarely disappoint with topical content as was the case in this presentation. At a high level, the bullet points were ‘cross-train the entire team’, ‘rotate creative leadership’, ‘actively turn the corner’, ‘know your roles’, ‘practice, practice, practice’, ‘make your mission explicit’, ‘killing your darlings - if one person says ‘keep it’, it stays’, ‘leadership is a service’, ‘generate products around the group’s creative interests’ and ‘remember your audience’. I loved that they don’t use the term ‘post mortem’ to look back upon a project. Instead they use the term ‘after party’. I love that. Also, I love the idea of avoiding negative feedback by using the ‘keep it’ concept. Silence is better than negative feedback in close working groups. (5 stars)

Building Portable Social Networks w/ Jeremy Keith (Clearleft Ltd), Chris Messina (CEO, Citizen Agency), Leslie Chicoine (Experience Designer, Get Satisfaction), Joseph Smarr (Chief Platform Archi, Plaxo Inc), David Recordon (Open Platforms Tech, Six Apart Ltd)
There were some brilliant people on this panel but nearing the end of the day my notes are sparse at best. Much of the discussion centered around what are ‘friends’ on the web and how do you take them from place to place if that is what you want to do. (4 stars)

TUES MAR 11

Using Entertainment to Create Effective Mobile Advertising w/ Adam Zbar (CEO, Zannel Inc), Lathan Hodge (Co-Founder, Rapstation), Eric Eller (SVP Prod/Mktg, Millennial Media)
I walked in on this one late but it was a topic that seemed to have good resonance with my job. While most examples involved campaigns having to do with the entertainment industry which is probably the easiest to be successful at in the mobile space. One of my favorite examples involved a campaign with Public Enemy at the previous year’s SXSW conference where Flava Flav asked audience participants to send a text to a certain number. After the concert participant received a phone call from the band in response plus free ringtones and wallpapers (if my notes serve me correctly). Additionally, once the music festival started I met 2 other people who seemed to be trying to make a play in this market. There might be something here. I like the idea of fans getting involved and getting something in return be it free ringtones, wallpapers, mp3s or discounts. (3 stars)

Peas in a Pod: Advertising, Monetization and Social Media w/ Tim Kendall (Product Manager, Facebook), Ellen McGirt (Sr Writer, Fast Company), Kent Nichols (Ask A Ninja), Seth Goldstein (CEO, Socialmedia Networks)
This was unexpectedly one of the more entertaining panels largely due to the banter of the panelists primarily between Kent Nichols (Ask A Ninja) and Tim Kendall (Facebook). In one takeaway it was interesting to hear Kendall compare Facebook to television in that ‘Facebook is the network, apps are the shows and the ads are the commercials’. Also, it was said that tradition brands like ‘Proctor and Gamble’ like solutions that are scalable hence their hunger for display advertising. (4 stars)

How Piracy Will Save the Music Industry w/ Jason Schwartz (Prod Mgr, Angelsoft), Randy Saaf (CEO, MediaDefender Inc)
A good panel largely due to the controversy it stirred. Most of the room turned on Randy Saaf with his company’s practice of seeding torrent sites with tracks from bands that were recorded over or sub par recordings. Also the practice of adding ads to cover art did not gain much love. At one point the room erupted in applause as audience participant Doug March spoke on behalf of the consumer. On the other hand, the room had listening ears for Jason Schwartz’s ideas. One that gained my attention was a data service for artists and promoters to offer info on where songs are being downloaded from and at what frequency. Using this data, bands could better plan their tours even down to the better venues thus providing a cost saving factor. (3 stars)

The Trials and Tribulations of Using Music Online w/ Richard Bengloff (Pres, A2IM), Rusty Hodge (GM, Soma FM), Chris MacDonald (Founder, IndieFeed Networks/L…), Elise Nordling (Marketing Services M, IODA), Brian Zisk (C0-Founder/Tech Dir, Future of Music Coal…)
I think the primary reason I attended this session was to find out to what extent posting mp3s was a disservice to musicians and their bands. If you listen to the lawyers and label reps it sounds like they don’t like it so much. But I still wonder, doesn’t posting a track or two only help certain artists gain notice and exposure. I can understand how posting an entire album is wrong and blatant stealing but it seems that even with some light permissioning from the artists or their representatives that you’re only doing them a favor. Let the mix tape live on! (3 stars)

Taking Over the World: the Flickr Way w/ Simon Batistoni (Flickr/Yahoo! Inc)
In all honesty, this was probably a good presentation but I had already cashed in my listening chips. I learned a little about localization and internationalization but lost the mental capacity to focus quickly. Plus, GBV Hoot Night was on my mind by this time. Props to Simon Batistoni who packed the room in this closing event. My apologies for checking out. (3 stars)

The Team
A great time was spent with current and past members of the AIM design team. Some interesting things happened watching the fire dancers at the Frog party. There was a moment of concern when one of the girl dancers had her shirt catch on fire. Another involved a male in the audience taking up the spinning torches. At one point a burning ember made its way towards us flying through the sky. Sitting on the ground in front of me were Valli Ravindran, Shadia Ahmed, Ari Kushimoto and Elsa Kawai who made me crack up when they overdramatically screamed and ran to avoid the burning ember that was still at least 10 feet away. I have to admit, I took a few steps back as well. We all shared a laugh.

Another moment (of discovery) happened at dinner one night. Of the four of us sharing food, it turned out that each of us had a musical past. Ben Bennett started by saying he was in a band called the ‘Isthmus Doobies’ as a young teen. Justin Kirk followed by telling us about his punk band called ‘Brown Monster’. I came clean with my experience as lead singer of the ‘Cajun Runts’ for an ever so brief time in college. And the most decorated musician in the bunch turned out to be Jayna Wallace of ‘The Wallace Family Band’ whose accolades include being selected as ‘The Most Musical Family of 1996 by The Ohio Federation of Music Club’. I later ran into ex-AOLer Jason Garber (Mixx) who added his time in ‘Mir’ to the list.

The Food
Anyone whose ever been to Austin knows that its an oasis of food. Its no surprise that their BBQ and Mexican food are among the world’s best. Some places I had the pleasure of leaving table scraps at include Flemings, Boiling Pot, Maudies Too, Ironworks, Malaga and Stubbs.

The Music
What would SXSW be like without a little music even before the big music event starts. With a little research you can find a ton of great acts that aren’t listed in the official SXSWi list. Adventurous attendees included Andrew Wilson (Discovery), Jayna Wallace, Jason Garber (Mixx) and Doug March (Revolution Health) who joined me at various times to check out a bevy of artists including James McMurtry @ Momo’s, The Smithereens @ La Zona Rosa, Matt the Electrician and Bob Schneider @ Saxon Pub, Guided by Voices Hoot Night including Joy Cook @ Club Deville, Two Cow Garage, Glossary, Grand Champeen and The Drams @ Beerland.

Goodbye Austin! I’ll miss you.

-Tom

* Source for all MP3’s is SXSW.com

Originally posted on design.aim.com on March 17, 2008.

Walking around the Consumer Electronics show provides many surprises and delights. From gadgets, software and hardware to just about anything thought up by mankind CES has it all. Just a short walk through one of the halls revealed a massaging computer mouse, a heart rate monitor for dummies, a motorized and rideable beverage cooler, an automatic gutter cleaner, a touchless trash can and an air guitar belt buckle.

Here are some highlights among things I saw at CES:

AOL
I’ll start with some cool updates from my own company. AOL is announcing enhancements to BlueString and Xdrive. A Facebook application called “My Memory Gallery” will allow consumers to access and use BlueString. Xdrive is announcing an updated user interface to be released to beta early this year. Both of those are being built with Adobe® Flex™. AOL blog Switched.com has announced a branded web mail experience and contest to win a Nintendo Wii™ or Amazon Kindle™.

Sling Media
You can’t miss Sling’s booth in the Sands/Venetion conference hall. Its right at the entrance and their exhibit design is gorgeous and inviting. At times the design looks a little too close to campaigns we’ve seen from Target and Coca-cola but it seems that they’re truly trying to make it their own so a little forgiveness is warranted. Sling’s main product has been the Slingbox which is a product that allows you to access your home television from PC’s and mobile devices. There’s plenty to talk about regarding Sling but I’ll focus on a couple of things that stood out to me. Sling is clearly interested in making a play in web content via a site called Sling.com. A demonstration showed the ability to create clips from television shows by using a product called SlingPlayer and then the ability to share the clip with friends via email. Friends would then click on a link that brings you to a pages revealing the clip accompanied by a rich cobrand for the show and network and finally allows people to comment on the clip and find related content. The advertising opportunities here seem endless. An additional announcement was that they would soon support Blackberry access.

iRobot
Known for the little robot that automatically vacuums your carpet, the Roomba, iRobot is showing a few new and interesting products. The first is the Scooba that is designed to clean hard surface floors. Another is the Verro which is a pool cleaning robot similar to automatic pool cleaning devices we’ve seen in the past. The most interesting of the bunch is the Looj a gutter cleaning robot. Its loud and seems more difficult to use than the demonstration but I’ve never seen anything like it and its potential seems enormous. Nobody likes cleaning gutters.

Guitar Hero™ Air Guitar Rocker™ by Jada
This product was bound to be created after the popularity of Guitar Hero in the past year. Thankfully, it comes via a toy company named Jada Toys. Its simply a motion activated air guitar player consisting of a blazing rock n’ roll styled belt buckle, a guitar pic with a sensor and a miniature amplifier that attaches to your belt allowing you to rock out where ever you are. The presenters were having a blast in their booth. Conference attendees were invited to where a Slash-inspired wig and Elvis-inspired sunglasses and play to your heart’s content. The speed of strumming the wireless guitar pic controls the speed in which the music is played. The Guitar Hero Air Guitar Rocker will be available in March and is expected to retail at $29.99.

Bigger & Thinner
In talking with some folks, it sounds like plasma and LCD displays have been getting bigger and bigger and each year its a contest to see who can prototype the biggest. One that I witnessed was a 150″ plasma display by Panasonic. I’m telling you, this one’s not going through any standard size doorways and a photograph doesn’t begin to do it justice. It’s BIG! Another trend by most of the manufacturers is to see who can now build the thinnest. Allegedly, the thinnest at the show was equivalent to 3 credit cards stacked on top of each other. I’m betting that next year the competition will include the lightest display.

Jypsi
One of the great things about CES is that you just never know what you’ll stumble upon. As I was approaching the Sony booth, I couldn’t help but notice how good the sound was on their displays. As I got nearer I couldn’t mistake the sound of live music and not only was the quality good but the music was fantastic. Further exploration revealed a band of hip young up and coming musicians who call themselves Jypsi. They hail from Nashville and soon should arrive in a town near you. From what I can gather, the four main musicians are members of the same family. You’ll hear Lillie Mae (fiddle, vocals), Frank (guitar, vocals), Scarlett (mandolin) and Amber-Dawn (fiddle, vocals) harmonizing through most of the tracks though Lillie Mae and Frank seem to alternate most of the lead vocals. They were also accompanied by a drummer and bassist who seem to be unavailable in their online bio. Their first radio single is “I Don’t Love You Like That” and their sound is somewhere found in bluegrass, country and pop. Hopefully they’ll soon be in a town near you as you’ll want to check them out for sure.

Pimp My Ride
Another trend seemed to be extravagant automobiles. Imagine MTV’s “Pimp My Ride” on steroids. Bigger, louder, shinier are all words to describe the cars seen in the show. There seems to be no limits on how many video display monitors a car can have and where they can be installed. I’m not kidding. I saw one in a wheel well another in a fender and every head rest seems to need one. Apparently, all a car needs is a second seat and everything else is reserved for multimedia and mega sound systems. The one with the spinning amps was my favorite.

That’s it for this year.

-Tom

Originally posted on the AIM Design Blog.

By day four, I abandoned my analog note taking process in favor of using my laptop for notes. The advantage of this is that I could browse web sites as they were mentioned and I can type faster than I can write. The flip side is that its too easy to wander. I would check my mail when there was a lull in the conversation. That is, of course, when bandwidth would allow. Web pages tend to hang when thousands of people are accessing content at the same time. All in all, the digital note taking process went pretty well until the end of the day when I had no battery life left and had to sit in the back near an outlet just to continue on. You tend to see handfuls of people tethered to the wall. It makes electricity seem like a narcotic for the digerati.

In terms of picking panels, my day started out great and slowly tapered worse. My first session, After Bust 2.0: Ten Years Later, Where Will We Be? was the first session I attended where the moderator didn’t really manage the flow of the panel yet the conversation was still really fluid and engaging. I believe this was due to the panel consisting of intelligent business folks.

Moderator: Lane Becker , Satisfaction Inc

Lane Becker Satisfaction Inc
Michael Sippey VP Prod, Six Apart Ltd
Gina Bianchini CEO, Ning Inc
Eric Hellweg Sr Editor, Harvard Business Review
David Hornik General Partner, August Capital
Narendra Rocherolle Co-Founder/Principal, 30 Boxes

Here are some high level points I jotted down during the discussion. I apologize in advance if I’ve misquoted anyone.

Notes:

• “when is it all going to fall apart and why?” asked by Lane Becker
• The opportunity to make money today is fundamentally different than it used to be than Web 1.0 - GB
• contrarily thinks a shake out could be on the way; thinks we will see some attrition - EH
• yahoo and google making much of the money that comes from online advertising
• people are trying to build something up and then sell it - NR
• people who invest in ideas do so because they think they are interstingly large (ideas) - DH
• there are always going to be companies that make it and companies that don’t make it;; survival of the fittest is good. - GB
• Online video is arguably the hottest market right now - EH
• Market
  is divided into 2 audiences. People with more time than money and
  people with more money than time. Serve both. (in reference to a
  question regarding ad interuptions in video experiences) - DH
• We are at a time where anyone with passion and a good idea can do amazing things - GB
• A small team of really productive people can do as much if not more as a large team - GB

Later in the day, Will Wright of soon to be SPORE fame gave a keynote on game design and story telling. I’m not much of a gaming fan, but I can tell that this new game SPORE is something beyond anything we’ve seen before. It looks highly addictive. The type of addiction that ruins marriages and people’s real life social interactions. I can see the psychologists lining up to study this. Will Wright is the kind of guy who can talk non-stop forever and he has an amazing way of articulating his points. A Midas of geekdom, the gaming world is better off with Will Wright at the throne. I didn’t take good notes during this keynote as this is where I started to get sucked away by the distractions of my computer, but I’m sure there are hundreds of posts covering this very topic. Search away.

The remaining topics of the day were lost on me. My interest faded as I seemed to have misfired on the session selections. I thought The Imago Effect: Avatar Psychology would be more about avatars outside the world of gaming. There were hints of it but Harvey Smith, the moderator, is a gamer as were much of the audience. I chose to attend The Ultimate Music Recommendation Smackdown thinking my interest in music would make this the pinacle of all the panels I attended. It wasn’t and I left halfway through to hear the angry rants of Bruce Sterling who, by the way, brings new meaning to the term “snarky”. I wish I had the thought of mind to write down the few one liners that were classics for the ages.

And thus, SXSW Interactive 2007 came to an end. Even though some of the sessions were hit or miss, attending the conference was an invaluable experience. It was great to see so many co-workers there and have the opportunity to get to know them better and to meet other industry folks in this little parallel universe of ours. Austin is a really friendly city as I can attest from the friendly cab driver who returned my cell phone. This was an opportunity of a lifetime for me and one that I’m extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in.

Oh, I almost forgot… music highlights of the day included Two Cow Garage w/ special guest Tim Easton, Grand Champeen, The Explorer’s Club and The Lemurs.

-Tom

Reposted from design.aim.com.

Day 3 couldn’t have started any crazier for me. For brief moment in time, I was totally disconnected from the world. I left my cell phone in the cab that dropped me off at the convention center. As soon as I realized that this happened, I accosted another cab driver to help me track him down. He was helpful in getting me in touch with dispatch but also said that people don’t usually get their phones back. That would be devastating. My cell phone has been my primary means of communication here at SXSW. I’ve even learned how to effectively text message people. Though, admittedly, I still have not mastered the T9 word recognition as Jenna can atest. Long story short, thanks to the help of a good friend, a friendly dispatch lady named Dee and the best cab driver in the world I recovered my phone in less than an hour. Too bad that nice tip I left him isn’t a tax write off, but at least I have my phone back.

Finally, the morning panels started off on the right foot. For the first time at this year’s event, I attended a panel of designers that were effective communicators. One thing I learned by day 3 is that you cannot attend a panel based on title alone. Its much more valuable to see if there are recognizable names or companies listed as panelists. Seeing that Jefrey Zeldman and Luke Wroblewski (whom I’ve never seen but adore in written word) were on a panel called Get Unstuck: Move from 1.0 to 2.0 I thought it would be worth the gamble even if I’ve struck out on most of the previous design panels. Moderated by Liz Danzico of Bobulate.com, it turns out this was the model panel I had been looking for for 2 days. Not only were each of the panelists able to articulate their individual points, the conversation was funny and engaging. One thing that Danzico did that I wish I’d seen at other panels was to give everyone in the audience an index card to write questions on. During the last 15 minutes, they collected the cards (over 150 of them) with questions and read 15 of them with no more than a minute for the panelists to respond. This prevented crazy audience members from abusing the microphone and allowed the panel to go through a fair amount of questions. Bravo, Danzico! A couple of interesting points came out of this session.

• Everyone is the design team. In other words, everyone has an opinion on design.
• You set up a wall by referring to yourself as the “design team” (see above)
• Make your team feel loved.
• Road shows to educate company about design can be less effective than just doing great design.
• Consider creating a persona to represent the user when negotiating features and user experience needs.

Soon after, I followed my new method of picking panels by attending one called Convergence Culture: A Conversation with Henry Jenkins whom I didn’t know but Jenkins was being interviewed by Danah Boyd whom I did know and had the utmost respect for. Score, this was another great session. Jenkins dominated the hour and probably could have spoken on topic for another 2 hours. Much of his talk was about the shift of culture from spectators to participants. It covered fandom, politics, morality and more. If you ever have the chance to see Henry Jenkins speak, I highly recommend it. For that matter, Danah Boyd offers amazing insight as well.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty good with the exception of a panel called Bullet Tooth Design led by Andy Clarke and Jason Santa Maria which was a total waste of a half hour. A good presentation needs more than an interesting theme (heists) and slides with good typography. Andy Clarke, I want my half hour back. Another bad one, which was once again a design panel led by designers, was How to Create A Kickass In-house Design Team. This was a total yawn fest even though the topic had all the promise in the world. Thanks to Dan Rather and Luke Wroblewski, the afternoon was not a total wash. Rather’s interview offered an insightful look at how media has changed over the course of his looooooong career. And Luke W. always keeps it real with his talks about design patterns.

Music highlights of the evening included performances by Matt the Electrician, Bob Scheider’s Lonelyland, What Made Milwaukee Famous and VoxTrot. All good stuff.

-Tom

Reposted from design.aim.com.

I’m not a fan of the panel format. I find more often than not, panels are only as good as the people moderating them. But also, it takes a well selected group of panelists to really make a panel good. I’m much more captivated by a single presenter who has pulled together a presentation that keeps me captivated and always ready to catch that next big point. Panelists tend to ramble and sometimes the conversation can run astray. This seems to be happening quite often at this year’s SXSW conference. Let me offer a few thoughts to consider for future panelists.

1. Don’t show up to your panel hungover. Being a panelist is a privilege that many other people would like to have. I don’t care how smart and clever you are. If you show up to your panel and you use a hangover as an excuse, its a poor reflection of you and a huge disappointment to those who have paid there hard earned dollars to come see you.
2. Show up. See above. If you don’t get bombed the night before. Your chances of being there to present are much greater.
3. Know your topic. Think about the subject matter before hand and have at least one or two points available to share. This is your time to help others get insight that has given you success.
4. Let the moderator do their job. The moderator’s job is to maintain a good flow of the conversation, ask good questions and allow every panelist to have a fair share of time to talk. Far too often one panelist will dominate the conversation. This isn’t a soap box. Don’t use it that way.

For the moderator:

1. Pick good panelists. If you have the opportunity to select people to be on your panel, reach outside of your friends and pick folks who are articulate and diverse.
2. Lead. Watch the clock. Keep a natural flow. Break the session up into a few subtopics and manage the time for each well.

For the audience:

• Ask your question and then get out of the way. Don’t use open questions as your forum to plug yourself or abuse the time of other people who want to ask questions. There is usually only 5 minutes for questions and there are usually several people who want to ask them.

Now that I got that off my chest, here’s are some highlights from Day 2 at SXSW. Frankly, the first three sessions I attended on Sunday inspired my rant. For the moderators and panelists for Every Breath You Take: Identity, Design Workflows and the Keynote Conversation: Phil Torrone & Limor Fried, you wasted my morning and probably did the same for many other folks. I say this with the utmost respect. I know your job isn’t easy and I’m not sure I could do a better job put in your shoes. Regardless, maybe a little negative feedback will help your format in the future.

It wasn’t until the Building an Online Fan Base panel moderated by Scott Kirsner from Variety that the day was redeemed and this didn’t happen until 3pm. If there weren’t 2 more days of the festival, I would have felt cheated at this point. To offer an explanation of this panel, one of the themes of the discussion was that filmmakers own the responsibility for creating a fan base for their films. I think this applies to all fan fueled programming. Another point made was for filmmakers and their equivalents to reach out to fan bases with creative means by getting people involved with the films before release. Joe Swanberg of Hannah Takes the Stairs says that a new movie is the best advertisment for an old movie. Lance Weiler of Workbook Project built a web experience to promote his movie at HeadTraumaMovie.com on a tight budget along with a component that allows the fan to call in and receive a creepy callback. Ian Schafer’s group at Deep Focus allowed the first Clerks II fans to become “friends” on MySpace to be added to the movie’s credits. This was the best panel I attended on Sunday which provided redemption for an otherwise lame day.

I did attend one more panel of worth this day titled The Rise of the Blogebrity moderated by Kyle Bunch of Blogebrity. Panelists included Amanda Congdon of AmandaCongdon.com, Henry Copeland of Blogads, Nick Douglas of LookShiny.com, Karina Longworth of Vidiocy.com and Casey McKinnon of Galacticast.com.

Music of the day… VoxTrot at the Come Mashup With Us party held at Austin City Limits.

Here’s to high hopes for Day 3.

-Tom

Reposted from design.aim.com.

After a 2 hour delay at the airport, I arrived in Austin just in time to make it to the Kathy Sierra Opening Remarks. Sidebar… For some reason, I want to say her name as if Oprah were saying it, or rather Tracy Morgan imitating Oprah saying it, Kathy Sieeeeeerrrrraaaaaa… Anyway, I’m so glad I made it for her presentation because of the other sessions I attended on Saturday, this one hit closest to home. Have you ever run into a problem with your computer or a web site and tried to go to the FAQs or Help section and found them anything but helpful? Well, her presentation was all about this. Her point was that help is typically written by people in “writer” mode and fails to have a human touch. Why do we forget this when we address FAQs and Help text? But it is so true. Her joking suggestion was to have a button which reads “WTF?”. I guess this is a panic button for the web generation and perhaps not a bad suggestion after all. Another term she used was “canyon of pain” which apparently is the gap between having a problem and solving it. I think I’ve been stuck in that canyon many times. She also made the point that computers can’t read our expressions and that if they could, they might understand the human aspect of frustration and be able to solve our problems from an emotional standpoint rather than computer speak or white lab coat help text. Well done, Kathy Sierra, I hope you inspire people to make the changes you propose.

Other random highlights…

Some other sessions I attended on the first day included Grids are Good, Web Hacks, and AOL’er Cindy Li’s panel From Tags to Riches. As it turns out, Cindy was quite the SXSWi celebrity. There must have been 50 or so people in the room wearing her “Geeks Love” t-shirt.

Celebrity sighting of the day… A few of us had dinner at the Ironworks BBQ where we saw Bill Paxton and his family enjoying some tasty BBQ. Sorry, no pics, I don’t mess with people when they are with their families.

Music regret of the day… Apparently, I went to bed to early and missed Grand Champeen performing. I think this was a CD release party. Grrr.

-Tom

Reposted from design.aim.com

I just got back from The Future of Web Apps summit in San Francisco, California. To offer a short summary of the event, high points included presentations from Dick Hardt, Tom Coates, Kevin Rose, Ted Rheingold and Jeff Veen. The speakers were well chosen and offered great insight to their products and experiences. On the flip side, patchy wireless access was a definite low point and I think the summit was mislabeled as most of the speakers covered the history of their products while offering few predictions for the future. There were dozens of bloggers that assuredly did a better job of blogging the event, so my contributions end here. Instead, I offer my hand written notes.

Additionally, check out other photos from the event.