I’m writing from a Jetblue flight from Austin back to Silly Valley, it’s a great chance for me reflect on what happened in the last few days at SXSW and sober up both from last night’s party and the excess of stimuli –they both require some detox. First of all, this is the type of event people love talk about when they’re there, but those who aren’t there may find the noise excessive. I’ll try to boil down the key things I observed, caveat, this is just one person’s perspective, leave a comment with your experience.
SXSW, Bigger Than Ever
Attendance was up, many rumored that it was up around 30% over last year, which was also growing. There were so many events and panels that even spilled out of the traditional convention center to neighboring hotels some as far as 6+blocks up hill at the Sheraton. The attendees trend a similar look: often younger than older, stylish glasses, blinking device in hands, the occasional ironic tattoo, and glossy shimmer of sweat from last night’s drinking binge.
Panel Content: Hit or Miss
While I didn’t attend many panels, several folks mentioned to me the quality of content in panels was very hit and miss, often dependent on the quality of the moderator to draw out insights and guide the panel. Because SXSW deploys the scalable way of voting up panels to determine who will speak this leads to panels that have popular speakers (but that doesn’t guarantee the best speakers) or topics that are liked by the mainstream. Fortunately, given the vast assortment of panels, the opportunity to find niche topics is available, providing you can easily get to the physical location. Colleague Susan Etlinger blogs how Deb Schultz lead an insightful session on the ‘manners’ of the internet and social web. I think it was Robert Scoble who said that the best content at SXSW will just appear on blogs later, so Ill continue to keep a watch out for the panels that were a “hit”.
Yet Parties, Events, and Dinners Galore
There were many, many parties and events, even during the day. During the evening there were several events, parties, and dinners all happening consecutively. In particular, the Social Business crowd was assembled around the All Hat (pics) even held by David Armano and Richard Binhammer off campus, the Corporate Social Strategists and those that serve them were present, this was the market I serve, and was glad to see them all. To me this was the best event, as it was off campus, a mixture of dialog, meet and greeting, and good food and music, great mixer. I heard that the SocialMedia.org (formerly SMBC) event was a great mix for Corporate Social Strategists who glean a lot of value from peer to peer interactions.
Influencer Outreach: Samsung, Chevy, AMEX, Apple, Pepsi.
One of my mottos is to ABR (Always be Researching) and I did just that for clients. In fact, several brands were present, and sought to reach this influencer and early adopter crowd, notables include:
Samsung hosts bloggers, and showcases electronic products. I spent time in the Samsung blogger lounge, which was well attended by influencers, and featured product demos and their tweeting fridge. One nice treat was Guy Kawasaki was giving away signed books, Enchantment, (which I read and recommend) at the blogger lounge. Also, Samsung brought the social media space to their own devices and worked with Jess3 an information design firm to showcase hand-selected curated tweets in their large airport-styled screens for passerbys to see what the zeitgeist was of the event. I even was a panelist in an impromptu “unpanel” on the topic of curation.
Chevy doubles down on this influencer market. Last year, Ford had a strong presence at the event, which likely drew the interest of General Motors, who I learned was the sole exclusive sponsor for the show, I’d estimate that buy out certainly be in the millions as they had integrated branding, product demos, charging stations, sponsors of the Techset party, and had inter-city rides available to anyone using their vehicles. Ford was not present this year, nor other auto-manufactures. See Twitter exchange between myself and Scott Monty who commented on spending, here, here, and here. (Update: Chevy’s Mary Henige has updated me that Chevy has a 3 year exclusive sponsorship with SXSW for the automotive category)
American Express seeks WOM. I learned from Jennifer van Grove of Mashable how American Express has launched a form of a loyalty program that encouraged users of their credit cards to receive money credited to their account after purchases after they shared it on foursquare. This form of social commerce initiates advocacy at point of sale –increasing spread of the service. Very smart integration.
Apple pops up a store in downtown. Apple assembled a “pop up” store in downtown where lines went around the block to purchase the iPad 2 and hours extended to the wee hours of the night. The store was a former Gold’s gym, and was assembled virtually overnight to serve this specific market. I saw several proud owners of this shiny device with colored covers touting their purchase at a variety of venues, it was the hot physical product (see friend David Berkowitz with his orange topped one). I experimented with it and believe the features to be evolutionary, but not a major upgrade, that being depending on new software to emerge to take advantage of the cameras such as augmented reality gaming, or new forms of video conferencing.
Pepsi tells their story. Other notable brand out-reach booths was Pepsi’s touchdown station that let people recharge and learn about the variety of products. Clearly an influence play, as Pepsi as a lifestyle brand isn’t directly related to ‘interactive’ that SXSW sports.
No Technology Winners –Although “Intimate” and “Hyper Local” are Trends to Watch. I was at SXSW when Twitter, Foursquare ‘broke out’ in previous years, yet this year there were no clear winners our ‘breakout technologies’ that I saw from the space. Why? There’s an over saturation of products due to low barriers to entry –while innovation certainly isn’t stifled the number similar or ‘like’ products is hard to swallow.
The closest to it was SMS chat tools with a small social group of friends like GroupMe and Beluga were being used by this early adopter crowd, even the press picked up on some of these trends (thanks Julie Viola for the link). Secondly, I asked my network what technologies to watch for and saw some adoption of local Q&A tool LocalMind (screenshot from iPhone). This tool allows you to ask very specific question “where are the cleanest restrooms in this hotel?” and it shows it on a localized map.
In both of these new toolsets, they are less about mass broadcasting to your network like Twitter and blogs, but are more about intimate discussions with your most immediate circle and localized content down to the building that you’re present at.
So that’s my perspective: This year, SXSW was great for networking. New technologies trend towards smaller personal networks and hyper localized content, but I didn’t see any clear winners, at least from my limited perspective.
Please leave a comment or link to your experience so we can share what we heard.
I agree – especially on the point of panels being hit or miss. It was frustrating how some sessions were “sold out” a good 30 minutes before they were due to start. A great panel not attended by many was Sunday at the Hilton – “Whither the Female Tech Founder” that was brilliantly moderated by Jessica Vascellaro of the WSJ. Low point for me was the session on Saturday by the authors of “Content Rules”
As Social Media continues to explode, it only makes sense that events like SXSW would explode – in attendance – and not quality. It’s basically just another excuse to get away and party with like-minded people and maybe learn/see something cool. I think for the younger generation – anything that has a social/creative/music theme that used to be known more by WOM offline and somewhat exclusive to outsiders – is now becoming more mainstraim with the viral sharing through Twitter and Facebook etc. Similar examples that come to mind are Cochello and Burning Man. With the huge viral affect of Social Media – awareness has increased across the globe and demand for tickets and attendance has also increased. I’m curious about the more intimate social tools coming out – as I think people will begin to realize more friends/followers is not important – and actually connecting in smaller, intimate groups is way more interesting and valuable. Thanks for sharing your insights – always good stuff. Cheers.
I live in Austin and am vicariously experiencing SXSW through all the blogs (and I did attend one party). Just downloaded LocalMind. Appreciate your recap for those of us on the fringes.
Thanks, Jeremiah. A great summing up for those of us who didn’t feel like trekking to Austin.
Shannon: I appreciate the feedback here. But again — it was a book reading and not a panel. We thought of reading from the book as directed, but that seems impossibly lame. Like C.C. said, I’d love to hear anything you’d like to share.
This was my first SXSW Interactive and while I met some nice and smart people and did hear some great speakers, way too many of the panels were disappointing. There was often too much similarity in the experience of the panelists (eg, they’re all in the exact same industry or took the exact same approach to solving a problem) or too much agreement. I don’t want argument for the sake of argument but a variety of perspectives would have been helpful and more thought-provoking. I wanted ideas I could use for my business, I wanted to be challenged in my assumptions; but too often SXSW felt like Consultant Training School. Maybe I just had bad panel karma.
C.C. I personally think you and Ann handled the session well, and I think it was a good idea to field Q&A. But what I think some people were doing was coming to the day cafe and just staying there. I got there for David Merrman Scott’s session and was in the back of the room. I assumed that at the end of his session the crowd would change, and then I could move to the front of the room. Almost no one left the room, it was all the same crowd. So I’m wondering how many people were there for each session, and how many were there for simply the Day Cafe?
But if I had already read the book (which I have), I would have rather had more focus on Q&A than rehashing the content. I think you and Ann had to do a bit of guessing as to the proper format, and think you made the right call.
Ann this is my guess on what happened, and I mentioned this in my comment to C.C. I think most people in that room were there for the day cafe, moreso than the book readings. I say this because there was VERY little turnover from David Merrman Scott’s session before yours. And who can blame them, you have nice seats there, and drinks and snacks are just a few feet away. And David did a powerpoint deck for about 15 mins, and then took a couple of questions. Which was PERFECT for me, because I hadn’t read David’s book, and it got me excited to buy it.
But I’ve read Content Rules, so if you and C.C. had followed the same format as David, I personally wouldn’t have liked it as much. I think you guys had to guess a bit at the format of the event, and I personally think you both made the right call.
Jeremiah thanks for the recap, especially noting what companies and brands were doing in Austin, that’s always fascinating. I agree with you that #AllHat3 was a true gem of the event, as it always is. Richard and David have created a wonderful chance for us all to meet and chat in a very low-key atmosphere which is perfect for noon on a Sunday. Sorry we didn’t get a chance to chat, but there was just too much happening. Hopefully next year!
TYPO: “In fact, several a few brands were present…”
There are more people are like to use the SXSW 2011 technology. They got more comfy to use this and they can do more work by help of this technology. This is big achievement for our technology.
Now we get more effective network and i know every one are like this. To get more better technology such kind of effective network system is more helpful for us.
This is correct headlines and i believed that technology can play an important rules in our life. I hope day by day such will be so more familiar for us.