SXSW 2008

Social Strategies For Revolutionaries: SXSW Roundup

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

You know your company needs to be involved in social technologies, but where do you start?

At the “Social Strategies For Revolutionaries” session, Charlene Li, a Forrester research analyst (my favorite of the group), gave us the strategic framework for creating a social strategy that will appeal to executives and your target audience.

If you want to dig deeper, she’s got a book called Groundswell coming out soon. This presentation was based on those findings. Here are some choice notes.

What’s The “Groundswell” in Social?

Definition: people using technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.

What Process Can I use to Create a Social Strategy?

Try using the POST process (people, objectives, strategy, technology). Here’s a couple highlights from the first two. Notice technology is LAST!

People: Assessing your customers’ social activities is key. Why start with Myspace/Facebook if none of your customers are there?

To help with this, use what’s called the “social technographics ladder,” combined with knowledge of your customers age.

Obviously, age is a huge driver of adoption level, but there’s evidence more and more boomers are starting to become joiners rather than just spectators.

Objectives

Based on your objectives, you’ll want to deploy a social strategy tailored to what you want to accomplish. I had originally typed all these out, but here’s the handy chart to show what they mean, along with the tools to help out and the metrics to use to measure success.

How Do You Get Started?

It’s easy to get overwhelmed. So start small. Using the POST process above, maybe you discover your customers all over the blogs discussing flaws with your product. So you could set up your own blog to help answer those issues, or even create a team (like Dell) whose sole responsibility is to root out those negative stories and turn them into a conversation.

Other important parts to keep in mind, specifically related to internal cultures and staffing:

Final notes

Topics: Blue Ion Team, Marketing & Advertising, SXSW 2008, Social Media, charleston sc marketing, charleston sc web design | No Comments »

Tool Talk - Twitter V. iPhone

Monday, March 10th, 2008


Two technologies are dominating the halls here at SXSW Internet. First, there’s lots of Twitter chitter chatter, including tons of talk on tweets, among attendees and presenters. A few panelists seem to be panelists solely because they twitter all day….perhaps an early signal that something’s about to jump the shark?

But of course the iPhone is the real stud here….everyone’s sporting one. So much so that we’re keeping Simpson’s dinosaur phone in his man purse for fear of being ridiculed or asked to moderate the “Yesterday’s Technology Today” panel discussion.

Simpy’s “Classic” Bag Phone

Topics: Blue Ion Team, Marketing & Advertising, SXSW 2008, Sweat & Tears, tech news | No Comments »

Featuritis & The ABC Rule

Monday, March 10th, 2008

Two nice points made by Kathy Sierra….kind of apply to anything/everything.

Topics: Marketing & Advertising, SXSW 2008, Sweat & Tears, charleston sc web design | No Comments »

Conference Notes

Monday, March 10th, 2008

These are the best presentation/panel notes I’ve ever seen. For the main talks at SXSW they have artists at the front of the room creating “real time” murals….capturing the main points and overall flow of the talk. This technique would be great for any retreat, brainstorm, etc. Hopefully it would still work with my grade school stick figure art.

Topics: Marketing & Advertising, SXSW 2008, Sweat & Tears | No Comments »

Random Highlights Of The Day

Monday, March 10th, 2008

All in all..a solid day at SXSW. Here’s a quick recap of some of the highlights (or lowlight in one case):


CS in the heat of the moment.

ScreenBurn Arcade - stopped by the gaming den at ScreenBurn to demo some of the latest games/equip and watch the pro gamer tournament. CS made some kids cry while playing Team Fortress.

Wireframing/Prototypes - good presentation on wireframing in a 2.0 world by a duo from Clearleft.com. Aside from nifty examples of how to build live prototypes, they shared their perspectives on how traditional wireframing limits opportunity (or possibility space) while advanced prototyping is about exploring/expanding possibility.

Getting Emotional By Design - heard Eris Stassi of Apple and Didier Hilhorst of IDEO talk about ways to leverage emotional connections in digital design. Learned a new word….haptics (think iPhone).


Mark Zuckerberg and Sarah Lacy

Keynote Disaster - What was meant to be the highlight of the day…Facebook founder/ceo Mark Zuckerberg being interviewed by BusinessWeek reporter/author Sarah Lacy…turned into a disaster and the talk of the town/web. She was more interested in making her own statements, couldn’t muster any intelligent questions and seemed to be trying to dis Zuckerberg in front of the crowd. The lowpoint/highpoint was when the restless audience revolted after one person shouted “say something interesting.” She then replied…”you don’t understand how hard my job is.” Never seen that before. More on all that here.

20 Ways to Woo Users - GREAT presentation by Kathy Sierra on ways to “harness” cognitive seduction in user experiences. Best point…focus your goals on users, not the company or product. It’s not about someone thinking your company kicks ass…or your product kicks ass. It’s about about the USER kicking ass.

The 2008 Web Awards followed (Eugene Mirman was an hilarious emcee) and the night was capped by a party at the Austin City Limits Sound Stage.

Topics: Marketing & Advertising, Party, SXSW 2008, Sweat & Tears | 2 Comments »

SXSW Report….The Brinkmobile

Sunday, March 9th, 2008

Last night we met with a team from The Brink, a loose group of entertainment and media companies (call themselves a bite size conglomerate) that develop content for clients and, in their spare time, work on growing their grassroots culture/entertainment site.

Really liked their wheels. The team rolls in one of two restored Travco motorhomes (1968 model) they’ve transformed into mobile studios. These “Brinkmobiles” travel to film festivals, tech conventions, music events, clubs, coffee shops, schools, etc. - serving as promotional vehicles as well as mobile web design offices, film production studios and HD screening rooms.

Each Brinkmobile features a mini theatre with flatscreen HD video, GPS, HD projection and broadband Internet hookup. They are wired inside with a discreet 3 camera setup that instantly transforms any gathering inside into a BrinkTV Talk Show.

Topics: Marketing & Advertising, SXSW 2008, Sweat & Tears | 1 Comment »

SXSW Starts

Saturday, March 8th, 2008

Greetings from Austin and the SXSW Internet conference…also known as SXSW Music’s nerdy brother/sister. It’s four days of chatter about all things digital - design, social networking, gaming, programming, Web 2.0, business, etc. Along with a good dose of nightly entertainment.

After an arduous trip thanks to American Airlines (we pulled an OJ through the Dallas airport) we arrived in time to catch a few panel sessions, including a solid presentation by Jason Fried from 37Signals. Some of the best points made during his “Ten Things We’ve Learned at 37Signals”…..

On the web there’s too much attention to pixels and too little to words.
Always err on the side of simple.
Long projects can be deadly for morale and motivation.
Be inspired by famous chefs…as they build by sharing all they know.
Interruption is the enemy of productivity…passive communication (in a work space) reduces interruption.
Morale feeds off of progress. Do lots of small things.

Topics: SXSW 2008, Sweat & Tears, tech news | No Comments »