Open The Dialogue

South by Southwest (SXSW), the annual meeting of professionals and passionate fans of social media, music and film, began March 12 and concluded this past weekend in Austin, Texas.  In my first year at SXSW and attending on behalf of Nikon, I enjoyed a week full of learning, collaboration and inspiration.  The hype is true.  It’s an excellent opportunity to build strong relationships and create unique brand engagements for your client.

For those unfamiliar with SXSW, the first five days are dedicated to all things “Interactive,” including panels, parties and power-bloggers roaming the halls of the Austin Convention Center discussing what’s next.  The Music and Film portion of the Festival follows and the city swells to more than 30,000 filling the streets of downtown Austin.

This year,  attendees for the Interactive portion doubled with not only bloggers and social media “experts,” but corporate representatives and hundreds of PR, advertising and digital agency representatives, including a team from @mwwgroup.  As Jenna Wortham of the New York Times wrote, “the high concentration of tech savants supplies a rare opportunity for companies to woo the eyes and clicks of early adopters and influential Twitter users and bloggers capable of elevating their sites and services out of obscurity.”

Of course, not all content enlightened attendees.  There was a great deal of noise and panels with intriguing titles that didn’t deliver anything more than what is already covered within Mashable. As AdRants put it, “Some of the content was good. Some of the content was truly terrible.”

Here are a few takeaways from what we learned throughout the 10-day Festival…

#1.  Geeks like to karaoke and party.  A lot.

Interactive included five days of cookouts, kickball and Foursquare matches along with lunchtime happy hours, cocktail hours and after-after-after parties. This might seem like all fun and games, but in practice, it was a Festival of networking and idea generation for brands as large as Microsoft and as small as FoodSpotting, and a great celebration of the important role of technology and entrepreneurism of the past year.

#2. “Just watch American Idol.”

The legendary Smokey Robinson gave the keynote address to the SXSW Music attendees.  He spoke of his award-winning history in the music business and how some of his greatest hits were created by accident.  When asked what advice he would give to rising stars, he paused for a moment and said, “You are not the first to be in showbiz, you will not be the last.  Just watch the crowds at an American Idol audition.”  Knowing always where you’ve come from, what you stand for and appreciating the breaks you’ve been given along the way is key to success, according to Smokey.  It’s advice all businesses and practitioners should follow.

#3. Business in the Bathroom Line.

An incredible thing about SXSW was that everyone was someone worth getting to know.  Everyone had similar interests, passions, and desires to collaborate just waiting for a connection to be made. Everyone had an idea worth pursuing or a friend-of-a-friend you “just need to meet!”  Even standing in the 50-person bathroom queue at Stubb’s BBQ, you might meet the lead singer of a cool band, the CMO of a brilliant startup, or even a filmmaker debuting at SXSW in need of PR representation.  And, just like that, a relationship or a deal can be made.

#4. The Necessity of Official Sponsorships
The usual suspects sponsored the SXSW Festival, including Pepsi Refresh, AOL, Chevy, Miller Lite and more.  Their presence was big, splashy, and ever-present among a sea of Convention Center visitors.  We realized, though, that impact can be made without a step-and-repeat banner and pricey sponsorhips. Nikon (MWW client) partnered with the largest photo and video uploading service for Twitter, called yfrog.  Knowing there was no official aggregator for images and video at SXSW, this service pulled in content using the Twitter hashtags #SXSW and #SXSWpics to form an online gallery.  In addition to public content gathered, Nikon also sponsored several top bloggers, including Chris Brogan, Pop17 and Jeff Pulver, to hit the streets of Austin with their Nikon cameras to capture the scene.  The Nikon Gallery had hundreds of professional photos and thousands of public images.  The openness of social media, and collaborators like yfrog, allowed Nikon to have a unique brand presence without official SXSW sponsorship, although the right official sponsorships can work too.

#5 The Next Big Thing

Our minds are spinning with thoughts of what could be next for Interactive.  Of course, the talk of the town was FourSquare, Gowalla and more location-based social media networking.  The “celebrities” included Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk), iJustine (@iJustine), Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) and many more who will continue to drive the thought leadership in this space. We also heard great buzz for Food Spotting, Twitter’s @Anywhere platform, and countless analytics tools and opinions about ROI.  It remains to be seen what the next “big thing” will be, because the SXSW community is full of early adopters and it takes time to create mainstream adoption, but we’re confident one of the 15,000 brains at SXSW will be responsible.

Austin featured a great cast of characters, living up to its motto “Keep Austin Weird.”  And, we can’t wait to return for the weirdness, creativity and rockin’ music at #SXSW2011.

Last week, CNN President Jon Klein, said during an interview with BusinessWeek that he is “more worried about the 500 million or so people on Facebook versus the 2 million on Fox.” And he has cause for worry.

We have entered an era that puts demands on our news sources to get with the times or get out. In 2009 we witnessed the collapse of some of our most beloved magazines, and newspapers are now an endangered species. Instead of buying the paper, we get our information on the Internet, where we can readily access the exact article that appeared on today’s front page of the New York Times print edition. We can get our information 24 hours a day, and as new information comes in, we get that too, before it ever hits the print edition. When you’re sipping your coffee and reading the headlines, all the while getting your hands covered in ink, I’ve already read the headlines at three a.m. when the news broke.

So are we training ourselves for the potential extinction of network news, too? All our favorite sources are online now – CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, and CNBC.  Maybe we’re training ourselves not for broadcast network news, but for the extinction of the network news’ websites.

What happens when we expect all our information to be packaged in 140 increments and we rely on social media platforms like Twitter to get our fix? People like CNN President Jon Klein start to worry that we won’t go to their website anymore, or watch their video or read the full article. But, hey, if you can’t make your point in 140 characters, what good are you?

And then there is Reuters, who last week released a social media policy telling its journalists they shouldn’t break news on their Twitter feeds (versus BBC who’s Director mandated their journalists to use social media or get out).  We can appreciate Reuters trying to stay true to its journalistic routes, and break news ‘over the wire.’ It’s nice in a sort of nostalgic-good for you-I’ll-get-my-news-somewhere-else-if-you-aren’t-telling-me-first. Reuters should be more worried about Facebook users than CNN. At least I can follow @cnnbrk for the latest.

How can any news source position themselves as the most trusted network, or the place to go for breaking news, if they aren’t part of the conversation?

What is important is that instead of fighting these changes, our news sources need to integrate themselves with the changes. Get on Facebook. Let your journalists break news on Twitter. If a journalist I’ve been reading for years is breaking his/her news on Twitter, I’ll go there first. If I’m friends with CNN, Reuters, BBC, and they are giving me the news then I’ll listen to them. I’ll read what they have to say (in 140 characters or less) and maybe I’ll click on their link and read the rest of the article. Maybe I’ll stay tuned for more information on a story that is just coming ‘over the wire.’

If these news sources thought of Twitter as a wire service and their followers as their journalists who disseminate the information, they wouldn’t have to worry about the 500 million Facebook users. Instead, these sources would be part of it. The information would start with them and their followers distribute it.

Twitter users, for example, don’t just rely on their friends and followers for their information, but they go back to the traditional news source in a non-traditional way. And instead of being on the sidelines, everyone gets in the game – 24 hours a day.

Last week I looked at what drove the meteoric rise of Chatroulette.  In short, it showed that while traditional news outlets primed the audiences about the service but with limited effect, it was Mashable’s coverage that boosted the service to stratospheric heights.

There were at least two lessons from that study.

1) Social media outlets such as Mashable, Engadget and others can have much greater influence than online version of traditional news outlets.

2) How the content is covered is also different in social media than on television news shows.  While the sentiment on social media was mostly neutral towards the service, those that communicated an emotional response, showed that the users found the service to be “funny,” “hilarious,” “great” and “addictive.”  While others said described the service as “creepy,” “NSFW” and “perverts,” it was no where near what CNN and other television news outlets suggested.  A cursory study by Casey Neistat shows that 83% of users were anything other than perverts.   Despite such a large section of normal users, CNN decided to frame the issue based on the small 17% of “perverts” and headlined the service as “titillating.”

What this suggests is that social media is definitely a better indicator of mainstream sentiment on issues.  The traditional media, especially television news programs while embracing social media are engaged in framing issues in a way that may not be reflective of public opinion.  The implication are far reaching especially when it comes to critical national issues such as healthcare reform, financial reform and other important issues.

Apparently no one told Twitter co-founder Evan Williams the old Texan proverbs “If you’re ridin’ ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it’s still there.” In his keynote address at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin today, @ev announced Twitter’s intention to blaze a new trail with their @anywhere platform.

If you haven’t heard, the new platform will integrate with some of the world’s top websites. It will allow you to follow a journalist’s byline or tweet about a YouTube video without leaving the page.

While some may see this as an attempt to connect with the world like Facebook, I see it as Twitter fully embracing their destiny.  In my opinion Twitter has always been a platform for quick communication. Whether it’s been link sharing, reporting news, or laughing at the latest meme, Twitter has always been about communicating through a platform to the community that formed around it.

While the Twitter community that has grown is spectacular, it still leaves a lot be desired. It lacks the everyman attitude of Facebook and the dominance of Google. While Twitter would always have a large fan base, it wouldn’t necessarily be enough to sustain itself.

That’s why I think @anywhere might be the best trail Twitter has blazed so far.  By combining the content we love to share with a platform that everyone knows, Twitter has a chance to weave itself into the very DNA of the web.  By thriving as an communication platform, Twitter can survive and grow as a community and a company.

Image Via TechnologyExpert.com

Last month, toy manufacturer Mattel made waves with geeks everywhere with the announcement of Barbie’s newest profession. For the popular doll’s 125^th occupation, Mattel consulted over half a million fans. Through Facebook and Twitter, the public was encouraged to vote Barbie’s new profession. The public has spoken and Barbie’s newest career will be as a Computer Engineer.

“Coder Barbie,” much like her other high-heeled wearing counterparts, has not avoided the usual controversy that surrounds the release of modern Barbie incarnations. Last year alone, “Burka Barbie” and “Black Barbie” kicked up heated comments all around the blogosphere as critics questioned their political correctness. Many are wondering how a computer programmer who works with binary codes and numbers all day also wears hot pink high-heels with matching glasses and laptop?

Mashable’s Rebecca Zook – a female math tutor – points out that Mattel consulted the Society of Women Engineers and the National Academy of Engineering when designing the doll’s newest outfit. She also asserts that “women shouldn’t feel like they have to stop being feminine to work in technology.”

Critics have cited current gender inequalities that exist within tech fields. Most feel that a blue-tooth touting blonde with pink accessories will further accentuate these inequalities. Mattel hopes that the release of Computer Engineer Barbie will “inspires a new generation of girls to explore this important high-tech industry, which continues to grow and need future female leaders.”

The release of this Barbie has definitely been a step in the direct of raising awareness of the availability of tech-related careers for all genders. What do you think – is Coder Barbie one small step for gal-geeks everywhere or does it do more for deepening gender inequalities?