sxswi

SXSWi2008, Day 3: Social Networking and your Brand

by David Lee King on March 11, 2008

Coolness – they’re taking questions during the presentation using twitter – twitter.com/snayb4sxsw – great use of twitter!

panelists:
Paul Boag, Jina Bolton, Mark Norman Francis, Steve Ganz, Steve Smith

Defining social networking
it’s something we’ve done forever – even before the web

ways to use personal brand
not just logos and letterhead
your brand is simply the promise of an experience

ways to use personal brand:
Boag – his company used his personal brand to push some stuff out, because he was already well known in the field

Names
some brand themselves by their personal name – some have to use different names/personas to stand out from the crowd (Steve Smith talking here)

[me talking - that's why I use my middle name - it helps differentiate me from the millions of other David Kings out there]

Then you have to be consistent – always use that name

Tips & Tricks:

Pics – use a consistent avatar/icon/thumbnail pic, too.

Commenting – can affect your brand. Some people leave rude comments… you can be polite…. this type of thing can leave good or bad impressions of you.

SOme people give up when they don’t immediately become internet famous – you have to be consistent, and keep keep it going – it’s lots of work.

Represent your self as who you are – be yourself.

Keep your attitude the same as if you were speaking to someone face to face

when it’s a personal brand, you have to watch what you do – don’t necessarily want “I’m wasted” in the same place where potential clients are watching/reading…

stuff can get taken out of context – be careful what you twitter…

Tools:
twitter is used much (the linkdin guy said this)
Paul (a podcaster) says Podcasting!
Campfire, email, IMs, private chatrooms
Bolton – twitter, IM, etc are NOT social networks – they enable social networking – nice differentiation

How do we deal with all these pieces out there?
Reserving your name – dangerous to not get your name in that social space – you want to grab it up before someone else does.

Is it a detriment to get it and then not use it? Not necessarily

The Real World
How do you keep in touch? Email feels too formal. Paul uses Twitter and flickr – you can sort of follow their lives without interrupting their lives so much – and then when you meet up with them again, you have something to talk about

Paul takes business cards he gets at conferences, puts them in his contacts list, and finds a pic online to associate it with – helps him put a name and a face together

Lots of the panelists mentioned flickr as a great way to know the person, know their lives

Balance between private and public stuff
be aware
use the privacy controls if needed
bring out personality, who you are rather than specifics…
you have control of what you put out online

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SXSWi2008, Day 3: The Art of Self Branding

by David Lee King on March 11, 2008

artofselfbranding.com

branding yourself
no restrictions, very personal, organic

Brands are built upon what other people are saying about you – not what you are saying about yourself

Dang… didn’t save, and lost a couple of notes.

Speaker is comparing Mint and Wesabe in terms of branding. Mint wins, hands down. One example – names. Both are financial services companies – Mint makes sense, is easy to say, has pleasing experiences behind it (they use a mint leaf in their logo). Wesabe? Not so much.

Consistency is key – poor branding is all over the place.

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SXSWi2008, Day 2: Tools for Enchantment: 20 Ways to Woo Users

by David Lee King on March 11, 2008

Kathy Sierra’s session, as you can expect was great. She’s a talented speaker, and has good stuff to say. She did, however, assume that most people in the audience had heard lots of her presentations in the past – so she went really fast, and at some of the points below simply said “you’ve heard me cover this one before” … so she didn’t cover it!

[note to speakers: you probably hang out with all the other cool speakers. Just because you and they "know everything" doesn't mean your audience does - go ahead and share the basics and stuff that feels like you're repetitive].

And now, here are some incomplete notes from her session:

Difference between fabulous and average:
- not about natural ability
- about the ability to practice/put in the time

20 ways…:

1. use telepathy. There are two flavors of neurons: mirror and motor. They feel the movements and read emotions.

Visualization – you have to see the thing you want to do in your head – that’s sort of like practicing

2. serendipity: psychic shuffle – it’s that “I was thinking about this song, then it played” moment. So add randomness.

3. The Dog Ears principle. Ears come after the head. Think about real life physics when you design.

4. Joy

5. Inspire 1st person language – really shouldn’t be about you.

6. T-Shirt-First development

7. Easter Eggs and other treats. Leave “treats” in your design, things that are there for no other reason than to make people smile. “A smile in the mind” – title of an interesting-sounding book.

8. Tools for evangelism

9. You are a… : You are a predator – predator’s eyes are in front of their heads. So right now, there’s 400 predator eyes looking at the speaker! Learn how to manage your fight/flight response. There are tools for this – ie., Stress Eraser, a breathing game – also calms you down.

10. excersize the brain – BrainAge as an example

11. Give them spuerpowers, quickly.

12. ???

13. Speed their knowledge

14. Make product (or Do’s) share your feelings

15. Help with reinvestment of mental resources… focus – have to devote all your attention on it. Attention offsets vs partial attention

16. Create a culture of support – no dumb questions, no dumb answers

17. Do not insist on inclusivity. Jargon is ok – passionate users “talk different”

18. practice seductive pacity – mystery, anticipation, curiosity

19. Atoms are NOT old skool – if you make digital stuff only, give out t-shirts – something people can hold

19.5. Do what this guy does – Gary ??? – does a radically different, passionate wine show. Gary is making his viewers entertaining – he is taking the focus off of himself

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SXSWi2008, Day 2: Mark Zuckerberg Keynote

by David Lee King on March 10, 2008

aside – I was in the overflow room, and was dosing off… so not too many notes. The more interesting thing would have been to be in the big room – apparently there was lots of booing, hooting, and hollering over the interview (mainly the interviewer’s fault, from all the tweets I’ve read). More news about that here (and many other places).

My poor notes:

- Facebook’s goal is to help people connect and communicate more effectively

- They are big in Columbia – people are using Facebook to plan revolts in their country – Mark never expected that to happen!

- Facebook’s goal: The world has lots of problems… Facebook is building a platform on which to solve these problems.

- They don’t focus on the money – honestly, mark sounded like a web developer/programmer who had a great idea and went with it.

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SXSWi2008, Day 2: Social Network Coups: The Users are Revolting!

by David Lee King on March 8, 2008

Panelists: Jessamyn West, Gina Trapani, Jessica Dzwigalski, Annalee Newitz

[aside] – I came to hear/see Jessamyn, who completely rocks! But the panel was good, too.

Newitz:

three kinds of user revolts:

  • anarchist-style pranks
  • grassroots protests
  • op-ed/open letter from high-profile users

Discussed some Digg revolts:

  • paying people to Digg your page
  • the HD code thing

Dzwigalski (Jessica Linden):

  • Griefers – tax revolt in July 2003
  • CopyBot protest, Nov 2006
  • Resident-Created IP rights campaign, 2008
  • “if you’re taking our avatar, your’e taking our identity”

Jessamyn West (Metafilter):

  • Outline
  • how they handled a sexism brouhaha at metafilter

Trapani (Lifehacker):

  • talked about an ad that their users didn’t like
  • It was an ad featuring naked bottoms… they didn’t like “mooning their audience” – interesting way to look at it
  • Readers said the ad contradicted the nature of the site (ie., it’s supposed to be safe for work)
  • interesting questions – when do you listen to your users?
  • 2-3 dozen emails about a single issue – that got them to notice it and change

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SXSWi2008, Day 2: Opening Remarks

by David Lee King on March 8, 2008

Henry Jenkins, Steven Johnson

Johnson interviewed Jenkins

Random stuff they said:

  • No single person should be asked to write for an encyclopedia
  • wikipedia’s model is much better, because it’s community-driven
  • Britannica’s model is one person sharing their knowledge – wikipedia’s model is many people sharing their knowledge
  • younger generation have learned to read and write because of Harry Potter – they learned to social network through Harry Potter
  • Jenkins says he is a Total Obama boy (everyone clapped and hooted)
  • Older people say I – I will do this for you
  • Younger people say We – what can we do to get this done – this is what happens in social networks
  • Obama has tapped into the we model – Hilary has tapped into the I model

I turned off my laptop during the q & a session, and missed a great answer to a usual question. The usual question was about how to deal with internet addictions. Jenkins answered by first saying that when someone stays up all night to read a book, it’s considered learning and an ok thing – but when someone stays up all night on the internet, it’s considered an addiction and bad. So instead of saying it’s an addiction and bad, we need to figure out what the compelling parts of the online experience are, and then try to integrate those positive experiences into other things, like learning.

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SXSWi2008, Day 2: ExpressionEngine 2.0 Sneak Peek

by David Lee King on March 8, 2008

Session by Ellis Lab, makers of ExpressionEngine, a CMS we’re using for our new Digital Branch.

Note to David – there’s an Ellis Labs party – t-shirts!

Goal – you should have control of the code and the design – design shouldn’t have to work around the CMS

They have paid support staff

They claim it’s becoming very popular for developers (of course they’d say that!)

Big News from the coder dude:

  • 2.0 is powered by CodeIgniter – an open source PHP framework
  • lots of coding libraries – jQuery, Javascript libraries

Control Panel redesign:

  • more user-friendly – Create, Modify, View labels
  • learning EE tab at bottom – place to put tutorial videos, etc
  • site stats link/tab

Create New Entry page

  • easy to move fields around
  • dynamic sorting
  • custom create new labels
  • A “write mode” – just the body text area pops up, hiding all other fields – nice

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SXSWi2008, Day 2: Quit Your Day Job and Vlog

by David Lee King on March 8, 2008

Zadi Diaz, Bre Pettis, Lisa Donovan (Lisa Nova on YouTube), Lindesy Campbell

lots of people taking video of people in this session

People who have made videoblogging their day job – topic of panel

Telling their stories:

Lisa Donovan:

  • started a small production company
  • lots of corporate stuff
  • they wanted to be more creative in their down time
  • this was about 2 years ago – they discovered youtube
  • started posting videos…
  • her videos have been watched 40 million times
  • They use the resources they have – no money involved – just time, primarily
  • she was picked up on MadTV 2 months after she started doing the youtube stuff

Zadi Diaz:

  • EpicFU – internet culture show
  • her background editor is in publishing and acting
  • she started vlogging to keep in touch with her family, then discovered other vloggers
  • hooked up with rocketboom
  • show started as JetSet – recently changed the name
  • the British Council is a fan of her show, and they’ve invited her over to do something
  • EPIC-FU IS their job
  • (aside) Steve Garfield just walked around the room, vlogging the session)

Bre Pettis:

  • got started as an art teacher
  • 2004 – he started doing online video
  • he mentioned the library! Loves the 700 section in the library
  • started making DIY videos
  • 2006 – started doing DIY videos once a week

Lindsey Campbell:

  • MOBLOGIC.TV
  • she’s an actor (translation – she was acting, singing, and temping in NYC)
  • saw an ad for a web hosting for a financial show thing and auditioned for it
  • she did wallstrip – acquired by CBS Interactive last year
  • “the internet IS TV”

Some people tell them it’s too bad they haven’t made it on TV or film

They are just a little bit ahead of traditional media, and traditional media types are starting to contact them and ask questions – sort of like what I do in libraries

Bre’s suggestions

  • don’t make people wait even a second – cut everything to the edge
  • Make friends with musicians
  • publish often
  • own your IP
  • take acting classes
  • take care of your teeth

Zadi

  • start where you are
  • don’t quit your day job – just start there – make a show with the people around you

Campbell – email your heroes – they might help you

q – what’s the justification for being in the web space with trad media companies that bought video?
- they wanted to be in the space
- it’s experimentation

building a community – they want to feel like they’re participating with you, hanging out with you, connect with you – the web offers that connection point

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SXSWi2008, Day One: Rock Star Lighting and Accordions

by David Lee King on March 8, 2008

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

Formats: Quicktime | iPod

Quick video of the How to Rawk SXSW, just to give you a flavor of the first session. The lighting was pretty cool, and they found an accordion player who plays popular tunes on his accordion. Here, he’s singing an AC/DC song – he also closed the session by sing Hit Me Baby One More Time by Britney Spears.

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SXSWi2008 Day 1

by David Lee King on March 8, 2008

SXSWi2008This is my first time attending SXSWi, in Austin TX. Wow – it’s a different conference! At the many library conferences I usually attend, I bump into a few people I’d term “creatives.” You know the ones – their hair points to the sky, it’s died green, and they wear stripey socks. Well… all of those people have converged in Austin to attend SXSWi. Not that I’m complaining – I like hanging around creatives, and I’m certain I’m going to learn some cool things. It’s just… well… decidedly NOT a library conference.

And you get to come along with me, because I’ll be blogging what I see and learn! So strap in, hold on to your hats, because away we go – to my first day.

First off, I registered – and immediately saw Harry Knowles, the guy who runs Ain’t It Cool News registering for the film part of the conference. So I’m already geek’d out, and I don’t even have my badge yet!

After getting my badge, my bag of schwag, and lunch, I attended the first session, How to Rawk SXSW: The Basics. Some people from Valleywag sat in front of me, typing and snapping photos the whole time. This was an “introduction to sxswi” and was led by a panel that included Matt Mullenweg, Tim Ferriss, Min Jung Kim, Ian Lloyd, Jason Toney, and Rannie Turingan. I don’t remember who said what exactly, but I wrote some interesting quotes down:

  • Don’t try to pace yourself – try to do everything at the conference
  • The liver is evil and should be punished
  • lots of talk about how to party, how to get over hangovers, how to extend your caffeine rush (take aspirin), etc.
  • make sure to talk to people, introduce yourself to people, etc
  • You want to be memorable (there’s lots of “remember me” networking going on)
  • some discussion on how to meet someone who’s Internet Famous
  • Geeks are nice, and usually want to meet you, too
  • Say your name and blog URL
  • Remember that Internet Celebrities are not real celebrities
  • The people who are going to be big in 5-10 years are here
  • Lots of language…
  • And the panelists downed a whole bottle of bourbon during the session
  • Hey, it was something to do… :-)

Jeffrey ZeldmanNext, I went to Respect! Say it Loud: I Create Websites and I’m Proud! Also a panel, led by Jeffrey Zeldman. Panelists included Douglas Bowman, Liz Danzico, Erin Kissane, and Jason Santa Maria. This session was a loose discussion of figuring out the value of what we, as web dudes, do, and how we translate that to others. Random quotes:

  • at Google, speed trumps everything – it’s a type of common ground for Google during meetings
  • One person mentioned having a session where clients draw what they think they need in a site or app – this helps them feel part of the design process (even if you don’t use what they drew)
  • A new Google employee is called a Noogler (ie., New Googler)
  • Zeldman mentioned the Alzheimer’s approach to meetings – remind non web types what was decided in the last meeting, why we’re going a certain way, where we are in the process, and back it up with stats, studies etc – basically reminding them frequently of what’s going on
  • watch out when marketers write content – it can sound too markety and not web enough – it starts sounding like a polished salesman.

Finally, I attended a party and hung out with some web developers from the National Geographic and the Pentagon.

Again – a very interesting start to a very interesting conference!

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