Apr
30

Enabling Protest with Foursquare: Du4 at IO Global 2012

Foursquare Logo

Foursquare Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m extremely lucky to have been asked back to present at this year’s Information Operations Global Conference in London this June. I had a ball last year talking to folks about the “Andy Carvin effect” and discovering new challenges in the military and government influence space. This year, in addition to a presentation on what to expect next from digital technology, I’ve been asked by the conference organizers to conduct a practical workshop focused on some kind of social technology. I’ve chosen to do something much different than prior years’ workshops by showing attendees how to use Foursquare to compel people to move physically to an influence objective.

My workshop will actually take place over the course of the entire conference. I’ll conduct an intro session where I will explain to participants how Foursquare works and show them the various pieces and parts of the app. Then, I’ll split participants into teams and give them a “live fire” exercise objective: Somewhere in London, a protest against a corrupt politician will be organized. Because local authorities are cracking down on traditional methods of communication amongst the protesters’ organizers, they’ve chosen to leave instructions for supporters to join them using Foursquare. Teams will then be turned loose in London to find the protest.

In preparation for the exercise, I will set up a number of check-in locations around the conference. Some of these will be easy to find; others will require teams to do a little social media detective work to discern where the next clue lies. By the end of the conference, teams will be evaluated on their progress in finding the protest location. We will then brief the conference attendees on our lessons learned from the experience.

I’m really excited about the promise of using Foursquare in this fashion, and it will be a huge learning experience for me to see how military IO professionals might find new ways of using the service. I don’t think the book has been written on how app-enabled location-based services can socially be employed for military and government influence objectives yet. There’s plenty of data on how well Foursquare works for brick-and-mortar merchants, but I believe there’s an additional layer of influenceable data that lives amongst that base layer. Admittedly, a large part of whether this concept would work or not in some regions of the world comes down to user adoption, but of all the location-based services, Foursquare already has the global incentives for users to adopt on their own: virtual rewards (i.e. badges) and physical rewards (i.e. specials and discounts via merchants).

If you have any feedback about to better execute this workshop, or if you have some advice you’d like to share in making this a more value-filled experience for conference attendees, please sound off in the comments.

Details on the conference itself follow:

  • Conference locations: Charing Cross Hotel, London, UK
  • Dates: 26 June (workshops), 27-28 June (main conference)
  • IO Global main website: http://www.informationoperationsevent.com/Event.aspx?id=594180
  • Register for IO Global here: http://www.informationoperationsevent.com/Event.aspx?id=594178

 

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Mar
07

SXSW 2012 App to Watch: NewsiT

I have the privilege of working with a cool new DC startup that’s been selected to present at SXSW 2012′s HatchPitch competition. NewsiT is an app that empowers citizen journalists to document and report events and respond to emerging editorial assignments. The app just debuted for iOS users in the App Store, and the NewsiT editorial team is rolling out a number of assignments specifically geared toward SXSW. Already you can sign up to answer an assignment about the next big technology debut at SXSW by writing a text piece, shooting video, or submitting photos.

It’s a supercool idea that puts mobile reporting organization right into the hands of people who want to get the word out about something, particularly those who suddenly find themselves in the middle of emerging events. Eventually, I can foresee a news ecosystem growing out of this technology and its users. Imagine something like this being available for people in the Middle East during the Arab Spring.

I’m most interested to see the potential of this service applied to musicians and bands seeking wider exposure at SXSW. In the next few days, NewsiT will post assignments and tasks that allow bands to upload multimedia pieces about their personal stories of journeying to Austin to get seen. Furthermore, fans and SXSW attendees will be able to post their own stories about the coolest bands they see at SXSW and/or personally interview musicians themselves.

I think this is a great way to integrate crowdsourced content development. The app interface is slick and easy to use, perfect for snap decisions to capture and disseminate content happening around you. My favorite bit that, admittedly, still needs some development is the gaming aspect of the reporting: users receive points and unlock badges based on their engagement with the platform. I’m ditching my trusty FlipCam for this year’s SXSW and will be reporting the AWESOME directly from NewsiT, so be sure to follow along at the website. Download the app to contribute yourself, whether you’re going to SXSW or you’re interested in one of the existing assignments.

{Disclosure: I’m working for NewsiT as part of their street team for SXSW 2012.}

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Feb
17

Exit To Live

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the general wanderlust I get every year to escape the DC region and travel to new (or semi-trod) places and experience interesting events. Among many trips last year, I went to London and spoke at the Information Operations Europe conference, and I had a huge SXSW adventure in Austin, Texas. This year, I’m getting ready to embark on a road trip to SXSW 2012 that will begin with my wife and I spending our anniversary with Elvis in Graceland, and I have many more things on the horizon for both fun and work.

Image courtesy of ~Rare-GFX at Deviant Art

I really only learn when I go somewhere else. Social Media Week came to DC for the first time this year, and it’s just wrapping up today. Aside from a regularly great DC Tech events and one AWESOME public diplomacy panel, I found most of the panels pedantic and aimed at journeyman social media and communication professionals. Perhaps I only attended the crappy ones, but the feeling of having missed advanced insight pervades. Compared to the things I’ve learned at virtually every out-of-town engagement I went to last year, DC just hasn’t stacked up in the department of strengthening my personal learning curve. And that’s really the issue here: if I’m going to invest time and energy going somewhere, even if it’s local, I need live value from the experience. Most often, I also need that value to teach me something or otherwise inspire me to self-improvement in some way.

Sounds simplistic, doesn’t it? Of course you want value from the events in which you invest your time and money. Having traveled internationally the past several years though, I found learning value even on personal trips. Meeting other travelers in crowded bars or on the streets can change your perceptions of the staid environment of your home city. That’s just basic exposure too. Add a great conference, meeting or other event to that trip, and you can come home full of new knowledge and experience to motivate you for months.

In your travels, what have you learned? Have you found a specific exit to your hometown that lead you to a new motivating experience? Did something unexpected happen to you on a trip that inspired you when you got home? What trips, events, or plans are you making in 2012 that you hope will inspire you to live when you get home?

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Jan
20

Melt Faces at Mad Rose Tavern, Feb 2nd

I’m spending more time offline in 2012 planning and executing events and building integrating marketing plans around those events. Many of these projects are exploding through client work, some as experiments via my volunteer time in cause-based organizations. I’m learning a ton from it though, and I’m putting a lot of the lessons learned to work in my other passion: MUSIC.

Last year, I started two rock bands. VA Stripper grew out of mine and guitarist Andy Petrick’s love for 1990s rock, a passion we both shared experiencing the music scene at SXSW 2011. For various reasons, VA Stripper never quite got off the ground explosively, so we started another act. This act – Brains of J – paid tribute to one of our favorite ’90s bands still rocking today, Pearl Jam. Both are very different projects, and both give us very different satisfaction in performing. Brains of J is a headlong dive into the music of Pearl Jam, while we plan on writing our own music as VA Stripper at some point in the very near future. However, both use similar methods of integrated event marketing to get fans to come see our shows.

Hence, the Must. Be. AWESOME!!! call to action:

Come see both bands Feb 2nd at Mad Rose Tavern

If you’re in the DC/North Virginia/Maryland region, consider coming to see both VA Stripper and Brains of J for our first full-on rock show. Joined by DC sensations The Vandelays, we’ll have a solid show of facemelting from 9pm till closing time. The Mad Rose Tavern sits within spitting distance of the Clarendon Metro station on the Orange Line. View a Map of Mad Rose and the surrounding area.

Be sure to grab one of us and tell us what you think of the show too!

What else can you do to support us?

Engage, baby. Here are a few things you can do to keep track of us:

Enter your email address:

Email Format

 

And in closing… some FACEMELTING!


Brains of J – “Hail, Hail” Live at The Front Page from Chris Dufour on Vimeo.

 

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Dec
04

Mister Du4 Goes to Washington

Tomorrow, I’ll be accompanying my lovely wife to a holiday tweetup at the White House. While I’ve visited the White House on several occasions – some for fun, many for work – this will be my first visit where I’ll get to interact with senior members of the Obama Administration’s communications and engagement staff. I intend to livetweet the entire day, so be sure to follow me on Twitter or just search the hashtags #WHTweetup or #AtTheWH throughout the day.

I’ll monitor my Twitter and Facebook feeds all day in case you want to send me a question to ask the officials on hand. On the docket to brief and greet us are:

I’m less interested in the content of the White House’s outreach to people and more interested in how they’re doing it. I think this administration’s embrace of digital strategy has been a groundbreaking step forward in engaging and involving the public in a better, more transparent fashion. That said, I’m no stranger to throwing the occasional turd in the punch bowl, so if you’ve got something testy you want answered by these folks, holla atcha boy!
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Aug
16

Come Join the Fun at Rando Happy Hour

Image courtesy Spectacle Theater.

So… every few months I put on one of these Rando Happy Hours, which is essentially me just mining my contact database and telling everyone at the same time where I’ll be drinking one evening. What ends up happening is a really fun social experiment wherein I get to see how the varied people in my offline network interact together.

There’s no goal: it’s totally rando. Hence the name. However, what ends up happening at these things are odd little personality collisions between people who would normally never talk to each other, and I love watching it happen. For instance, one of my music buddies might rub shoulders with a buttoned down colleague of mine from the Pentagon, resulting in commodious AWESOME talk about favorite bands. People have even found new leads on jobs and work through the amorphous blob that is the Du4 grid.

So if you’re in the DC/NOVA area, feel free to come join us in Shirlington on August 30th for a brew. The details follow–

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Jul
06

IO Europe Wrap-up

Having been overtaken by events in London last week, I found it untenable to get out a daily blog post covering IQPC‘s Information Operations (or IO) Europe conference. There were also quite a few concerns from some conference-goers about how new media dorks like me attending could potentially bust up IO Europe’s tradition of “Chatham House rules” where none of the gathering’s discussions were attributable let alone reportable.

Wrestling with this personally, I’ve decided to go ahead and write up my thoughts on the conference because I believe the discussions are important to the wider global communications community. I will, however, decline to name some names to protect the guilty. ;)

That said, let’s see what’s new in another year of IO.

True Best Practices Are Usually the Most Controversial

From what conference-goers told me, this year more than ever saw more status quo-challenging presentations than ever before at IO Europe. The IO community, being as small as it is, tends to attack points of view that make these challenges. IO being a military discipline tends to rely on structure, plans, and doctrine that do not evolve. This runs counter to the promise of the Now Media Age (with apologies to MountainRunner) where we see communication innovation happening every day. And before people rail against that assertion claiming that our most popular conflict environments are in traditional media dependent regions, we also saw plenty of controversy that had nothing to do with the internet. Ed O’Connell – late of the Alternative Strategies Institute, which has now been acquired by Blue Hackle – gave a rousing talk about how he has conducted “interventions” into historically denied areas. The influence effects of Ed’s work dealt with providing forums for locals to air grievances in ways they had not considered before.

Ed’s a controversial figure in the IO world. He’s rankled quite a few feathers but his effects are undeniable. He is a fearless believer in personal, face-to-face rehabilitation of societies that have been brutalized by everything from violence and terror to poor economies. As much as we would like to put a new media solution on everything, there is still need for the de-radicalization work of someone like Ed.

Image courtesy Science 2.0

Most IO Pros Fear the Internet

Despite traditional approaches being successful and warranted in our current conflict environments, most of the IO pros I ran into at IO Europe are still massively afraid of conducting operations on the internet. While we have seen a huge ramp-up of media monitoring and analytical capabilities (i.e., programs that scour the internet for operationally relevant information and intelligence), very few organizations are actually doing anything with the information gleaned. Most arguments in favor of this fear have to do with limited policy and legislation governing influence operations on the internet but in my conversations with people, I detected a marked lack of motivation to even understand the online world. Many used excuses like “I’m too old to get it” or “My boss doesn’t care about this.” Worse, we even had a cybersecurity exercise one day lead by a facilitator who claimed to care nothing about social media and still professed to be an expert in online security operations.

IO Policy Still Stuck in the Dark Ages

Such fearmongering is exacerbated by onerous IO and strategic communication policy. There were more discussions on what simple terms mean than I could count, and when you factor in the international perspectives from the US, NATO, the UK, Canada, and many other nationalities represented, doctrinal debates became comical. Because of these debates, IO policy (and its overriding legislation) is still clawing for relevancy in an information age that has already left it behind. While professed IO policymakers and “experts” continually disagree over the meaning of “strategic communications,” citizens are moving on to the next platform, the next online game, the next social network, the next INNOVATION.

This facet of IO Europe upset me a little because this was one of the reasons I got out of the government business a while back. One of my former bosses used to say that government is about maintaining the status quo NOT innovation. Because of that, we will never see an IO or influence organization that thinks and operates ahead of the curve.

That Doesn’t Mean Innovation Isn’t Happening Though…

Quite a few private sector companies talked about communication systems monitoring platforms and methodologies. As we all know, entrepreneurial creativity occurs in the private sector. I met a number of companies who claimed to have technical solutions that provided end-to-end monitoring and sentiment analysis capabilities in multiple languages. Unfortunately, none of them were on hand to demo, something I would challenge all of them to rectify next year. IO Europe could be a great conference if IO pros could cycle from table to table to see the latest innovations in online data analysis.

Aside from tools, there were some great case studies of innovative approaches to operations. Hats off to the gents from Bell Pottinger for a supercool study of their strategic communications work in the Horn of Africa.

For Every Jerk You Meet, There Are 10 AWESOME Mofos

The IO community has its share of smarmy turd biscuits slinking through events like IO Europe, whether they’re government reps or otherwise. However, there are just as many, if not more AWESOME people hanging around with amazing stories, conversation, and things from which you can learn. I made twice as many friends at this IO Europe than I did last year, and these are folks with whom I anticipate having lasting professional friendships as well. The value of so many international perspectives in one place is hard to calculate, but may of the non-Americans at the conference gave me tons of new things to think about. I especially have to thank the gents from M&C Saatchi who recruited me to speak, offered some great conversations about music, and – in one case – hosted me at their home for my last day in country.

Final Thoughts: Be Better, Do Good

Ultimately, IO Europe was a great annual get-together for those of us in the community, but I think we can all do better. Too many of us got wrapped up in our own organizational prejudices, focusing on selling something or satisfying a government requirement. Instead, I think we all need to take a step back and remember why we’re in the influence business. For me, it’s all about experiential sharing – the process of understanding the complex global ecosystem in which we live that is made manifest by online means. At the end of the day though, all of us need to recognize a passion for communication, whether we’re a NATO PAO or a PR firm VP. There are too many people in this business who are just punching a clock, and that’s a shitty way to communicate with other cultures even if all you’re doing is approving comms plans.

See y’all next year.

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Jun
28

IO Europe: Day 1

Greetings from wet and humid London! Your intrepid host of AWESOME has skipped the pond to attend and speak at IQPC’s 10th Annual Information Operations Europe conference.

The guts of the conference don’t actually begin until tomorrow, but the organizers have a history of bookending the conference with operator-focused practical workshops like the one I started with today. Because wifi is a bitch to string up (shame on you, IQPC), I figure I’ll try my hand at a read-out via blog and livetweet when possible (under the hashtag #IOeurope).

Chatham House rules generally apply at IO Europe, so I’ll be judicious in my reportage.

Session 1: Can Commercial Advertising Teach IO Professionals Anything?

M&C Saatchi presented a case study on its Change 4 Life campaign against obesity, executed on contract from the UK Department of Health. I really liked this campaign’s use of iconography to get across its message: demographic-neutral cartoon characters aimed at borderline impoverished families. While several lessons could be learned from the case study, many IO pros in the room didn’t find application because the nuances of public information campaigns work very differently from military information operations. Most military attendees were fresh off IO tours in Afghanistan and Iraq where they have a very different environment in which to work versus the generally permissible domestic audience to which M&C Saatchi catered.

The Department of Health headquarters in Whitehall

The UK Department of Health (Image via Wikipedia)

 

This doesn’t necessarily mean there weren’t any good kernels of knowledge here; there were. But I think only in the context of those who are looking at evolving the IO practice. Unfortunately, few of those people exist as today’s current environment of budget cuts and drawdowns leaves very little research & development space for future state IO and influence. It may become incumbent upon the private sector PR, marketing and advertising industry to consider designing future state IO training pro bono or at least in such a fashion as it can be demonstrated as useful and effective to those who watch the number of zeroes in the check box. Most of the cutting edge work and thought in influence is happening at places like Edelman, Wieden + Kennedy, and the tech startup world… all of which are a long way from MacDill Air Force Base.

Side note: there was a fun little practical exercise where we were to put together an on-the-fly ad campaign for selling more caravans (RVs, to you Americans). It was interesting that all the groups arrived at many of the same conclusions when presenting their campaigns. Ultimately, however, the exercise was too short to get into the meat of the differences between IO processes and PR/advertising processes. I’ve long argued that communication is communication is communication, but delineations do exist between disciplines like IO and PR… even though they are very, very subtle.

Session 2: Afghanistan

I hesitate to mention too much about this session due to operational sensitivities, but suffice to say, there is no good news about the situation in Afghanistan. Everything every pessimist has written or analyzed about that country and our united presence there is true. Much of the problem involves flawed objectives and poor partnerships with corrupt Afghans not to mention the looming drawdown coming in the next year. Afghans trust Westerners very little on long-term promises or operations; they know our political will to sustain change in their country is fleeting. Worse, we keep pumping money and time into communication through a flawed-from-the-start Afghan national government, where tribal engagement at the lowest possible local level proves more effective in the long run.

Many of the Afghanistan vets in the room conveyed a sense of unfortunate hopelessness. They believe that it’s possible to sustain change in the region, but they’re not optimistic about it given the political and economic realities in their native governments.

Fish and chips, lads?

Coming up: THE PUB. Where the real work in the influence business gets done.

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Mar
28

The SXSW Survival Guide

With SXSW 2011 freshly wrapped, it struck me that I might put together a good tip guide to the event while it was still fresh in my mind. Here’s a 10-point guide for keeping your SXSW 2012 experience AWESOME.

Lodging – Get Your Own Place

The smartest decision I made during my stay in Austin for SXSW was getting a condo for the length of my stay. Now, a lot of people will tell you to book a hotel as early as possible, and there are several great hotels in downtown Austin that would be close to the action. I only recommend doing this if you’re going down for a few days. The longer your trip to Austin, the more a condo or vacation rental makes sense. I trolled Craigslist for weeks looking for deals on week-long stays and grabbed a condo north of UT in Hyde Park for only $1200. That ends up being MUCH cheaper than a multi-day stay in a hotel which will invariably also tack on parking fees and taxes.

The great thing about a place away from downtown Austin is that you have your own little oasis. The hotels get packed full of people during SXSW, and it’s not always easy to get away and relax when you need it. You may have to rent a car and drive between your rental and the convention center, but it’s worth it. Plus, this will put you in a new Austin neighborhood to explore, which is just as fun if not more so as SXSW itself.

Next year, I plan on going down with a group of people for the express purpose of sharing a large house that we’ll rent for the week.

Cars & Parking

If you choose to rent a condo or stay in one of the hotels that are quite far from downtown, you may want to rent a car. I heard a million horror stories about the SXSW shuttles, and me being me, I did not want to remain dependent on someone or something else for my own transportation. A car comes in particularly handy when you want to get out of downtown and party in one of Austin’s other fun regions like SoCo or the East Side. Many people balk at the expense of a rental car and associated parking, but for a week, I came out under $1000 with a Toyota Camry rental from Alamo. Trust me, this is worth the expense.

I found a couple clutch parking hacks in Austin that will save you some money. Most public lots will raise their standard rates of $7 a day to $15 and $20. You may end up having to duck into one of these lots on days when you haven’t planned well, but here are a couple better options:

  • The Omni Hotel. The Omni in downtown Austin has $7 a day parking during SXSWi. Even better? The garage attendant leaves at midnight and opens the gates, so if you leave after that time, your parking is FREE. Be warned though: Omni jacks up parking rates during the music festival at SXSW (usually beginning on a Wednesday) and the garage attendant stays all night, so be wary.
  • Residential parking. There are a number of residential and corporate areas near downtown where you can stash your vehicle. There’s a small but popular one close to the convention center and Magnolia, but it sometimes gets roped off. If you wake up early and do some hunting, you can find a ton of these hidden spaces all over town. Be prepared for a hike though as some of them end up quite far out from the convention center.
  • Greasing the skids. I never tried this but heard it worked for many people in Austin. Valets at many of the hotels are all about the tips, and if you can guarantee them a certain amount of income from you during the week, they may let you park for free at the hotel. A slipped $20 does wonders if you do it right.

Shoes

You will be on your feet ALL DAY, EVERY DAY at SXSW. If you don’t do well on your feet or walking, I suggest swallowing your dignity and getting yourself a pair of orthopedic shoes. A lot of convention-goers recommended Converse as the official cool-looking yet comfortable and supportive shoe of SXSW. Lots of people wore these. I bought a pair of the Jack Purcell Converse and was mildly satisfied with them, but there wasn’t a day that went by that they didn’t start rubbing my feet the wrong way halfway through the day.

What did work for me (and always has) was a solid pair of Merrell clogs. I’m particularly a fan of the “Slide” versions of their shoes that resemble slip-on clogs. They’re lightweight and reinforced with all kinds of nifty foot-cushioning insole technology that won’t wear your feet out while you’re skipping about Austin. I own a stylish pair that they don’t make anymore; they’re super-comfy and under the cover jeans look pretty rad. Trust me. Grab yourself a pair of Jungle Moc Nubucks or something similar. You’ll thank me.

Comfortable Yet Cool Clothing

There is no way to look bad at SXSW because of the hispter influx the town gets during this festival. There are more bearded geeks bounding around than you’ll be able to deal with, so don’t worry about looking fancy all the time. Normally, you’ll be bounding between panels and free booze parties anyway, so plan your attire accordingly.

I highly recommend a pair of comfortable jeans or khakis and a solid selection of Quicksilver shirts. Quicksilver makes ultra-comfortable surfer shirts that are often found in beach shops. While they make a variety of styles, the most comfortable (and stylishly designed) ones I’ve found are the button-down short-sleeve shirts. They’re made for activity so they won’t bunch up or look crappy once you’ve been darting around in the Austin sun all day. I actually would wear Quicksilvers all day, every day if I could get away with it. My buddy Tyson introduced me to them on the island getaway of St. John’s, and I still own every one I’ve ever bought.

Boots and Texas-wear

The urge will strike you at some point to buy a pair of authentic Texas cowboy boots or a hat while you’re in Austin. If it doesn’t, ignore this section. If you’re cool, follow the subsequent steps to deal with your newfound desire to become a card carrying citizen of the Republic.

  • Allen’s Boots. On South Congress, in the “SoCo” neighborhood, is a strip of vintage clothing stores, taco joints, and the site of Austin’s classic western wear store. Allen’s is a must-visit in Austin. They have an AWESOME selection of boots, hats, jeans, and shirts for men and women. If you’re a boot newbie, don’t puss out and go Justin just because someone tells you it’s affordable. Try on a couple pairs of Lucchese ropers. They are the finest boots made in Texas and receive the Must. Be. AWESOME!!! seal of approval.
  • Straw hat versus felt hat. If you are just now shopping for hats during your first SXSW trip, do not buy a felt Stetson. You are not cowboy enough for that shit yet. Straw is the way to go. Expect to pay about $70-$90 for a solid straw hat that doesn’t look like it was made in China for mass sales to Targets and Wal-Marts. I bought the hat below for $86.

 

The Platinum Badge Gets You Into EVERYTHING

I bought a platinum badge for SXSW 2011 and had no problems getting in to see anything. Every place that has an RSVP signup will let in badge holders, so don’t waste your time RSVPing for parties you want to get into. It’s expensive, but if you want the full SXSW experience, it’s totally worth it. Plus, you’ll be getting into day parties all over town with free booze and free eats, so you may even be saving money that way. A couple days during my trip, my buddy Andy and I knocked into two separate day parties, got loaded on free Lone Star, chowed on free tacos, and exited that towards the evening shows already shored up and not a dollar spent.

Panels Are For Shit

Generally, you will be disappointed by SXSW panels. Panelists usually appeal to the lowest common denominator so there is very little originality to what you’ll see, particularly if you are already a Web-maven who hungrily sucks down content from places like TED.com. I was pleasantly surprised by a panel on futurism, but that may have been an anomaly. Plus, panels are spread out between hotels and the convention center so much so that you’ll spend your entire day shuttling between them if you’re not careful.

Instead, focus on the people. Curate and/or follow a Twitter list or two of the people you want to meet and talk to, and then stalk them around town. Everyone checks into everything at SXSW and shares it via Twitter. Gather yourself a solid group of people you like to hang out with then hang out with them. The Bloggers’ Lounge is usually a good stop to make where you can make some connections and build your street team. You will learn more and have better takeaways from building a strong core group of relationships than consuming panel content.

The Radio Day Stage Is AWESOME

When the music festival kicks off, the convention center sort of dies down. However, you’d be mistaken to avoid it completely. The keynoter halls are converted into massive day stages where local radio stations feature performances from pretty AWESOME bands. It’s a chill atmosphere with plenty of bean bag chairs in which to lounge around, and you’ll get closer to some of your favorite acts than you will at any other stage in Austin. This is where I discovered my latest music obsession Fitz and the Tantrums and bumped into Emmylou Harris.

Above All, Have Fun!

To me, the best SXSW experience is one of DOING. Get involved. Get moving. Join a scavenger hunt. Test out some new apps. Make a comic with the deviantART crew. Most importantly, get out of the SXSW scene for at least a day and see Austin. It’s a great city. There’s so much to do here, you’ll be doing yourself a disservice by just panel picking all day.

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Mar
23

The SXSW Experience

I tried to document as many of my ongoing thoughts as I could over on my Posterous feed during SXSW, but I thought I’d take some time to try and make some coherent sense of the week-long insanity I put myself through.

Location, Location, Location

There didn’t seem to be any consensus on a single new technology or app that debuted or blew up SXSW this year. However, plenty of existing ones brought immense marketing campaigns to Austin, and the majority of those seemed to be location-based services. Gowalla, in my opinion, severely dropped the ball by not preparing local Austin businesses for the influx of SXSW geeks galvanized by the Gowalla passport scavenger hunt. Foursquare, on the other hand, ruled the day by deploying 2000 virtual “Golden Tickets” into specific checkin spots in Austin that unlocked free tickets to their Big Boi headliner show. So many more location-based companies littered the landfalls in Austin as well, each with some zany promotional campaign to get people to download and use their app.

David Armano's Allhat3 at Guero's.

For my money, Foursquare was the clear popularity winner here. Their partnership with Pepsi – where they created an actual competitive foursquare court near the Austin Convention Center – culminated with an AWESOME party at the Seaholm Power Plant, where all sorts of people got to chill with Dennis Crowley and his Foursquare army to the tunes of Locksley, The Sounds, and Big Boi.

App Discovery of SXSW: Roqbot

Roqbot is an app-based service that allows you to take control of online-enabled jukeboxes in bars, clubs, restaurants, and other locations featuring these types of music services. Once you download the app, you develop a DJ profile of your favorite music and check into whatever location you happen upon that has one of these net-enabled jukeboxes. From there, you’re able to control the music playlist emanating from the box. Don’t like Lady Gaga? Spend a couple Roqbot credits to put some Oasis on higher in the music queue. You also earn free credits to play by unlocking various checkin rewards or you can just connect Roqbot to a Paypal account and buy songs directly. It’s SUCH a great a control solution for jukeboxes in places. I can’t wait till they expand their services into the DC/NOVA region.

DC Represents

I was caught off-guard by the massive DC presence at SXSW. From government rockstars like Amanda Eamich from USDA to nonprofit supercolliders like Tammy Gordon of AARP, DC’s varied social media community descended on Austin in force. I hung out with Mike Schaffer, Director for Social Media at iostudio the most, and lamented that despite having met and living near DC, we never hang out like we did at SXSW. I’m making a pledge to change that behavior on my part now that I’m home, and I want to invite any and all DC/NOVA peeps to call me on any antisocial leanings I may display from this point forward.

Margie and Dave Newman, masterminds of the DC Flacks Meetup group, created an on-the-fly “DCxSW” Twitter handle and hash for all of us while in Austin. They also organized an impromptu meetup of these DCists at the Driskill Hotel one night where I had the best networking conversations of the week. I met a lot of folks i only knew through Twitter here, and I am super-excited to build upon those relationships in the future.

So here’s a big public shout-out to all my DCxSW peeps: Margie, Dave, Schaffer, Gabe Hilado, Amandare!, Alejandra Owens, Peter Corbett, Tammy Gordon, Tammy Portnoy, Lisa Byrne, Patti Shea, and all the rest of you AWESOME DC peeps. It was also great meeting a bunch of non-DC folks like Jeff Esposito, Teresa Cantwell, and old friends Anne Weiskopf and Tonia Reis (formerly of TWTRCON fame, now The Realtime Report

"You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas." --Davy Crockett

).

Walking in Your Footsteps

Much of the research I performed in prep for this massive undertaking panned out well. I intend to do up a fuller post on the travel hacks I came with on the fly, but the basics came down to comfortable shoes and clothing at all times. I can’t tell you how many times I just had to sit down because my feet hurt so bad from walking around so much. People recommended Converse as the go-to shoes for SXSW, but I have to put in a plug for the much comfier and supportive Merrel’s that I brought.

Panels & Speakers

For the mot part, I found SXSW panels pedantic and freshman. The only ones that piqued my interest and delivered a good conversation were a panel on The Singularity and another with John Hagel III on shaping the future. The Singularity panel brought together experts like Michael Vassar from the Singularity Institute and Natasha Vita-More from Humanity+ for a SUPER-AWESOME discussion about the ethical limits of transhumanism and posthumanity. I’m stll processing a lot of the info from this panel, but be sure to check out the convo archived on the #singularity hashtag. That conversation is still going on, so feel free to jump in and add your thoughts.

Seaholm Power Plant, site of the Foursquare/PepsiMax party.

I missed Seth Priebatsch’s keynote on the gamification of marketing and education, but I heard it was cool. I also missed Christopher Poole, aka moot of 4chan, who gave a keynote on social communities online and how their influence will continue to grow in the future. I heard good things about both of these keynotes but just couldn’y sync schedules to make them

Getting Your Groove On

I was most disappointed by the party situation. I RSVP’d for several parties specifically to hang out with or meet people that were throwing them. Unfortunately, every party is oversold, leading to massive numbers of people often crowding into small clubs, all trying to figure out who’s there that’s important or famous. What’s worse, I got the distinct impression at many of these parties that pre-existing community relationships led to a degree of “cliquey-ness” that isolated a lot of outsiders. This bothered me mainly because a lot of folks like myself stood in these long-ass lines for long periods of time to get into cool parties that only turned out to be fun for the cool kids.

 

Ogilvy Notes, a cool attempt to make visual sense out of all the information overloading SXSW's attendees.

There were literally so many people at many of these parties that you would get interrupted talking to someone of note, and they would never come back to you due to successive interruptions. It’s damned hard to connect with someone in this fashion, and you can damn sure bet I’ll be working on a SXSW Guide to Party Ethics for 2012.

Even worse, most of the Interactive parties featured some of the worst, most annoying DJs on the planet. Note to party organizers of the future: they don’t call Austin the “Live Music Capital of the World” for nothing. If you want to throw a SXSW party next time, do some fucking due diligence and get a couple of inexpensive but AWESOME live acts instead of a bunch of douchy DJ pricks.

Music vs. Interactive

SXSW should really be broken up into two conferences for Music and Interactive because virtually everyone from the Interactive festival popped smoke when the Music festival began. It was SUCH a sea change in personalities too: I joked to a buddy that all the Interactive geeks stayed inside the Convention Center for Interactive where Austin had to shut down streets to accommodate the influx of Music nerds.

What’s funny about the disparity between Music and Interactive attendees (and the lurking Film festival geeks too), is that they could all stand to spend time in each other’s sessions. So much inspiration flowed out of musical performances that I think would have benefited Interactive attendees, particularly the PR and marketing types who were hard-charging the entire time selling and jiving versus soaking up the people’s culture.

 

Emmylou Harris performing solo on the Radio Day Stage.

I’ll do up a separate post later on the musical discoveries I made. Those are stories in and of themselves.

Omni Hotels Continue to Rock

Not only did my lovely friends at Omni Hotels hook me up with a couple free drinks and grab bag of SXSW necessities, I also found that the Omni’s parking situation far outweighed any other in downtown Austin. Where other lots were jacking prices up to $10 and $20 at a time, the Omni kept a moderate $7 a day parking charge for SXSWi. What’s more, you could avoid that charge completely if you returned for your car after midnight, where they opened the garage. GREAT customer service from Omni, especially for people who weren’t even staying at their hotel for SXSW. Thanks again for the stops along the way!

(Pro-tip: The Omni also had the cleanest bathrooms in town. At about midnight when those tacos are kicking in, ain’t nothing better than a spotless and empty bathroom!)

Where Do We Go From Here?

 

The Macallan 15, proud sponsor of SXSW and drunk-asses everywhere.

SXSW was a worthy event, but I’m not sure I can do it all in one sitting again. It was a great time, and I enjoyed it, but had it not been for the people I met there, it could have been a big old bust. I brought back with me a ton of great ideas and content that I have to work with, so I hope to see some heavy return on investment soon. In that vein, keep your eyes peeled for successive posts about different SXSW aspects that I couldn’t fit into this one.

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