Archive for March, 2009

Sunday was supposed to be the first nice day, but we woke to grey skies and rain.  We decided to punt on the 10am panels and hit Moonshine again, for their brunch.  It was well worth the break to get a good meal in to start the day:

• James started the sessions off with “OpenID, OAuth, Data Portability and the Enterprise”.  The panel talked about how Software as a Service (aka SAS) is chaning how Enterprise is dealing with 3rd party / cloud computing.  The main issues that are troubling Enterprise at the moment with 3rd party SAS applications are user account management across internal/external services, provisioning software (automatic new hire and termination account management) integration, and data security issues.  The panel was a little future vision based and the crowd was a little more current vision which lead to some heated arguments about the current realities of IP law, security and the pace that Enterprise moves (i.e. slow).  The panel had the lead architect of Plaxo and he was very much consumer centric and this caused some frustration with the IT crowd because his vision of how it all works does not comply with a lot of Enterprise.  When we got back to the hotel we had a long discussion about how the old brick-and-mortar mentality of large firms need to change but until experiments like Zappos.com continue to define success it will be hard for large firms to openly adopt new and potentially risky ideas.
• Aaron’s first session was “Violating the Warranty on Your Touch Computing Device“, which turned out to be a session 100% dedicated to Microsoft’s Surface product.  The session included 4 panelists; Chris Bernard (User Experience Evangelist, Silverlight/Microsoft), Joe Engalan (Dir of Dev, Vectorform), Erik Klimczak (Creative Dir, Clarity Consulting), Joe Olsen (CEO, Phenomblue), Dan Thompson (Developer, Silverlight (PP)/Manifest).  A good session none the less, they talked about the challenges facing current development on the table, which included: programming behaviors, the lack of a common toolkit, and the difficulty finding 3D programmers.  The coolest example Aaron heard of was Vectorfarm’s vehicle configuration for BMW.  Inside of dealers, customers can configure their vehicle on a Microsoft Surface.  First, the customer can play with real materials such as a leather seat swatch or a paint chips that are next to the table. When custom likes a paticular accessory, they can simple lay the swatch/chip on the Surface, it reads a bar code on the item and updates the virtual configuration.  We have both built vehicle configurators in the past and this sounds like the most engaging experience on the market.  For anyone looking to enter the Microsoft Surface development market it will only take $15,000 for the device which will include 5 seat licenses.
• After catching up between sessions, James headed off to “CSS3: What’s Now, What’s New and What’s Not.”  The panel had a Mozilla, Microsoft, Opera rep and was lead by one of the Opera evangelist.  The panel showed what each browser was doing for CSS3, such as Firefox’s support of background borders (scale 9 support), embedding web fonts, type size management, etc.  Interestingly enough, a lot of the things they demo’d are already in Flex.  We are not saying the Flex is CSS3 compliant, because its not by a long shot (maybe Flex 4 is closer), but the things that got the crowd to ooh and ahh was all Flex enabled features.  Microsoft showed how IE8 is 100% CSS 2.1 compliant which is important because this means that the spec can be signed off and CSS3 can begin for real.  Opera then showed off what its doing and where they want to take CSS beyond web layout, such as print (think PDF features such as table of contents leaders, page numbering, etc).
• We met up and headed out to sit in on “So You Want To Write A Tech Book”.  James liked the panel because we are more familar with the process and the panel got deep into industry jargon, but we felt sorry for the people that had never seen/heard about the process.  The presenter tackled the process backwards, and should have first explained how you go about getting a book deal, instead of trying to explain the industry first.  These kinds of panel are frustrating because you can clearly see it is structured wrong but yet you get good information out of it.  We were one of the lucky few I think that gleamed something from it.
• After this James called it a day and met up with peeps for drinks, since he has to pace himself for the rest of SXSWi and then the music portion.
• Aaron caught the break of the conference when his “Twitter for Marketers: Is It Still Social Media” session was at full capacity.  Heading back to the hotel he stumbled upon the keynote session by Gary Vanynerchuk the creator of Wine Library TV and other sites like Corkd.  For those who have not seen his show, the guy is straight up crazy. Crazy in a good way. Gary is so passionate about his life, career, family he can make the most unmotivated person stand up and do 100 jumping jacks.  Only Gary will critique wines with phrases like “Big League Chew” or a “Rubber Tire”.  Gary talked about how in order to be successful in this online craze, you have to get out there and hustle.  Do whatever it takes to make your dreams happen. For Gary, that’s staying up until 2-4am every night reading blogs, and replying to every email sent to him.  He is so passionate, that if you comment on his site and tell him you don’t like something or that he is wrong he will hunt you down and make you see his point, or at least make you see that he’s a cool guy.  (Aaron Speaking) When I left the session all I wanted to do was go back to the room and start searching 100,000 ideas in my head, but of course I went out drinking and was asleep by 1am. Gary posted a video of the talk….Listen in

Day Two (Saturday March 14th 2009)  of SXSW Interactive kicked off at 10am for us.  Head over here for a recap of Day One.

• James headed over to see Danah Boyd, Judith Donath, Alice Marwick, and Siva Vaidhyanathan discuss privacy on their panel “Is Privacy Dead Or Just Really Confused.”  This had to be one of the best panels James saw here at SXSWi, not just because he knew two of the panelist, but because the discussion was amazingly mind expanding.  The core idea that was discussed is how privacy is a contextual construct that is defined by social and cultural norms.  One of the clearest examples of how privacy is contextual was the idea that when eating at a resutrant, we construct invisible boundries around the table.  It is considered rude to just walk up to a table and start talking to random strangers.  Yet, there is no physical walls… we create this boundry due to our social constructs and therefore in the context of a resturant our privacy at a table is respected.  These contexts are being removed and/or re-defined online and we, as a society, need to define new privacy definitions, create better understanding of privacy and hopefully create policy that best suites all our needs.
• Aaron’s day started with a session entitled “Tips For Making Ideas Happen“. This session was presented by the CEO of Behance Scott Belsky who’s team has been interviewing individuals from many types of organizations trying to understand how some of the most productive people in the world make ideas come to life.  Out of this research Behance has produced many products and services including the Behance Network a network portal for creative individuals to share their work and the Action Method. The Action Method is made up of three basic elements that Behance recommends to help organize in order to make ideas happen. The first element is Action Steps, which are concrete tasks that need to be completed.  References are notes that provide context for Action Steps.  And lastly there are BackBurners, which are ideas that are great, but have no place in the current scope of things.   Scott suggests using this method when taking notes in meetings, to help scope the meeting’s results and come up with a better action plan for each key member of the team.  Behance offers notebooks that help breakdown each of the elements and offers a website 100% dedicated to the method.  There’s even an IPhone app.
• Next up for James attended the “Microformats: A Quiet Revolution” panel.  Microformatting is a set of standardized tags and properties that are applied to HTML to help define the content the HTML describes.  An example is setting the “rel” attribute, of an anchor tag, to “me” for site links that belong to you (or your company).  This attribute enables a parser to look at a single site, such as a blog and then back reference other links that are tagged as “me” to find the individuals Flickr page, MySpace page, Twitter page, etc.  As more sites use Microformatting new tools can leverage this data to create linkages, data profiles and other import context from the HTML that is not clear unless a human reads the data.
• “Bootstrap Your Startup” was Aaron’s second session. Presented by Bijoy Goswami (this slides are here), we walked through the three types of business startups. Cookie-cutter (Franchise), Funding Generated (Venture Capital), and Bootstrapping. The first two have their benefits but lack the control most entrepreneurs seek. Bootstrapping provides an open landscape to allow for a dynamic business model that is constantly changing as the business grows. Bijoy pointed out this was the model of Southwest Airlines which grew it’s no assigned seat business model out of necessity of having to sell one of it’s first four airlines to generate extra capital but still be focused on covering the same routes as before. In a startup environment you are always looking forward at the upcoming landscape making adjustments when necessary, however you are not racing at a pace that would be set in a Funding given model.   The key point taken from this session was that a Bootstrap model takes the largest commitment by the entrepreneur: personal investment. You must give up something in order to take the step toward your goal. That could be giving up your BMW, or asking your spouse to take a higher paying job, or to live in a cardboard box. But if what you are doing is your passion, the sacrifices will be worth it.  Who knows maybe your idea will make you the next Larry Page.
• James met up with his old friend and co-worker, Larry Gonzales, to catch up and talk about how things are going over at his company, Eye-Fi.  Larry was in town to both attend the conference, but to also shoot a lot of shows using Eye-Fi to post the images in real time.  Thanks for the card Larry, we’ll let you know how we use it!
• We both headed over to the keynote to see Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com (follow him on tweeter @zappos), talk about how Zappos is run fundamentally different then any other large billion dollar firm.  The core concept of Zappos is to make customer service and company culture the number one goal.  All new employees, from Accountants to Customer Service must spend 5 weeks in training.  during this time they will spend a week answering customer phone calls and another week in the warehouse filling out customer orders.  The whole time they have a $2000 offer to quit at any time during the training.  By focusing on making sure that people both understand the entire company and verifying that people WANT to work their has created an amazingly loyal workforce and customer base.  They consider this kind of monetary investment marketing, since it makes people want to use Zappos.com.  The best line from the session was “If I had to do it again, I would hire faster and fire quicker”. The idea that culture is key and compromise will only lead you down the dark side. Podcast of session…Listen in
• James took a break to have lunch with Larry and then got ready for the evening launch party for StandardAnswers
• We headed over to Stubb’s backyard to take a peek at the Digg.com show.  It was amazing (and not neccesarily in a good way) how fanatical the crowd was for Kevin Rose.  We also saw Felicity Day from Dr. Horribles Sing-along-blog there.
• Next up we walked over to Red Eyed Fly for the Standard Answer Launch Party where we caught two amazing bands, Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears and White Deniem. As Aaron said, it was one of the best shows we had both seen in a long, long time.

As promised, here is a more detailed breakdown of the “oooh That’s Clever” panel. This panel was presented by Paul Annett the creator of a very popular site that shows some cool CSS called  Silverback App. In this panel Mr. Annett explored a wide range of company trickery that gave customers a joyful surprise when discovered. The examples ranged from company logos, to secret message on the bottom of juice bottles (”stop looking at my bottom”), to website easter eggs. The idea behind the session was two folds. First to show designers (and developers, that’s me!) some creative “easter eggs” that inspire creativity. Second was to show how these little gems could help channel potential customers to your product or service through a viral “did you see this” pattern. Here is a list of as many examples as I could write down and/or research.

continue

In the past, James has written SXSW posts on his personal blog, Vivisecting Media, which were in-depth long hour by hour editorials of the experience.  This year, our goal is to do more condensed notes, just because writing long recaps at four in the morning is kind of exhausting and we know you want the real content.  So we will try to link audio and video of the presentations as they become available by SXSW.

• Our cab ride to the hotel involved a classic cabbie persona who decided to update us on his current life plans.  Aaron missed part of the conversation and thought that the cabbie was taking us by his house to pick something up.  Due to this misunderstanding, Aaron was worried that we would end up at some meth-house/trailer park (we did not).
• Got our hotel room, it had two beds.  If you have read or read James previous SXSW series, this will make a lot more sense.
• Grabbed a bite to eat, drank a few pints, made a few client calls (darn you AT&T losing the connection in the middle of a call)
• Picked up our passes, met Mark from eGuiders, and had a wonderful in-depth conversation about technology, film, TV and video production. We got deep into aggregation, writer strike benefits for web based exclusive content, and of course BBQ.  A quick summary about eGuiders, Mark explained his site as a TV guide for online video content, with industry leaders reviewing and suggesting content they find appealing.  Guiders range from Jerry Stiller & Anne Meara to the Executive producer of Lost Damon Lindelof.  If you want expert suggestions in this ever growing blackhole of content, check out eGuiders.
• Dinner was the at Moonshine.  Fantastic trout… like, seriously best we have ever had. www.moonshinegrill.com, make sure you turn down your volume, the play some annoying music.
• Slept.
• Headed out to our first sessions (stupid cold rain, it was warmer in SF). James went to “Minority Report is Real” which delved into the concept of tactile and immersive UI experiences.  The focus was how Film represents futuristic experiences in movies, how this inspires technologists, how technologist are applying these visions, and where are we at today by comparing the film to reality.  Examples of this is the Microsoft Surface, CNN “holograph vision”, Oblong {http://flowingdata.com/2008/11/17/minority-report-physical-interface-in-real-life-oblong-g-speak/}, etc.
• After the first session James headed over to catch the “Open Source Flash” presentation but ran into Danah Boyd and decided catching up with her was WAY more important.
• Aaron caught  “Everything You Know About Web Design Is Wrong” presented by Dan Willis.  Dan argued that web design is stuck in the same dilemma film faced during it’s creation in the early 19th century, when the first camera was invented, and technologists created films that were stuck obeying the same framework and rules conceived and followed in the world of theater. “Everything we know about web design, is what we know about print design” As D. W. Griffith did for film , the web needs to create a grammar (1+1=3) that combines elements to create an enriched experience.  For the web the idea is to break out of the norm, create new elements and as artists combine those elements to provider users with an experience they can control.
• James’ second session was The “Ecosystem of News” which covered how news and media are changing due to the Internet. Very exciting and deep examination of how news media has changed over time, including both bad changes (newspapers closing) and good changes (in-depth focused coverage, such as Ars Technica or the 2008 Presidential Race).  The presentation was led by Steven Johnson who used the term “old growth media” to describe technology news reporting.  Currently, technology news, is the oldest form of new media based news and how other news topics such as local, war, politics, etc. can learn and adopt methods used by technology reporting.  He also defined his vision of the new structure of news media.  Hopefully, it will be posted online so that we can share it with you.
• Aaron attended an inspirational session entitled “ooh That’s Clever”.  The presenter Paul Annett explored a wide range of web trickery that showed how designing and implementing a little extra feature can not only inspire the community at large, but also provide a viral channel to drive traffic to your product or service.  This presentation shows some amazing links which Aaron is currently compiling. Expect a secondary post that highlights each link example.
• James and Danah met up with Judith Donath (MIT Media Lab) who is amazing.  Great conversations about privacy, technology, social networks, cultural structures and how most of this is dependent upon context.
• Dinner for Friday was at Stubb’s BBQ, we just had to have it.  Aaron commented on how he has never seen a restaurant move in and out customers so damn fast.  They must turned each table 7 times in a night.  So our suggestion is, go there for the good quick food, not a long well served dinning experience with friends you are trying to catch up with.
• Slept again.