Sessions at SXSW Interactive 2011 about Careers on Friday 11th March

Groundswell technology comes to consumers first. At home, we get social, mobile, video and cloud services pitched to us 24x7. Empowering technologies will always come to consumers first because it's a wide-open market. A single developer can build an application that changes the world from a broadband-connected bedroom.

All this technology puts tremendous power directly into the hands of customers and they often have more information than your sales or services team does. You'd better make sure you give customers better information than they can get elsewhere.

The only way to do that is to empower employees to directly engage the needs and expectations of customers. Fortunately, they are not standing still. Your innovative employees are already building new solutions using these same technologies to solve customer problems. In fact, 37% of US information workers use do-it-yourself technology to get work done. It's covert innovation – your employees solving your business problems at the ground level.

The challenge is to support this innovation while keeping the company safe. That takes a whole new way of thinking and acting. It takes an empowered IT organization working under a new set of principles.

Empowerment is chapter 3 in the Internet story. Chapter 1 was the Web. Chapter 2 was Social Computing. It has that feel of inevitability. Companies like Best Buy that empower employees to solve customer problems will win. Companies that don't will lose.

LEVEL: Intermediate

Business is broken. We gotta fix it. Together, in this session, we'll start doing just that. Hacking Work is about exposing the cheat codes for work that we found while interviewing an underground army of benevolent hackers — working around business's stupid rules.

There are many ways to make a pittance as a blogger. Google ads will bring home a very small amount of bacon. Maybe a slice. The book deal, though coveted, is often meager at best. And there are all of those adorable animal species who are just waiting for their photos to be manipulated into something even cuter/funnier/more irritating, but what happens when the next tiny cute animal comes along? Moms ought to pour their hearts out every day for more than free fabric softener. How can bloggers get paid appropriately for generating and promoting content and managing a loyal community?

How about a leap from the job where you spend most of your day ignoring the tedium by blog surfing, checking out Twitter and replying to the growing comments on your blog, into a position that will probably pay better and allow you to use all of those skills you learned as a blogger?

This presentation will show both sides of taking skills learned as a blogger and translating them into a career change or enhancement. The presentation will be conducted from two points of view-the blogger, and, the hiring manager.

LEVEL: Beginner

Josh Bernof will be stopping by the SX Bookstore to greet registrants and sign copies of his book, Empowered.

Mr Simplicity, Bill Jensen, will be stopping by the SX Bookstore after his book reading to greet fans and sign copies of Hacking Work: Breaking Stupid Rules for Smart Results.

Industry All-Stars tackle the subject that we're all most curious about but causes us the most discomfort: what, when, and how to charge for our work. Learn their inside tips on how to charge your clients, when trading work for equity makes sense, and how to avoid common client pitfalls. Stop cheating yourself and learn that you deserve to be paid in full for doing work you're passionate about. Our work has the power to make enormous amounts of money for our clients. Let's take a good hard look at the value we provide and how to ask for and receive value in return.

Negotiating your rate for a project is the difference between being a starving artist or successful freelancer or studio. Creatives fall prey to lowball offers, promises of future work, and other forms of wage penalties in fear of losing a potential client. Learn how the pros have created successful freelance businesses and startups by not compromising their rates and standards. Understand how they attract the big name clients and avoid the bad clients.
We'll also explore potential benefits and risks of working for stock.

Lawyers, doctors, accountants and other professionals typically don't experience angst, guilt, or wishy-washy boundaries when stating their rates and neither should we. We see standard billing rates across many industries. We’ll take a look at the role a standard billing rate would have in the creative services industry and how such a standard would be upheld and implemented.

LEVEL: Intermediate