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

Marketing is a fine line between sales and PR. This panel aims to focus on the rudimentary principles of marketing often overlooked by both new and established businesses. Special attention will be paid to "playground tactics" and ways that kids can influence others with far more success than adults.

Kids have a natural instinct for marketing - they learn early in life to bring enough for everyone, to become an expert at everything, and to share just enough to make the friends but not so much where they turn others away.

By approaching marketing like a five year old, brands can develop and maintain a strong identity and establish a role as an influencer in the industry. Applying concepts like bringing enough for everyone (appealing to a wide range of audiences), or staying out of detention (being marked as spam), brands too can become an expert at everything (establish itself as an industry leader).

A typical five-year-old can identify common commercial jingles and name the season's popular toys. Five minutes in a playgroup can result in families having to take a trip to the toy store because of the influence of other kids on their own children.

Kindergartners have a lot of influence. Its time to start following their lead and start learning the right way to approach marketing.

LEVEL: Intermediate

Society stands to gain a lot from our next generation of kids, who are not only consuming vast amounts of media, but highly engaged with creating media themselves. Research shows the top type of media kids aim to engage in online are games. If we empower them with the tools to make their own games, we give them the opportunity to build valuable technical, artistic, storytelling, media literacy, and complex systems thinking skills. This panel will explore actual classroom case studies and perspectives on the effects of teaching game design to young children.

LEVEL: Intermediate

The Apps for Healthy Kids competition pooled $60k in prizes in support of the First Lady's Let's Move initiative to reduce obesity and raise awareness for healthy lifestyles. USDA led the effort providing the MyPyramid dataset and focusing the app and game competition on "tweens" for learn through play, and nutritional gatekeepers to arm them with critical information to make healthy food choices.

We started from scratch and found tremendous support in the Office of Science and Technology Policy as well as the game/app developer community. The challenge platform welcomed entries and we invited the public to vote. An esteemed judging panel including Aneesh Chopra and Steve Wozniak will select winners.

By the time SXSW begins, the winning games and apps will be making a positive impact on children and adults to make health food and lifestyle choices.

Other federal examples will provide alternative approaches to using competitions to achieve specific goals. Government is becoming more adept in utilizing games, tools and Internet technologies to reach citizens on relevant platforms and devices. Learn from our mistakes and successes, and take away useful tips for designing your own challenge or competition.

LEVEL: Intermediate