Sessions at SXSW Interactive 2011 about Failure on Sunday 13th March

What happens when Wikipedia isn't big enough? This is a key question for those developing closed community spaces. Wikipedia came onto the scene promising to offer a repository for all knowledge, but it turned into the world’s best encyclopaedia—absolutely nothing more, nothing less. A remarkable achievement it is, but one that never managed to store local knowledge with the same reverence as general, global knowledge. This panel will explore how developers are trying to address these limitations by building a different kind of collaborative environment. From local wikis that only allow those who live in the community to contribute to government-sponsored social networks meant to enhance a specific organization, the panel examines the viability of closed and semi-open networks. The panel will specifically look at how you get local communities involved in mass collaboration: 1) What topics generate traffic for local communities? 2) Which current collaborative tools work best for community engagement? 3) What kind of collaborative tools are needed for the future? 4) How do local collaborative environments reach out to community members who lack digital literacy? To answer these questions on local collaboration the panel will involve experts involved with DavisWiki.org and the Department of State, as well as those involved in digital inclusion efforts in underprivileged communities.

LEVEL: Intermediate

Former entrepreneur, current investor and innovation community leader Charlie O'Donnell will discuss five different patterns of failure often seen in startups that don't make it. It will cover how entrepreneurs can derisk their ideas, maintain momentum, and take advantage of opportunities early on in a company's life cycle. Patterns of failure include: 1) Failure to zero in on a sector's most pressing pain point. 2) Not leaving enough time or financing to iterate on an idea. 3) Failure to create short term milestones that create value. 4) Failure to capture industry attention and mindshare. - 5) Failure to build a realistic customer acquisition engine.

LEVEL: Intermediate

#Amazonfail, United Breaks Guitars, Motrin Moms: These are just a few of the social media PR disasters caused by inattention, poor service, or a failure to understand the target market. In the age of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, one customer service mistake can be all over the web before you can say “non-apology form letter.” Enjoy a history of edifying and often hilarious social media misfires, and learn how to avoid being on the receiving end of user-generated campaigns that can cost thousands or even millions in bad publicity.

LEVEL: Beginner

Failure is not an option--it’s a requirement. Like the mythical phoenix, creativity constantly springs from its own ashes to be reborn new and different.

The world is filled with excellent implementations of the same things, created by wonderful technicians who have the talent to recreate any style. This talent shouldn’t be discounted: it’s a necessary part of interactive design. We can’t diminish the importance of convention or usability when being creative, but the fear of opposing them can kill the creative spirit and hide our most promising work. It’s this fear of breaking conventions, of not being understood, of failing that dooms us to repeat what others have done.

This panel will focus on the idea of becoming fearless, and therefore, truly creative. We will discuss the concept of failure as a necessary part of creation. We will introduce the idea that even the most artistic expressions benefit from prototyping, restarting and reworking. We will discuss the concept that absolutely nothing is sacred, especially your own work. And finally--and most importantly--we will discuss how to get satisfaction and enjoyment from the process of failing forward.

LEVEL: Beginner

Enterprise organizations love to talk about all the successes they've had implementing and executing their social media campaigns, but you rarely hear about the (gasp!) failures. This is really too bad because it is from both these successes and failures that enterprise marketers learn from to be better armed to deal with their own challenges within their organization. Well, lucky for us, we have had the opportunity to talk to dozens of the largest enterprise brands out there and can tell you that there are many stories of social media challenges and failures that you haven't heard.

Mike Lewis, VP of Awareness, Inc. recently traveled across the country meeting these large enterprise brands. During this eye-opening road trip, Mike learned about many of the challenges each of these organizations were faced with as they were trying to either get their social media strategy rolling or just manage it all. During this session, Mike will share some common social media challenges and failures the big brands didn’t want you to know about along with some social media success stories you haven’t heard. After this session you will walk away with some actionable strategies that you can apply to your social media programs immediately.

LEVEL: Beginner