Add an eventSessions at SXSW Interactive 2011 of type Core Conversation on Friday 11th March
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Being Young and Rocking It
by Brian Wong
Being a young entrepreneur in this period of time in business and commerce is an exciting thing. It is your biggest asset. You should rock it.
But how do you rock it? How do you overcome traditional preconceived notions of being "younger", more "inexperienced", and "naive"? Simple. You turn them into your strengths. Everyone always talks about how being curious, how retaining youthful characteristics is a great way to succeed without bounds. Why can't those who truly embody those characteristics be the ones that indeed reap those rewards?
Most younger entrepreneurs are at the edge of a cliff. They are looking for reasons to jump, or not to jump. There are lots of people willing to tell them all the reasons of why they shouldn't. Very few are there to tell them all the reasons why they should, and to help them throughout to show them how to grow wings in the process. I'm there to nudge them.
Being a 19-year-old entrepreneur with a funded start up - experience at a well-known company in the social news landscape, and literally being thrown into a pit of extremely successful entrepreneurs as a non-American (a Canadian), helped prime me to learn all of the lessons that I will be sharing with everyone.
Anyone fascinated by the elusive "young" entrepreneur - and especially the type that genuinely takes tangible action towards successful milestones in their career - and wondering about how to learn from them and to help nurture their growth - should come.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Improv Classes: Not Just for Comedians and Actors
by Brad Temple
Austin is a growing hotbed of improvisational theater. Many of the city's improvisational comedians work in the tech industry by day. This panel would explore the benefits of enrolling in improv comedy classes and how those benefits translate to additional success in your day job. Learn about basic improv philosophy and how it can enhance teamwork, spontaneity and adaptation to the ever-changing demands of our workplace.
LEVEL: Beginner
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Lighten Your Load: Successfully Leverage Volunteers and Interns
by Betsy Flanagan and Jennifer Selke
People are willing to trade time for work experience in every occupational field. Volunteers and Interns can be a fantastic source of creative energy and labor. Organizing and managing volunteers and interns can be a full time job. Can you take advantage of additional help? Learn how to recruit and manage workers while also providing a learning experience while getting real work accomplished.
LEVEL: Beginner
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Slaying the Four Horsemen of the Social-Media Apocalypse
by Jaime Punishill and Greg Matthews
Convinced social business should be a bigger part of your company’s plans but frustrated that you can’t get the horse out of the barn? No idea how to keep your organization in compliance with local & federal statutes governing advertising, consumer advice, & customer comms? In a highly regulated industry & exhausted trying to convince management there are business & technical solutions that can enable social business for your enterprise? Feeling like you’ve been rode hard and put out wet everytime you deal with your lawyers, compliance officers, risk managers, technologists, or information security teams?
In this session you'll hear from those who've ridden in the saddle of some of the most highly regulated companies out there and successfully BROKEN the wild horses of the SEC, FTC, FINRA, FDA, and other internal & external regulatory orgs. We’ll share best practices on organizational design, governance structures, business processes, HR policies, technology providers, and other dimensions of social media controls you’ll need to keep the law men at bay. Learn how to convert social business’s most common inhibitors into your biggest advocates.
And discover how doctors, lawyers, financial advisors, pharmaceutical & consumer product companies, & others are harnessing social media despite regulatory concerns. Come for the carrots, stay for the comedy, & at the end of it all-ride on!LEVEL: Advanced
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The Life of the Startup Parent
by Joshua Porter and Charlie Park
You’re starting a startup, running a blog professionally, investing in other startups, or otherwise doing "the geek thing," and yet ... you know that your identity is rooted even more in the little one at home who’s toddling around in a playpen, learning teamwork on a soccer field, working on a science fair experiment, or otherwise doing "the kid thing."
How do you balance your role as a parent with your role as a co-founder? How do you reconcile these two worlds, each of which would happily consume you completely? How much do you rely on your (life) partner? Your (business) partners? How do you reconcile the tension between these two worlds?
A panel of rockstar parents/startup cofounders will share their secrets of success, their awkward failures, and their startup / parenting war stories.
LEVEL: Beginner
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Web 3.0 and Human Computation: Ancient Mayan Legacy
[Session will be presented in ENGLISH. Sesión será presentada en INGLÉS – Web 3.0 y Computación Humana: Legado Maya. SXSW Latin America programming hashtag: #sxswLatAm]
The small country of Guatemala is contributing positively to the advent of web 3.0? This panel will share some of the research and projects from Guatemalan Artificial Intelligence Scientists and how a small group of a few hundred young engineers have churned out dozens of prototypes and concepts for semantic web ontologies that solve real world problems and dilemmas. The prototypes combine Semantic searches and Semantic Databases which are the base of Web 3.0. One can argue that “it was not in vain” that the Ancient Mayan people of Guatemala are known to have been the pioneers in the use of “zero” amongst all the great World civilizations.
General theme of Web 3.0 to be covered by the panelists: The rapid growth and development of the Web has made it be unequally divided, ranging from Web 1.0 to Web 3.0, and even Web 4.0. Still today the main challenge is the “searching and presenting” of information. The explicit representation of the semantics underlying web resources will enable a knowledge-based web that provides a qualitatively new level of service. Automated services will one day assist humans in achieving their goals by "understanding" more of the content on the web and thus provide more accurate filtering, categorization, and search of information sources. Ontologies will play a key role.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Are We Not Men? Reaching New American Dads
Men's media has changed tremendously - almost as much as men and dads have. Today's dads are active in every aspect of the household, from parenting to chores, and yet, they are largely overlooked as readers and consumers.
New American Dads are thirsty for knowledge and a community that speaks their common language - that of the real man. The new language of men helps Jacks of all trades learn how to be better at all of them, retain their essential masculinity and perform well in a new paradigm of family, work and self. Traditional media outlets - those that espouse the virtues of supposedly manly interests ($10,000 suits, rare scotch and women, women, women) are missing an opportunity to serve this emerging male marked.
In order to speak 'Dad,' media must speak to the realities of his life, his priorities, responsibilities, aspirations and, above all else, be useful. The growing online media directed at the New American Dad understands that service journalism - that which seeks to inform as well as entertain - is the next evolution in the daddy blogger.
Blogs have their place, but in order to effect change in men's media, online resources must engage the reader in a conversation, one in which the consumer walks away feeling better informed than they had before engaging the site.
Service journalism - how-tos, how it works and best-of lists - have practical applications in readers' lives, thus engendering loyalty and creating conversations with a long overlooked population, while developing an audience for whom older media models based on supposed aspiration and stereotype have little meaningful impact.
Speak to dads in their language, encourage them to speak back, teach them something they can use and entertain them - this is the next evolution of men's media.
LEVEL: Beginner
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Can You Trust Me?
It’s no secret that it’s been a tough time for some of the world’s most trusted brands—BP, Google and Facebook are just a few of the companies that have been recent victims of brand erosion. In the digital age, information (truth and hearsay alike) flows like water, opinions spread like wildfire—one day a brand is synonymous with trust for millions of people, the next day it’s being dragged through the digital mud by a few over a product recall or privacy violation. Unfortunately, it’s happening faster and with bigger implications and greater transparency than ever before. Consumers have stopped basing their trust of successful brands on the mere knowledge that they are financially successful—or because they run ads that inspire trustworthiness. In fact, it seems the very definition of “brand trust” is morphing as rapidly as technology is. More often, an increasingly-skeptical public is flocking to the web for real-time information and social network commentary posted by “officials” or by anyone else with an Internet connection and an axe to grind.
Paul Parkin, Founding Partner of SALT Branding and expert on brand building, will provide an overview of the ever-evolving “brandscape” and share strategies for building and maintaining brand trust online and offline. He will also discuss how to best redefine and measure brand trust across different generations—Baby Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y—and why consumer collaboration will be key for marketers in the years to come.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Creating an Effective Marketing Intern Program
by Amanda McGuckin Hager and Caroline Lim
Would you like a helping hand that is affordable, accommodating, and productive? With the explosion of Web and mobile applications, now more than ever, companies could benefit from a helping hand. With so much to do, and so little time, Amanda and Caroline share how to knockout that online marketing to-do list with an internship program, where they address how to assess the workload, create a mutually beneficial program and recruit Rockstar interns. Amanda and Caroline will share strategies and tactics on: (1) Finding ideal tasks for interns (2) Developing the internship program structure (3) Setting expectations on free versus paid. This presentation intends to show you how to create a win-win situation for both your company and your interns.
LEVEL: Beginner
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From Personal Blogger to Professional Marketer
by Deb Rox and Melissa Lion
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
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Got Great UGC, Poor Monetization?
What makes your user-generated content great? It’s the users. If they like it, they’ll come and stick around. So if they like what they see and you’ve got a high number of video views, how do make that work for your business? First, you have to realize that building an audience and monetizing UGC doesn’t require a special strategy, because everything your content business puts out into the world already comes from a socially-oriented vantage point. Uh-oh; you mean you don’t have that mindset? Okay, that’s a problem. You can’t expect people to engage and share if everything you do doesn’t give them a reason to care. During this panel, we’ll talk about why a user-focused approach is the best foundation for UGC campaign success. We’ll discuss transparency of ads and sponsorships, balancing content and ads, good design, and how UGC sites with large, naturally engaged audiences can build on their success.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Hold on Loosely: How Loose Organizations Work
Companies always try to grow so they can do more things, add more capabilities, and make more money - right? Not anymore: Not in Austin, or in many other places. People are finding that digital and mobile technologies can help them to organize more loosely and rapidly, and that means they can keep small and flexible, scale up when necessary, and link up with other loose organizations to swarm big projects, even if they are freelancers working out of their own houses, coffee shops, or coworking spaces.
How do these loose organizations work? In this core conversation, I'll briefly share stories from my research into some of Austin's loose organizations: freelancers, coworking spaces, and an internet startup. I'll discuss how the organizations in my research hold together, function, and build links with each other.
With these cases in mind, I'll moderate a discussion about attendees' own experiences with loose organizations and brainstorm ways to make them run more effectively. Afterwards, I'll post conversation notes on my blog so we can keep the ball rolling after SXSW.
LEVEL: Beginner
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Why Everything is Amazing But Nobody is Happy
by Zachary Burt and Daniel Hope
According to Louis CK: "Everything is amazing and nobody is happy". Are we humans overwhelmed by witnessing Moore’s Law in action? Has Social Media and it’s accessories left us technologically rich but spiritually bankrupt? This panel will explore the effects Social Media is having on us as humans and spiritual creatures in three areas:
-Our Evolution: Humans have spent millions of years hunting and gathering but just the past few pointing, clicking and tweeting. What effect is Social Media having on our development as human beings? Is it ushering us into the next stage of human evolution or is it just making monkeys out of us?-Our Relationships: Facebook is being cited by divorce lawyers as the next big catalyst for marriage break-ups, but it can also connect us with amazing people we never would have met otherwise. And what about our relationships with ourselves when we can’t even sit quietly alone because we have an iPhone? How can we use these tools to become actual friends and not just Facebook friends?
-Our Spirituality: Social Media can connect us with some truly transcendent moments (Paul Potts singing opera) and these moments can make the human spirit soar. But, in the long run, is it just dumbing us down with instant gratification and vibrating Twitter notifications?
This panel will explore how we can use our embarrassment of technological riches to become better and more content people.
LEVEL: Beginner
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Avatar Secrets to Real Life & Love
After a recent shoot for PBS FRONTLINE’s Digital Nation, I looked at my colleagues-attractive, successful women-and was struck by a startling realization: We’re all struggling to find the right guy, yet MMO gamers seem to be finding true love. What’s going on?
Time and again as an interactive media producer & professor, I've encountered gamers who’ve found their soulmates in-world.
With digital citizens spending a staggering 3-billion hours a week in online games, what are they onto that the rest of us should know? How is the internet fostering our primal instincts? And how can we apply this magic to our real lives?
Seeking answers, I challenged myself to look for love in one of the most unlikely places: World of Warcraft. My journey has me exploring the addictive pull of online worlds: the rush of adventure & the feeling of accomplishment at the end of a challenge.
So how we can apply this allure to real life to reengage with the physical world? That’s the $3-billion question.
In this presentation, I’ll reveal the 10 secrets that online games teach us about succeeding in life & love. I’ll share the harrowing trials & tribulations of heartbreak & hardware malfunctions, the sage wisdom gained in conversations over all-night raids, and the unlikely lessons about life, success, perseverance & communication I’ve learned along the way, from these digital gaming obsessions. You’ll walk out of this talk inspired and ready to play your way to real world happiness.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Breaking Taboos: Pros Get Real About Money Matters
by Marc Hemeon and Whitney Hess
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
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Focusing In On the Future of Social Photography
Instagram closes $7 million in funding. Path supposedly rebuffs a $120 million acquisition offer from Google. Over a 100 million photos are uploaded to Facebook each day. There is a renaissance in social photography. The relatively new field, started by Flickr only a few years ago and dominated by Facebook today is seeing a flurry of new, predominantly mobile entrants, all showing promising early traction. Photos are becoming instantly shareable and are being marked-up with a vast array of data from face-tags to geo-location to paint a more complete story of the "captured moment" than ever before. We explore the convergence of photography with mobile and social technologies, discuss whether the new startups in this field are fad or future, and imagine what the long-term future of social photography might look like, including its cultural, commercial, and social implications.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Hate Gone Viral
by Brian Cuban
Hate Gone Viral tackles the challenges faced by society in dealing with the growing phenomenon of the proliferation of hate speech in new media. This phenomenon has created a “ Internet Hate Incubator” that has accelerated and heated hate speech to a boiling point.
Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have become prime breeding grounds for hate groups, cyberbullying and terrorist recruiting cells, all hiding behind the protections offered by First Amendment protected speech.
What can we do to stem the tide of hatred? What can parents do as their children are exposed to this steady stream of hatred in a world where there is no longer a barrier between the brick and mortar world of hatred and the safety of the home? Hate Gone Viral attempts to answer those questions and explains how the Internet Hate Incubator and the Social Hate Incubator are playing roles in the increase in hate speech and violence in our society.
LEVEL: Beginner
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Help! A Giant Meteor Is Headed Our Way!
by Brian Reich
There is a giant meteor headed our way... and we need to knock it off course or life as we know it will cease to exist.
If that news turned out to be true, you would do everything you could to save the world, right? Well, an equivalent disaster is unfolding before our eyes. Everything about our society is changing - rapidly and constantly. How we communicate, get and share information, and engage each other - online and offline - is different than it was just a few short years ago. Information moves faster, people are more closely connected, and the level of interest and commitment that people have when it comes to the organizations they engage, the transactions they make, the issues they care about and the causes they support has never been greater. Our society has changed and how organizations operate and communicate, the products we sell and services we offer, what causes we support, how we address serious issues - and find solutions to the biggest challenges we face as a global community -- needs to change as well.
If we don't change - everything - we are doomed. This session will outline the changes... in thinking, organization, education, engagement, government, media, and everything else... that need to be made.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Metrics for Social Media: The Net Promoter Score
by Mark Krupinski and Jeremy Hilton
Now that social media is accepted practice in the business world, the question still remains, “how do you measure it?”. The “bottom line” (ex. sales) is generally what comes to mind first for Leadership, but how do you measure your social media efforts when the focus of your business includes repeat and referral business?
In their presentation, Mark Krupinski and Jeremy Hilton define the Net Promoter Score along with a case for it’s consideration as a Return on Investment (ROI) metric for your social media initiatives. Additionally, they compare this measurement with other customer loyalty and sentiment formulas currently being championed by industry leaders.
Lastly, Mark and Jeremy review “real world” examples of the Net Promoter Score in practice by mainstream organizations.
LEVEL: Advanced
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Shine Light On Others To Build Your Brand
by Robyn Cobb
The real-time web is quickly becoming a reality that allows your developing online social graph to be recorded into a stream of social activity. These increasingly popular lifestreams show the shifts around the social connections, the ways in which they’re made and the content discovered within each interaction, a unique indicator of the changing ways that consumers are also interacting with brands. Inside this stream of activities is a movement that is starting to take hold beyond just a re-tweet. More and more people are leveraging their social and corporate networks to create change whether in their community or across the globe. Social media and our blogs allow us to help rally our networks around a cause. Shining a light on others - without expecting anything in return - is the surest way to grow, strengthen, and promote your very own brand.
This panel will address why it is important for brands and individuals to join the pay it forward movement. We’ll give you real examples and ideas on how you can leverage your social capital to rise above the noise, affect change, and get more enjoyment from your social networks.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Tales of the Past Future: Web Pioneers Remember
by Katie Spence
This year, millions of people will start their first blog. Millions of people will write their first tweet, join their first social network, or post their first picture to the Web.
Welcome to the future, guys, but some of us have been at this for nearly two decades!
Join a panel of industry veterans who rode the waves of the first boom and lived to tell the tales of the '90s Internet. Featuring practical stories of life lessons learned online as well as fond (and not so fond) memories of bygone sites, startups and memes, this will be a great panel for those who lived through it, and those who wish to learn from the hilarious and heartbreaking mistakes of others.
LEVEL: Beginner
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TeenFuture2.0: Technology & Your Child's Future
Education is failing our youth - maybe it's your child or teen... or even you. A recent study by the Gates Foundation and Public Agenda found that 67% of youth say their guidance counselor failed them in preparing them for their futures. Today, those graduating face a 29% jobless rate, partly as jobs move overseas. Global issues and global business underscore the need to better prepare our youth.
What can you do? In this exciting and engaging panel, led by Dow Jones columnist, author, national commentator (Oprah, CNN), and founder of SuperFutures, you'll learn:
- Where education is headed - new initiatives underway that could transform traditional learning
- The latest innovations in education using technology
- Ways to implement social media into your classroom or home to talk connect with your student
- How technology is being used to move education outside the classroom - to provide practical, real-world learning for your child
- Where social media and technology is hurting education and your child's future -- and what you can do
- Why “learning by doing” is becoming critical to your child’s success
LEVEL: Beginner
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