Add an eventSessions at SXSW Interactive 2011 of type Solo
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- Session type: Solo
Friday 11th March 2011
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Cargo Containers: The Next Big Social Network?
by Tom Stitt
The clothes you wear. The electronic gizmos you use. Much of the food you eat. These physical payloads were delivered by a complex, standards based, slow-moving packet switched network that uses cargo containers as packets and container ships as the network pipe. The containers, ships and ports are going digital and getting smarter. How containerization rules commerce. How new container technology is changing 40 years of no change. Hear why containers will become an integral part of emerging human social networks.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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How Not to Design Like a Developer
Open source projects, in particular, have long skimped on presentation and packaging (basically, they are the equivalent of "she has a great personality!" in the world of blind dating).
This talk is on how designer (graphic, UI & UX, all deft ninjas of the visual and editorial) organize and contribute their visual hacks to open source projects, working in tandem with engineers. Specifically, we'll look at how designers can get involved with Mozilla's Creative Collective, as well as how developers can leverage some of lessons learned by Mozilla's workflow and community-organizing techniques to foster their own design communities and inspire individuals to contribute to other open source projects of all sizes.
People who have contributed to or are working on an open source project, do so in an effort to create and distribute free software (free as in “free speech” v. free as in “drinks on me tonight!”*). This is a great opportunity to get involved with a team and movement (or start your own) that making a better and more awesome internet. As a bonus, contributing to open source is also a great way to enhance your portfolio, discover the brightest people, and create career-inspiring opportunities for yourself and your peers.
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Making Tomorrow Better Than Today is Hard Work
by Saul Griffith
People want the future for their children to be better than the past. We hear about "solutions" for climate change every day, but it often sounds like the future will be dismal. What really are solutions, how do we think about solving the whole problem, what are the actual numbers, how do we keep track of progress, and how do we make the future better than it is today?
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Programming and Minimalism: Lessons from Orwell & The Clash
by Jon Dahl
Programming is writing. A programmer's job is to express abstract ideas in a specific language - just like the poet, the essayist, and the composer. But while writers and composers spend years improving their style, many programmers think style stops with "two-space indentation". This needs to change.
This presentation will discuss style in music, writing, and software. We'll look at such diverse sources as George Orwell, Mozart, and punk music, and will find that much of art revolves around complexity and minimalism - just like software. Finally, we'll look at specific patterns and tools for writing software that is not just effective and efficient, but stylistically beautiful.
LEVEL: Advanced
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Writing Workshop with @BettyDraper: Saying It Short
In this age of attention deficit and time deprivation, brevity is critical to successful communication. Rules of writing succinctly are essential learning for storytellers of all persuasions: advertisers, marketers, PR practitioners and fictionistas. Learn from Shorty award winning voice of @BettyDraper how to create memorable communication in abbreviated space. Glean expertise from masters of the short form, both commercial and literary--including Hemingway, who wrote a story in a mere six words: "For sale: baby shoes. Never worn."
LEVEL: Beginner
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Your Business + Social Mission = Happiness + Ka-Ching
To expect you to add social purpose to your business just because it’s a good thing to do is foolish. Whether you're an employee or owner, you have a bottom-line and other obligations to meet. But doing good is a business strategy, not merely a moral argument or trend. In this core conversation we'll talk about how your company--no matter its size, focus or budget--can profit from integrating a social mission, how to win support for new initiatives and where to begin. Learn how companies like Linden Labs and Interface used sustainability to differentiate themselves, drive innovation and cut costs.
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Your Meetings Suck and It's Your Fault
Your meetings are stale, remote, and awkward conversations. You know you rock, but not everyone in your meetings is rocking to the same tune. Sometimes you aren't even sure you are in the same rock band anymore.
After having one too many unproductive (and occasionally sleepy) meetings, Happy Cog reinvented it's approach to meeting design around interactive activities, informed conversation, and collaborative design exercises. Happy Cog’s Experience Director Kevin M. Hoffman will review the key ideas from the history of meeting design and good facilitiation, then explore approaches for meetings that have proven engaging and successful to Happy Cog clients.
This talk will cover business strategy and project definition activities, conflict resolution processes, big group/small group conversation management, simple research engagements, deliverable presentations, and finally, post mortems. Many expamples will be pulled from Happy Cog's meeting approaches for clients like ecommerce (Zappos, Groupon), tourism (VisitPhilly.com), higher education (Georgetown University, MICA), and museums (the National Holocaust Museum).
LEVEL: Beginner
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App, Shmapp, Tell Me What Works Across Platforms!
by Aaron Forth
The mobile market is flooded with fun, useful and engaging applications. These apps are
becoming increasingly important to a company’s success but many companies are simply
recreating their product for mobile without giving adequate consideration to the differences in
mobile and Web based usage patterns. Additionally, specific benefits that the Apple, Android or
BlackBerry platforms offer are commonly not fully leveraged.During this session, Aaron Forth, director of product design at Intuit’s Mint.com, will discuss
how companies can analyze customer usage patterns to develop the best possible mobile
application and mold the app to harness the advantages of each platform.LEVEL: Advanced
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Cops 3.0: The Future of Policing and the Internet
The internet has become a critical tool for law enforcement. This presentation will explore ways that it is being used for investigations and community outreach and will discuss privacy issues and controversies as well as the reach and limits of the law when police go online.
LEVEL: Beginner
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Expressing Yourself Musically with Mobile Technology
by Ge Wang
The mobile landscape as we know it is focused heavily on gaming, productivity and social media applications. But as mobile technology continues to advance and phones become smarter, people will search for even more intimate, immersive and interactive ways of expressing themselves. Today, mobile technologies have made music creation easy, affordable and accessible to the masses, enabling users of all ages, abilities and backgrounds, to create and share music, regardless of previous musical knowledge.
Whether you’re a fan of hip hop, classic, pop or video game theme music, there is an app for everyone. And the entertainment industry has taken notice – almost every big name artist or brand has an app for mobile devices. Most of them are just fancy message boards providing information, but some are pushing the limits of what it means to interact with the artist or brand. From the palm of your hand you can Auto-Tune your voice to sound like your favorite hip hop star, play an instrument designed by Jorden Ruddess of Dream Theater or join a virtual Glee club. Each of these artists and brands are building communities thru mobile apps that provide anyone the ability to explore their inner star.
This presentation will discuss how advances in mobile technology have opened up a new world of expression to everyone and enabled users to broadcast their own musical talents across the globe.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Marissa Mayer Presentation
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Play at Work: Agile Games for Productive Teams
Get together with other conference attendees and play games in this unique participatory interaction. If you are curious about Agile development and want an insider view of the activities Agile teams do every day, this session is for you.
A special emphasis will be placed on experiential learning through Agile games and exercises, such as "Story Writing" and "Planning Poker," in this hands-on, interactive session.
Learn first-hand how games and other Agile tools and techniques can be successfully adopted by project teams, resulting in rapid delivery and improved teamwork. Participants will be strongly encouraged to share their own experiences and learn from each other in this session.
LEVEL: Beginner
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The Accidental Writer: Great Web Copy for Everyone
Great copy is critical to the effectiveness of nearly every website. Yet often, a business owner, designer, or developer, perhaps pressured by budget and time limitations, will write the copy him- or herself. This session will tell you when that's a good idea, and when it's not. For those times when it's okay to be the "accidental writer," you'll learn quick tips for crafting effective web copy. For those times when you really need to bring in a pro, you'll learn how to work with a web writer to get the best copy for your website, as quickly and cheaply as possible.
LEVEL: Beginner
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The New Frontier of Social Gaming
In this talk, Brian will discuss the typical social gamer and how this profile has evolved in the last year. 2009 was about introducing social gaming to the mainstream. In 2010, social gaming has gone mainstream with 65 million people playing FarmVille alone. 2009 was about introducing social gaming to the mainstream. In 2010, the quality bar has gone up with the release of games like FrontierVille, which hit 20 million users in its first forty days. This talk is targeted towards social game developers. In the talk, Brian would discuss the innovation and mechanics it takes to build fun, viral and engaging social games.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Thin is In. The Future of Digital Wallets
by Christina Nguyen White
The growing hole in your back jeans pocket is getting a bit too personal.
No need to swipe anymore. Just scan.
When can we get rid of our wallets without losing the cash? We know mobile is here. Now learn how far we can take it. Digital wallets are within very close reach. With RFIDs, QR codes, and Big-Brother-like tracking, the technology is already in place.
Checkout with your phone. Instantly grab coupons when you checkout. Scan your digital ticket at Friday’s ballgame. Digitally split the bill with your friends.
The possibilities that we’ve always wished for are now within reach. Get a glimpse into how retailers are edging towards digital, understand the impact of how this will change the way we buy, and ultimately, as designers, understand how this will change the way we interact with our mobile phones.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Interactive Comics: Techniques to Enhance Math Education
by John Baird
Comics have a long history of use in education and promoting understanding in a wide range of topics from English to history to public health. This presentation covers multiple levels of the employment of comics in math education, beginning with simple classroom activities, moving into mathematics pedagogical research methodology, and delving into advanced cognitive research to explore the mechanisms of how comics reinforce instruction. As a teaching tool, comics are inherently well suited for patterns, geometric shapes, and visual representations of data. They can be a form of stealth teaching - engaging students to think creatively about mathematics, helping instill intrinsic motivation and improving long-term retention. Accurate assessment of math attitudes and learning environments is a key challenge in addressing discrepancies in knowledge and performance. Comicvoice, a research method using comics to collect individual perspectives and has demonstrated utility in exploring similar public health topics, has strong applicability to this problem. Navigating the symbolic language of math is a known barrier for many students. Current research into how the brain translates concepts and similarities suggests that comics provide a pathway for alleviating this barrier through the very nature of being “sequential art.” By traversing through each of these stages, a holistic picture of comics’ place in the development of advanced math pedagogical techniques becomes clear.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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OMG - My Pancreas Just Texted
There's been a shift in the center of authority in healthcare. It's moved from established authorities, like doctors, to the people who are experiencing a given condition. The proof can be seen in the growth and popularity of websites like WebMD, Wego Health, and PatientsLikeMe.
And technology now provides new ways of sharing knowledge. As feature phones improve and as smartphones begin to saturate the market, users have unprecedented access to information and to each other. The exponential growth of the iPhone and Android app marketplaces show that users are looking for new ways of doing old things.
At the intersection of user-managed health and technology lies an opportunity. A mobile solution that enables users with a chronic condition, accustomed to managing it alone, to track their health socially and to access the learnings of the larger community.
Users can passively hold each other accountable in a way that is difficult for them to do alone. A mobile solution removes some of the hardest barriers to better record keeping. It also provides a forum for knowledge-transfer, letting users optimize their treatment at a quicker pace.
OMG - My Pancrease Just Texted will explore a concept for a mobile community geared towards supporting diabetics in better managing their health, together.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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The Sexual Survival Guide for Geeks
by Violet Blue
What they say about geeks, sex, relationships and hooking up just isn't true: we ARE hot and nerdy, and when it comes to events like SXSWi we could all use a little "booty call boot camp". Anyone can read sex ed basics online, but when you're faced with real-life situations and the nuances of quirky geeks who are smarter than the average hottie, and have that irresistible OCD, you'll need to know more than how to Google a pickup line or navigate a smooth SXSWi afterparty fling.
In this talk, leading sex educator Violet Blue explains:
- Sexual health basics, including safer sex 101.
- Exactly how to have a smooth negotiation about safer sex.
- Rules and tips for geek flirting.
- Do's and Don'ts of picking up on geeks.
- Sex etiquette and social media.
- How to have a great one-nighter and feel happy saying hi in the halls the next day.
- Navigating honesty (and health issues) when someone is cheating.
- Consent: saying yes and no to sex with clarity and coolness.
- How to have a hot time without pissing off your hotel roommates.
- Why geeks are better lovers, and how to attract a geek.
- Geek-specific suggestions for seeing each other after SXSW.
While heterosexually focused in scope, this presentation will be inclusive of all genders and orientations. Includes a handout of recommendations for a Geek Sexual Survival Kit.
LEVEL: Beginner
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The Talking Cure: Making Online Discourse Suck Less
by Clay Shirky
LEVEL: Intermediate
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When Good Companies Go Horribly Wrong
by Rolf Skyberg
This is not my beautiful job, how did I get here? We never want to believe it, but often we watch in horror as the company that we once loved, either as a founder or as an employee, suddenly descends into a rotten, back-biting, stinking mess. Maybe it was a slow death of a thousand cuts, maybe it exploded overnight. Regardless of how it happened, we hope this could have been avoided. Whether you are an old salt or a young pup, you've probably seen your fair share of meltdowns, and probably have some idea of why they happened after the fact…
LEVEL: Beginner
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Will Your New Technology Win? Ask a Tree
by Ross Mclean
Picking the right new technology to bet on and be on is a fundamental challenge in just about any business. But separating the future blockbuster from the flash-in-the-pan early enough in its lifespan to matter often baffles many of the smartest among us.
This presentation proposes a simple analogy to help us dramatically improve our ability to predict which new technologies are destined to be the next Facebook, and which will be the next Second Life.
By taking the audience on a historical tour of successes and failures in human technological innovation and filtering the cases through core principles of psychology, anthropology and other social sciences it makes two core points.
First, it helps us understand why we are often blind to truly great and novel ideas and how we can learn to see them better.
Second, it lays out a set of simple principles and a shockingly simple core analogy that anyone working in a field that requires getting humans and technology to interact can use every day.
LEVEL: Advanced
Saturday 12th March 2011
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Diversity in the Digital Age
by Anne Hunter
With the plethora of niche sites it’s hard to deny that the Internet has increased the amount of social, political and personal groups one can join. But is this cross sharing really creating diversity?
In this session, Anne Hunter, VP, Advertising Effectiveness, comScore, will provide a comprehensive understanding of how the digital age has affected diversity. Does the democratic nature of the internet with its open sharing of ideas and cultures lead to a natural increase in diversity or are we seeing an end of true niche and specialty groups? Is over-diversification leading to a weakening of subcultures?
With your grandmother being able to join your band’s fan page how has the demographic makeup shifted? This session will highlight the key differences between visitors. Through understanding key metrics comScore will examine whether or not this democratization has actually created a more diverse audience or simply created a group of samplers versus key users.
Anne will examine how the digital age has affected demographics differently. For younger generations that have only existed within this schism, how is their idea of diversity different from older audiences? Does a generation, who is more prone to buy a single than an album, less likely to be deeply connected to one group?
Finally, this session will also examine how diversity changes based on the medium. For example, how does the audience of BET Television compare to their online component?
LEVEL: Beginner
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How Print Design is the Future of Interaction
This session is about how the history of Print Design is becoming an important influence in the evolution of Interaction Design. As a craft, design for printed media has a rich history. Several generations of designers have pushed its boundaries in countless directions. It has been shaped over several hundred years as both a functional and aesthetic discipline, with a deep foundation of principles, practices, theories, and professional dialogue. In comparison, Interaction and UI Design is still a relatively young field. Its history has largely been driven by technology and functional goals. The dialogue around it has been centered on usability, which has been its purpose in the context of technological advancement. The visual language of UI has evolved from that standpoint: that it should evoke the familiar, analog experience of tools, buttons, knobs, and dials. That foundation has led to a very specific visual language in interactive experiences. In the past ten years however, the relevant technologies that support the design of Interfaces - displays, processing speeds, and rendering engines - have matured to a point that they provide a more capable canvas for design. Meanwhile, our culture has become visibly more comfortable with the technologies that surround it. These combination of trends are creating an important inflection point for designers. The aesthetic experience of the digital surface can now be considered and explored in a more sophisticated manner.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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How Progress Bars Change the Way We Live
by Evan Jones
Once upon a time slow connections begat the Progress Bar - bloated sites would taunt us with '15% loaded' screens. High-speed promised to kill the beast and free us from their tyranny but yet it lives! Progress bars are being used MORE lately to direct user actions. Look to Farmville and LinkedIn which push their users to collect 100% of their personal information. Incomplete progress bars are an itch that needs to be scratched. They carry the implicit language that declares 'You are here' but more importantly 'The end is in sight'. Game design motivates us through incremental, measurable progress towards a tangible goal but is this the way real life works? Is the progress bar's ubiquity in technology starting to affect the way we measure progress in meatspace? This panel will reach far across time and space to look at the story of progress bars, why they hypnotize us and what we need to do - slay the beast once and for all, or throw ourselves into its partially-complete embrace...
LEVEL: Beginner
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iPad Design Headaches (Take 2 Tablets, Call Me in the Morning)
by Josh Clark
The iPad and its entourage of Android tablets have introduced a new style of computing, confronting designers with unfamiliar aches and pains. Learn the symptoms (and fixes) for a range of new-to-the-world iPad interface ailments, including Greedy Pixel Syndrome, the dreaded Frankeninterface, and the "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" bait and switch. Explore practical techniques and eye-opening gotchas of tablet interface design, all grounded in the ergonomics, context, psychology, and nascent culture of these new devices (both iOS and Android). The presentation inoculates you against common problems with close-up looks at successful iPad apps from early sketches to final design. Genial bedside manner is administered by Josh Clark, author of the O'Reilly books "Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps" and "Best iPhone Apps: A Guide for Discriminating Downloaders."
LEVEL: Advanced
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It's About Time: Visualizing Temporality
by Joanna Wiebe
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. I agree about the banana, but I'm not so sure about the arrow. What is the shape of time? Our online calendars, clocks and other models of time often are designed with the understanding that time is a forward-moving arrow. This sounds logical to the Western, English-speaking scientific mind. However, not everyone conceptualizes time as a relentless hurtling forward. Some cultures understand time as a fractal, a spiral, a mandala, a cycle. And a child, playing with the same toy over and over again, lives in a single seamless moment from dawn to dusk. Visualizing temporality is a fundamental issue in interaction design today. For example, we are looking at a future where our work must be useful for both Eastern and Western audiences, who differ in time-oriented cultural traits such as long-term vs. short-term orientation. We also need to be able to provide tools to differentiate the personal, bodily-felt experience of time from clock time. We may want to expand our customers' perception of time, to invite them to stay in the Deep Present. Our beliefs about time and its passage profoundly affect the design of software and interactive media. It's time for interaction designers to understand deeply how our customers know time, whether as an arrow, a spiral or a squiggle. How people slice and dice nature into concepts is fundamental to designing tools people can use to successfully live on the earth, for a long time.
LEVEL: Advanced
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Know Your Investors: Fundraising Isn't Just About Money
by Justin Fishner-Wolfson
In the current environment, the way to raise capital has changed with greater numbers of angel investors and more competition among venture capitalists. Today, entrepreneurs are faced with more and more options, which means more decisions. Taking money is like getting married; your investors are your partners. Pick investors as carefully as you would a co-founder. Entrepreneurs should do diligence on their investors and find out if they will be there when times are tough. Understand how to differentiate between investors and determine the right number of investors for your seed round. Learn the difference between angels, super angels and venture capitalists. Ensure that your investor's incentives are aligned with yours so that they help make your company the next big thing. Understand the market and what is a “good” valuation and what are “standard” terms. Figure out how to create a syndicate that positions your company to succeed. Come armed with your questions on anything from basic investment and venture capital terminology to decisions you’re trying to make to help your company grow.
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Saturday Yoga
by Ari Stiles
LEVEL: Beginner
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So Long, and Thanks for All the Babelfish
by Tim Holden
Will 2011 be the year of the Universal Translator? As this science fiction dream teeters over the horizon, what can and should we do now to prepare for a time when the translation robot, not the search engine, becomes the single most important audience for your site? Will SEO give way to TEO? Does language need its own subtext markup? And when on Earth is Microsoft Word going to replace its 'Bold' button with a 'Strong' one? Lay aside your Google Goggles and iLingual apps (just for 60 minutes or so), and enjoy a session that's packed full of accessible translation theory, insight into the working processes of web copywriters, and more than the occasional riff on Douglas Adams.
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Social Media Mythbusters
by Peter Kim
The early days of social media were filled with hope - and even more hype. Social media gurus and experts started popping up everywhere, offering brands assistance based on shaky credentials. Catchphrases became commonplace: customers are in control! Focus on people, not technology! Listen first! You don't need a Facebook strategy!
Without a doubt, social "stuff" has the potential to change the way businesses engage with consumers, employees work together, and consumers communicate with each other. However, businesses that focus on the learnings of early social media will find themselves no better off than the early pioneers who found themselves with figurative consumer arrows in their backs.
This session will focus on what worked early on, why it doesn't work now, and what companies need to be thinking about now in order to create and capture value from social business.
LEVEL: Advanced
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