Sessions at SXSW Interactive 2012 with write-up on Tuesday 13th March

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• Developing for a Consumerized Enterprise World

  by George Ishii and Sizhao Yang

  The consumerization of the enterprise is an emerging concept transforming the look and feel and intent of the software we use to run our businesses. It’s lowering the barriers of adoption, flipping the top-down model on its head and integrating consumer-friendly features we’ve grown to know and love in our personal lives. Gone are over-priced and complicated solutions catering to big companies with deep pockets. In are solutions that are based on an uncluttered user experience common in consumer websites, are customized for individuals, adopted bottom-up, can cater to small initial teams, yet scales as a business' needs grows. Salesforce, Dropbox and Yammer are examples of consumerized enterprise products that address small and medium business needs in customer relationship management, storage and internal communications. In this session you’ll learn how we got here, principles guiding new product design and development, and how these products impact your bottom line and culture.

  • Consumerism
  • Enterprise
  • Software
  • User Experience

  At 9:30am to 10:30am, Tuesday 13th March

  In Sabine, Hilton Garden Inn Austin Downtown

  Coverage write-up audio clip

• Agile Apps: Effective Mobile & Native Development

  by Amanda Wixted, Anne Halsall, Jonah Williams and Kyle Neath

  As the rise of iOS, Android, and the Mac App Store brings more web developers into the world of native applications can our existing processes and best practices survive the transition? How can we release early and often in an environment where each update must pass through a review process? How do we aggressively refactor code when outdated clients must be supported? Can we iterate efficiently on features when design changes require more than a stylesheet update? A group of experienced web, mobile, and native app designers and developers will discuss our experiences working on native applications. We will explain what unexpected challenges we encountered coming from a web background, what strategies have helped us design and develop native applications, what did not work, and what we should learn from experienced native application developers.

  • iOS
  • Mobile
  • Native Apps

  At 11:00am to 12:00pm, Tuesday 13th March

  In Ballroom A, Austin Convention Center

  Coverage audio clip write-up

• Democracy 2.0 in the German Parliament

  by Jimmy Schulz

  Jimmy Schulz attended SXSW in 2011 and announced during the panel session „Make Citizens Social: Digital Participation in Public Services“ that next year he would report the results of the implementation of “Adhocracy” in the German parliament. The Inquiry Committee “Internet and digital society” has been experimenting with the application of Liquid Democracy ( www.demokratie.de ) this last year. New forms of democratic participation thanks to technical innovation can help reduce public dissatisfaction with politics. Significantly, these tools can improve transparency, which is important for political legitimization and helping people better understand and identify with political decisions. Jimmy Schulz would like to report on the initial results of the application of these tools in the German Parliament.

  • Democracy
  • Politics

  At 12:30pm to 1:30pm, Tuesday 13th March

  In Salon B, AT&T Conference Center

  Coverage audio clip write-up

• Surviving Lulz: Behind the Scenes of LulzSec

  by Matthew Prince

  On Thursday, June 2, 2011, LulzSecurity.com registered for CloudFlare — a service designed to make any website faster and more secure. One hour after they registered, they published 3.5 million usernames and passwords allegedly stolen from Sony Pictures' website.

  For the next three weeks, LulzSec claimed to hack organizations ranging from the CIA, to the US Senate, to the Arizona Immigration Police. In the meantime, law enforcement, cyber vigilantes, and rival hackers worked to unmask LulzSec and launch major attacks of their own to knock LulzSecurity.com offline. CloudFlare watched it all from the heart of the crossfire.

  We've received permission from LulzSec to tell exactly what it's like to be one of the most notorious hacking groups of all time and how to keep your site online when the whole world is trying to shut you down. This is the inside story.

  • Scaling
  • Security

  At 12:30pm to 1:30pm, Tuesday 13th March

  In Capitol E-H, Sheraton Austin Hotel at the Capitol

  Coverage audio clip write-up

• The Future of Work and the Free Radical

  by Benjamin Dyett, Josh Rubin, Scott Belsky, Richard Schatzberger and Althea Erickson

  How we work is changing. But where we work isn’t.

  Over the last ten years a new way of working has emerged, along with some people who live it every day. They’re available 24/7. They network endlessly, and then plug their skills into others’ in surprising combinations. They choose when and how they do what they do, on their terms. They don’t want job security – they want career fluidity. We call them free radicals. And they’re creating the future of work.

  But when they look for a place to do all that, the options are weirdly outdated: office, home, or on the go – say, a café. Those are actually poor choices. Offices mean fixed cost and daily routine. Home is isolated and full of distractions. And cafés get old after the second latté.

  Be transported by this panel of experts into the future of work, as they walk you through their vision of the ideal work experience for free radicals just like you.

  • Careers
  • Freelance
  • Productivity
  • Work

  At 12:30pm to 1:30pm, Tuesday 13th March

  In Brazos, Marriott Courtyard Austin Downtown/Convention Center

  Coverage write-up audio clip

• DIY Mobile Usability Testing

  by Bernard Tyers and Belen Barros Pena

  Usability testing is an interaction designer’s bread and butter, but applying it to the study of mobile applications and websites brings considerable challenges. Which device should we use for testing? Can we use an emulator? How do we prototype for mobile? Can we just recycle the tasks we use for desktop software tests? Do we test in the lab or in the wild? How do we record screen, fingers and facial expressions?

  We don’t intend to answer all those questions in just one session: that would be madness! We’ll focus instead on the last one.

  Follow us in our quest to set up a mobile usability testing environment on a tight budget. We’ll show you how others do it. We’ll roam around electronics and professional video stores searching for brackets and webcams. We’ll put our DIY skills to the test and waste a lot of silicon trying to build our mobile recording device. We’ll scour the Internet for free software, and we’ll finish off building the lab and running a usability test in front of your eyes.

  If we can do it, so can you! You’ll come out of this session knowing exactly what you need to do to run and record usability tests with mobile devices.

  • Mobile
  • Usability Testing
  • User Experience

  At 3:30pm to 4:30pm, Tuesday 13th March

  In Ballroom A, Austin Convention Center

  Coverage write-up audio clip write-up write-up write-up

• Your Social Media Job Is Dead: Now What?

  by Ana Andjelic, Angeline Vuong, Sonny Gill and Natalie Rodic Marsan

  The digital world is changing too fast to let the industry label its roles with yet another buzzword. Remember digital ninjas? Social media mavens? Twitterholics?

  One moment, you are a self-proclaimed "guru" -- hey, it doesn’t make it less real -- and the next, you discover that you are not the only one.

  Younger marketing & advertising professionals are entering the workforce in social media-specific roles and finding that they must expand outside of their niche or risk becoming obsolete. As social media becomes more commonplace within organizations, it is evolving into another platform that good digital strategists and planners can handle with ease. More importantly, it reveals a schizophrenic situation in the industry. We want our developers to code in different languages, but we pigeonhole our strategists – people who are, by definition, entrusted with “big picture” – into smaller and smaller areas of specialization.

  And what about the people who started out as Social Media Coordinators and moved onto Community Managers and eventually Social Media Strategists? Where will they go from here? Or is there still room for specialization as strategists?

  Join us as we duke it out in a battle over the future of digital engagement jobs from the POV of people who have had all sorts of social media job titles, abandoned those titles, never had those titles and still proudly wear them.

  • Careers
  • Social Media

  At 3:30pm to 4:30pm, Tuesday 13th March

  In Brazos, Marriott Courtyard Austin Downtown/Convention Center

  Coverage audio clip write-up

• The Interactive Awards Pre-Party and Ceremony Presented by HP

  Come mix, mingle and enjoy complimentary appetizers and beverages before the main event gets underway. The 15th annual Interactive Awards never fails to entertain and delight. Featuring soon-to-be-announced entertainment breaks, a celebrity emcee and the presentation of first ever SXSW Interactive Hall of Fame award to Jeffrey Zeldman.

  • Awards
  • Party

  At 6:00pm to 9:00pm, Tuesday 13th March

  In 6th Floor, Hilton Austin Downtown

  Coverage video photo photo write-up write-up photo write-up write-up write-up