The following is my post last week on the Jack360 blog:

Last week I was at South by Southwest interactive with a few colleagues from Jack Morton to listen and learn about what’s new in interactive, what people are thinking about and generally absorb the experience of having tens of thousands of developers, designers, writers, strategists and marketers in a very concentrated space.

In two and a half days I filled my brain with as much information as I could and my stomach with as much barbecue. I’ll be sharing what I saw and learned at SXSW here over the next few weeks, but I’m starting with 5 overall trends that I saw across all of the sessions that I attended. They are:

1. No Matter Where You Go There You Are – The social network Foursquare was the was the breakthrough application at SXSW last year and as a result this year there were over 10 different location based social networks in play and the “SXSW stance” was head down over your smart phone checking in at your location. During South by SOuthwest Foursquare gained over 100,000 new subscribers and logged over 300,000 check-ins each day. In panels the value of geolocation was discussed as a means for monitizing social media, it’s value to social search and the expectation that by the end of the year every social network will have location integrated into their network. Where you are has, well, arrived.

2. We’re All Gamers Now – From your Wii to Farmville to earning badges on Foursquare, games seem to be everywhere. Whether the game is something as involved as Mafia Wars or just a point based leader board based on network behavior, games are being used to engage the audience, encourage behavior and keep them coming back to your social network. Are you using gaming to persuade your audience?

3.With Geolocation There Is No Privacy – Most people the same travel paths every day; home to work then back home with a stop at the grocery store or restaurant 5 days a week. With this travel information and a few other data points it’s pretty easy to figure out many more details of a person’s life. As a result, at some point in the not to distant future there will be a privacy debacle caused by social media and geolocation. It’s only a matter of time and hopefully the impact will be minor. It’s going to be up to the social networks to both maintain personal data securely and to help members make smart decisions about what data they share and who they provide access to it, because when something goes wrong they will be blamed.

4. The Rise Of Transmedia Experiences – If you are not in the know a transmedia experience is an activity, often a game, puzzle or tour, that involves multiple media types , for example a website, video, telephone and email. While transmedia experiences have been around for years they received a lot of mention at SXSW this year. There were several sessions on Transmedia and the concept came up on a couple unrelated panels as well. I suspect that this is another byproduct of smart phone adoption that make access to websites, video and email available just about anywhere not to mention the added bonus of geolocation that provide new ways of finding and delivering clues.

5. Media Environment Convergence – We have 3 screens (TV, computer and cell phone) and may be adding a 4th with the tablet and we simultaneously interact with multiple sources for information on the same topic. Think of watching the Academy Awards while IMing friends on your cell phone, watching a baseball game with a laptop open to view detailed statistics, reading the latest news that is imported through a social network. The convergence that we’ve already seen as our phones became small computers is only the beginning. Now imagine what the iPad may usher in for the experiences of watching television, socializing, surfing and creating content simultaneously.That is the converged future.

Did you attend SXSW? What trends did you see? How do you foresee the impact of these trends? Let me know in the comments

The Top 5 Trends From SXSW is a post from: Trumblog

The SXSW keynote interview of Twitter’s Evan Williams by Umair Haque may have been a bore, but it did highlight some interesting aspects of what Twitter is and how it is used.

Twitter is an interesting application precisely because it is not one.  Rather than setting up how to use the service, Twitter has watched as users develop retweeting, hashtags and a variety of other content types then supported them.  Twitter.com is not the primary venue for twittering or reading the tweetstream, thousands of applications have grown up around Twitter to support it with little  if any competition or push-back from Twitter itself.  As a result Twitter has clearly not positioned themselves as an application. Twitter is the network.

During the SXSW keynote Evan Williams explored the question what is an active Twitter user. Clearly they don’t have to read or send tweets through Twitter.com, but what about all the other ways that Twitter may be used? Which of these people qualifies as a “Twitter user” and which don’t?

• A person who only follows a few sources for a low bandwidth news feed?
• A person who benefits from Twitter results in a Google search?
• A person who never tweets, but follows many people for a full fire hose effect?
• A person who never tweets original content, but retweets generously?
• A person who only tweets weblinks that she finds once or twice a month?
• A person who tweets original content regularly, but never @ replies?
• A person who tweets regularly, retweets liberally and receives many mentions and direct messages then @ replies in response?

Certainly there is a spectrum of twitter engagement from reading to active conversation and this wide variety of usage is important to keep in mind when you read data on the Twitter population and active accounts.

Who Is A Twitter User? is a post from: Trumblog

In some of my posts last week about my South by Southwest schedule I hinted at an attendance strategy, but never really explained it in detail. This was in part because I assumed that it was how things worked and wasn’t that unique an idea (which is correct). But now that SXSW is over I thought that perhaps I should explain my strategy for being interested in more sessions than I could possibly attend.

After going through the SXSW schedule I had almost 50 sessions that I was interested in, but only 15 slots. Impossible.  Luckily I learned a little tip from my wife that I hoped would help me get the most from SXSW.  Last year she earned her masters in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

At Harvard students spend the first week of each semester shopping for classes. Professors give abridged lectures and students visit multiple classes in order to decide if the topic and professor’s style is what the student want to spend their limited time on that semester. Time for class shopping is short and there are a lot of classes so leaving in the middle of a lecture is an accepted part of the process.  It is similar to the business strategy of failing quickly in order to avoid wasting money on a losing proposition that drags on forever. You cut your losses and move on.

My plan was to use both of those strategies at South by Southwest. I had over 50 sessions that interested me and thanks to colleagues and friends I prioritized them and used that as a guide for what to attend. I began each period at the session that the most of the respondents to my poll were interested in. Then if it became clear that the session’s speaker wasn’t cutting it, the subject isn’t what I thought that it would be, or it was less useful than I hoped then I’d move on.

As it turned out I only ditched one session, Accessibility: What It Is For and Where It is Going?, because it started getting too deep into CSS and website development.  Did I do the right thing?  Should I have ditched some of the weaker sessions?  Maybe, but often the other session that I wanted to join was in a different building or I kept finding a little something that kept me engaged.  I know that I got a ton out of SXSW so I’m not second guessing myself.  But next year I may be a little more aggressive.

Shopping For Sessions at South by Southwest is a post from: Trumblog

While at South by Southwest this week I met a little gray and green critter named Tweeture.  He’s the brainchild of The Umbrella Group and is an alien robot monster attending SXSW and being baby sat by other attendees.  If they treat him nice he tweets them nice and if they don’t he get’s grumpy.  Treating him nice means showing him around (he has a gps inside him) bouncing him a bit (but not too much) and talking to him on Twitter.  Not only does the Tweeture tweet his thoughts and wants, he also gives feedback based on the color of his antennae.  I don’t know what the woman in the picture intends to do to Tweeture, but his antennae are green, which means that he likes it. Treating Tweeture well earns you points and of course there is a leaderboard.

Today it’s a SXSW attention grabber, will it be a toy tomorrow?  Is this the next Webkinz? How soon till we see a plush rabbit or bear with an embedded motion sensor that kids take care of in the real world that glows happiness and need and gives feedback via twitter or more likely a proprietary social network?  I’m sure that there’s already a business plan for it.

Tweeture Toys With Twitter is a post from: Trumblog

While at South by Southwest this week I live-blogged every session that I can attended.  I’ve edited them, adding photos, links, slideshows, details, videos where appropriate, highlighting the best stuff and generally cleaning them up for better and easier reading.

I’ll also be posting a recap of what I thought were the most interesting things that I experienced and learned about both here and on the Jack360 blog.

Here’s a complete set of links to all my SXSWi live-bogging.  Enjoy.

Saturday March 13

Making Sense of Privacy And Publicity

Ze Frank Conversation: The Creative Lifestyle

Does My Sh*t Talking Really Help Your Brand?

Sunday March 14

Accessibility: What It Is For and Where It is Going?

Web of Things: Connecting People and Objects on the Web

How Social Media Can Destroy Your Business Model

The 10-Minute Transmedia Experience

It’s Time to Save the World with Design Thinking

Search Patterns: Tangible Futures for Discovery

Monday March 15

What Does Corporate America Think of Web 2.0?

Web Series 2.0: Big Campaigns on Digital Dollars

The Life Graph: You Are Your Location

The Next Generation of Social Media Keynote Interview with Ev Williams and Umair Haque

Convergence 2010: Ten Cool Things That Could Happen This Year

South By Southwest Live Blogging is a post from: Trumblog

The following is a liveblog of a series of 6  short presentations on the convergence of media and devices that is taking place.  Presentations dealt with larger themes of convergence, tools for supporting convergence, current issues with it, transmedia story telling and possible futures.  The session was given at South by Southwest on March 15, 2010.

Convergence 2010: Ten Cool Things That Could Happen This Year – Dan Shust

4:34:15 PM: Social becomes the thread: source for news, media, purchasing, etc.

4:35:32 PM: Location Matters: we tell apps where we are and that will be taken into account with interaction

4:37:12 PM: Entertain Me Now: real time availability of entertainment & media anywhere on any platform

4:39:47 PM: Birth of the Front Channel: ability to add additional content & data on top of media

4:41:17 PM: Commerce Atomizes: Small bits of data and media that can be shared, exchanged, e commerce

4:42:46 PM: Life is a game: games, rankings and rewards become aspect of most interactions

4:44:28 PM: Interactive Products: expectation of digital interaction with physical products

4:45:31 PM: Your Reality Will Be Augmented: augmented reality at stores, home, etc for a variety of uses

4:46:22 PM: Imagine impact of augmented reality ala Bing maps for live TV

4:47:40 PM: Digital is the new paper: tablets will change how people use magazines, etc.

4:48:44 PM: Rise of the connected things: convergence means that our bathroom scale will tweet, fit bit, MS sync, etc

Convergence: Already Here, and Gosh It’s a Mess! – Jared Benson

4:55:37 PM: Rebuilding the Tower of Babel: use semantic web to bridge languages and other barriers

4:56:25 PM: Semantic web: tagging items to put data in context

5:00:48 PM: Publishing scientific results with common semantic database, allows reuse & reduce subsequent research cost and time

5:03:06 PM: Merc, Biogen Idec, GroupM & Chevron all using semantic tags

5:04:23 PM: Could we use semantic tags to media to rate and understand media and impact on viewers

5:06:03 PM: Semantic databases can bring together divergent data thus accelerating discovery

5:11:51 PM: Why is this presentation so much harder to take notes on than the previous one? Not sure where it’s going?

From Hulu To Yahoo Widgets: Will The Internet Transform The TV? – Richard Bullwinkle

5:15:12 PM: Q: Do we really want widgets overlaid on TV or an uninterrupted entertainment experience?

5:16:35 PM: Widgets on a TV are bound to be worse than those on your iPhone, laptop, etc.

5:18:03 PM: Why should it be that searching for media on your laptop so much better than on your TV?

5:22:36 PM: Imperative steps for better TV: add meta data for media for searching, create social networks around media

Imminent Fusion of Intelligent Mobile Devices & Entertainment Content – Rebecca Allen

6:02:59 PM: Mixed Reality – blending physical and virtual worlds to create new forms of entertainment leveraging mobile

6:03:43 PM: Mobile particularly suited to mixed reality because of interaction with location

6:05:21 PM: Case study: Augmented reality markers on Hollywood Walk of Fame w/ photos of actors

6:06:49 PM: Altars on Michael Jackson Hollywood star an example of importance of virtual place

6:16:43 PM: Nokia used transmedia, augmented reality, image recognition, image clues, etc. for tour of 6 blocks in LA

Tour starts in a theater with a projected video of the tour guide, then the actor.  Once the audience solves a team-based projected video game puzzle with their phones they leave the theater and use their phones to view and augmented reality of the street in the 1940′s using their phones.  They go to a diner and then a dance studio where using 3D audio they hear about the actor’s tryst with a dancer in the 40′s.  Finally the tour leads to a cemetery where that dancer, revealed to be Marilyn Monroe is buried.  The Nokia transmedia experience felt like creative for the lowest common denominator.  I suspect that the creatives did not have fun creating the story and so based on the second point in his presentation….

Transmedia Storytelling – Creating Stories That Work Over all Platforms – James Milward

6:23:20 PM: Key element of transmedia is using individual platforms for each’s unique advantages

6:24:07 PM: If you are not having fun creating the story on multiple platforms then people won’t have fun doing it.

6:25:36 PM: Why Transmedia? 1. Reinforce/ sustain and grow your audience 2. develop/ build your audience 3. Have fun

6:27:12 PM: Expect people to contribute to transmedia experience it, make space for it and encourage it

6:28:42 PM: Audiences for transmedia 1. hard core users 2. lifters (not dedicated but share for social currency) 3. casual users

6:35:16 PM: Transmedia rules of thumb 1. start early 2. set goals 3. know your audience/ genre 4. find partners 5. enfranchise advocates

6:36:38 PM: Loyalty = success for transmedia campaigns

6:38:05 PM: Transmedia seems to be either monetized through subsidiary products & events or are publicity for monetized media

Convergence 2015 ‘ A Look Ahead – David Berkowitz

6:44:59 PM: Convergence future #1: 1 media device, does everything, omni-tasking

6:45:22 PM: Fooks – books written out a Facebook status updates

6:48:54 PM: Convergence future #2: devices are still basically function specific w/ some additional features

6:50:44 PM: Convergence future #3: divergence as devices continue to multiply #convergence2010

Convergence is a post from: Trumblog

The keynote at South by Southwest by Evan Williams being interviewed by Umair Haque on Monday, March 15, 2010 received a horrible response for Ev’s rollout of @anywhere with no further discussion, softball questions and Umair Haque’s speaking at least as much as Ev about his pet theories rather than letting the CEO of Twitter speak.  Despite that there were some interesting points about Twitter and their philosophy that enlightened me about Twitter and social media in general.  Following is my live blog of the keynote minus my Twitter heckling and snarky comments.

RT @ALavelle: Twitter announces ad platform @anywhere

RT @heidimiller: Key benfits of @anywhere for site managers: more traffic, more followers, more conversation among fans.

RT @kimhollenshead: Whatever you assume @ the beginning of a biz is wrong. (via @Ev)

Twitter not a social network, it’s an information network

RT @sxswi2010: users are opting in to commercial messages, twitter (not social network, info network) is trying to improve the experience

Twitter devided into autonomous teams focusing on unique features/ tools/ tasks

RT @Kalabird: @ev: increasing signal to noise ratio and get that to people who care and give them better choices.

Parallel between Twitter the service and Twitter the company – transparency

Twitter: open or transparent? Open door let’s you come in and do things with your stuff.

Openness is a survival technique at Twiter, open to your ideas being wrong and change.

RT @adventuregirl: RT @socialnerdia: “We’ve debated openness vs transparency.. a door is open, a window is transparent”

Valuable data in the 50mm tweets each day, are you seeing the right tweets? Deals with Google and Bing help that.

Twitter optimizing system thru openness rather than hoarding data.

Vertical applications are the most interesting/ useful stuff going on in Twitter ecosystem.

Hardware device for twittering bakers?

RT @Pistachio: “We’ve always held it important to make Twitter reach the weakest signals in the network.” -@ev

What is an active Twitter user? Tweeting all the time? No. Someone getting value, via Google, 3rd party app, etc.

Twitter 2 way medium, the more a user listens the more likely to engage. Maybe RT, reply, etc. not necessarily broadcast

Umair was booked at an crummy hotel, got no satisfaction on the phone, but Tweeted unhappiness and got a new hotel.  Twitter played a role in fixing my vacation? NO someone listening & acting fixed it.

Twitter #1 principle “Be a Force For Good”

Thin Value: making profit thru little value Thick Value: making profit while delivering value to customer

On the web we expect a relationship with companies, in RW they are a black box.

Twitter a distraction from a boring #keynote about Twitter.

The Next Generation of Social Media: Keynote Interview with Evan Williams and Umair Haque is a post from: Trumblog

The following is a liveblog of a panel discussion with Ryan Sarver,  Sam Altman, Tina q Unterlaender, Clara Shih and Steve Lee on geolocation, social networks, privacy and monitization.  The panel was excellent with great back and forth, insight into issues around geolocation and social networks and the future of this functionality.  The panel took place at South by Southwest on March 15, 2010.

Lifegraph: sum of all places that you have been.

Within a year or so most apps will have a geolocation element

Great app for Android will track your commuting history and nudge you for shorter commute times.

Anonymous geolocation does not exist. Data is uniquely identifiable

Geolocation data must be opt-in for privacy reason.

Transparency & control critical to geolocation & privacy

Geolocation and relevancy is key. Starbucks app buzzes when near a store, but what if I don’t like coffee?

Active geolocation (Foursquare), passive (Latitude), future is a hybrid of the 2

Checkins have no inherent value, it’s what you do with the data

Used to be “next year is year of location” now every year is

W3C Geolocation spec API has been huge

Passive utility of geolocation with big value – knowns when you are coming home & turns on the heat

Smart phone penetration key driver to geolocation adoption

Privacy gaff will hamper major impact of adoption of geolocation

Q: Future of geolocation? Silence… Uh oh.

Lee and Altman agree loaning out profile for set period of time is coming for social networks and geolocation

Altman: expects that Facebook will become the aggregator for all geolocation data

Hedge funds are calling for data on what stores people are shopping at.

Integration of geolocation with key phone functionality will drive usage.

Altman: massive consolidation of geolocation apps in 9 mos

Lee: Consolidation of geolocation apps countered by addition of functionality to all apps

Location based coupons via geolocation mostly for small businesses and HUGE ROI

Big brands using geolocation for loyalty card style marketing

YES, I’d use it. RT @luckylou Asked unified LBS login app Q to the panelists & they seemed to like it. Think I will develop it

The following video coda shows checkins at SXSWi 2010 using a variety of different services and superimposed over a map of Austin and showing times when the checkins took place.

The Life Graph: You Are Your Location is a post from: Trumblog

The following is a live blog of a panel discussion with Melissa Fallon, Senior Vice President in TV, Film, Digital of Davie Brown Entertainment, Chris Hanada, co-founder of Retrofit Films, Milo Ventimiglia, co-founder of DiVide Pictures, Wilson Cleveland and Andrew Hemp on the use of online video for marketing campaigns, challenges and opportunities.  The session began with a lot of marketing speak and buzzwords, but moved on to a deeper discussion with examples and best practices.  The panel took place at South by Southwest on Monday March 15, 2010.

12:08:40 PM: Key is good creative, client needs and budget. In that order?

12:09:21 PM: Looking for way to get message out in a creative way that is different from a :30 spot

12:09:53 PM: Distribution is the biggest issue, where do you get it out there and how do people find it.

12:11:33 PM: Panel needs to dig in, all buzz words so far brand alignment, channel, marketing speak

12:12:28 PM: We should be playing buzzword bingo here.

12:15:14 PM: Ikea case study; wrote fan site with most links into series finale

12:16:07 PM: Paid marketing more safe, but social media is more authentic

12:19:51 PM: Symbiotic relationship between online and broadcast. Soon online will step up as an equal.

12:23:53 PM: Clients no longer seeing digital as a less expensive option, but a part of the marketing mix

12:24:49 PM: As brands become media companies CMOs becoming producers. A new role for them.

12:26:13 PM: Brand media is about representing the brand through story and content, not amount of product shown.

12:27:10 PM: Getting into branded online media not about cool factor, but about strategic goals

12:30:17 PM: Temp case study: show about horrors of temping, made fun of industry, but captured right audience

12:32:25 PM: No universal standard for measurement is a challenge – need custom analytics for each engagement

12:33:11 PM: Syndicate, syndicate, syndicate. You are asking a lot of an audience to come to your microsite to watch.

12:34:21 PM: Don’t let online video content suffer in order to deliver messaging via a microsite.

12:38:33 PM: 2006 C&D level celebs said no to online video, need to engage on screen talent as part of creative process

12:48:57 PM: Ikea had unique media players for each blog in order to track views.

12:58:28 PM: I want something that has never been done before, can you show me examples of how you have done that in the past?

1:01:01 PM: RT @betsyp: Hanada I won’t put dove soap in the content, but will put an ad at the top. Don’t compromise content with corp messaging

Web Series 2.0: Big Campaigns on Digital Dollars is a post from: Trumblog

This is a live blog of Andrew McAfee‘s session at South by Southwest on March 15, 2010.  The session focused on the barriers to adoption of web 2.0 within corporations and recommendations for overcoming them.  Overall it was inspiring, straight talk.

10:54:03 AM: RT @SterlingBooks: 2.0 is an amorphous term – quality comes from collaboration, innovation, but not strict preplanning.

10:54:47 AM: RT @Beckland: We found that you get great quality information, navigability, etc when we get out of the way of users

10:55:02 AM: RT @kekocher: If you want to control the outcome, control the process

10:55:56 AM: RT @CharlesOuthier: 2.0 = freeform visible emergent non-credentialist approaches to group work done & supporting tech

10:56:08 AM: RT @walkerfenton: sharepoint is white hot. lots of competitors emerging…

10:56:17 AM: RT @Beckland: McKinsey: enterprise 2.0 survey for last 3 years; each year numbers increase for ROI of tools

10:57:04 AM: RT @bettywriter: reaching a tipping point w/free-form tools? McKinsey study shows biz benefits. Social software maturing

10:57:49 AM: RT @Beckland: Explaining Facebook to corporate users & trying to make the case for biz is a failure, they must try it

10:59:11 AM: Don’t show Facebook feature examples, better example of benefit is to show before & after.

10:59:49 AM: RT @Beckland: Why aren’t more people buying TiVO despite obvious benefits & great user advocacy? People love of the status quo.

10:59:56 AM: RT @Beckland: Tech industry burned themselves by overselling and over promising tech solutions to corporate America

11:00:14 AM: RT @Beckland: corporations are unimpressed by features and novelty; those are actually problems to overcome

11:00:48 AM: RT @SterlingBooks: “Middle Management is the transmission belt of an organization” – essential, despite new features.

11:02:06 AM: RT @Beckland: Ouch. Tech industry says don’t need middle management. But need middle management to adopt our solutions within organizations

11:02:28 AM: RT @bettywriter: Corporate mindset: ROI-seeking, convinced of their own uniqueness.

11:03:07 AM: RT @Beckland: Corp managers are voracious consumers of theory; hence the rise of the biz book industry

11:03:28 AM: RT @bettywriter: Corporate mindset: Swayed by theory, evidence, narratives, peers; afraid of being left behind.

11:05:17 AM: RT @Beckland: Tech ind makes buzz phrases as a form of self congratulation, but constant churn of jargon is tough for corporations

11:07:15 AM: Trend: scholars writing accessible books that put the tools in our hands

11:10:08 AM: RT @krlooney: Comparisons not demos; Theories & frameworks – backed up; Granovetter “Strength of Weak Ties” 1973

11:10:48 AM: CIA great case study for using web 2.0, security issues, sharing & compatibility issues, etc.

11:11:27 AM: If only HP knew what HP knew then HP would be 3X more productive

11:13:49 AM: Web 2.0 Not gving everyone in an organization a telephone, but megaphone. Scary. Don’t be dewy eyed technologist

11:16:03 AM: Don’t talk to corps like they are dopes or the problem. Universal truth

11:16:20 AM: RT @bettywriter: Bosses: Activate peer effects, anticipate/allay concerns, show you understand problems, don’t treat like geeks.

11:17:10 AM: Learn more 20adoptioncouncil.com. Sign up now.

11:17:53 AM: Nelson Mandela – the job of a leader is to find the spark on genius of everyone in the organization

11:19:51 AM: CEO as smartest guy is passe; CEO as guy to turbo-charge org is in.

11:21:02 AM: Important Shift: default mode of working has changed from working in private to working in public.

11:23:27 AM: Millenial shift “Well why wouldn’t I…” work in public, share work before it’s done, etc.

11:26:12 AM: If a corporation thinks 2.0 is another flavor of the month, they will wait it out. Gotta keep hammering it.

11:30:38 AM: RT @Beckland: Cluetrain Manifesto was deliberately written to be confrontational; don’t use it to sell in to corps

What Does Corporate America Think of Web 2.0? is a post from: Trumblog