me::title_else
My Schedule
10:50 AM
to 11:50 AM
Clay Shirky
55 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom D Foyer
eventtype Panel, Interactive
event::about Clay Shirky will be stopping by the SX Bookstore to greet registrants and sign copies of his books, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age and Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.
event::tags Bookstore Appearance, #sxbookstore
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
Agile Self Development
86 schedule::attendees
Location
Marriott Courtyard, Rio Grande B
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Dinah Sanders, Marcy Swenson
event::about Know how to use an iterative, incremental framework to create improvements in software? You can use those mad skillz to make your life more awesome too! Come learn and share how agile techniques can be used to achieve personal goals and lower your stress – and even to get the most out of SXSW. Walk away with immediate, practical, positive actions you can take. Ideas to discuss: • What day-to-day or minute-to-minute techniques will allow me to satisfy shorter-term goals while building up to bigger progress? • How can I exploit my little monkey brain to get it to actually do stuff that will make my life better? • How can I stay aligned to the big picture while working on today's challenges? Tags: productivity, agile, lifehacks, happiness, self-development
event::tags Core Conversation, #AgileSelfDev
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
Drawing Back the Curtains on CSS Implementation
135 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom D
eventtype Panel, Interactive
event::about In this session, representatives from major browser vendors including Chrome, Microsoft, Opera and the W3C will pull back the curtain revealing some of the challenges with implementation and interoperability. The goal is to have designers and developers get a glimpse into how CSS has struggled and finally gained its footing as the presentation layer in everything we do for the Web.
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
How the USPS Should Implement Social Media
31 schedule::attendees
Location
Hyatt, TX Ballroom 5-7
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Amber Hutchins, Dara Quackenbush
event::about If there is one organization that should embrace social media, it's the United States Post Office. Instead, the USPS ignores social media, actively shunning it. In this session, the presenters looks at the USPS, offering suggestions how it, and other resistant organizations, can and should implement social media. In this day and age, it's difficult to imagine any organization, much less one with 596,000 employees and revenues of $68 billion, not having a social media strategy. Yet the United States Post Office does not have a social media strategy. There is no Facebook page, no Twitter account. It doesn't engage with customers or listen and try to fix complaints. To inform people of the upcoming proposed postage increase, the USPS used only traditional media. Creating buy-in for social media can be a difficult task. Like the Post Office, your company might be resistant to change or not see the value in social media. In this session the presenters will look at the USPS, examine why it may not be embracing social media, and outline a plan for the Post Office if it did want to start a social media program.
event::tags Dual
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
I've Never Met My Coworkers: Running International Teams
66 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon D
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Jason Lengstorf, Thomas Sturge
event::about I work with four other guys, and I've never met any of them. In fact, none of them live within 1000 miles of me. However, we manage to work together on 5-10 simultaneous projects and my business is up 300% from last year. Building a team to help you with sub-contracting is easier than you might think. I'll tell you how I took Copter Labs from a one-man (severely overworked) effort to a five-man collective in less than three months while continuing to increase my company's gross income and my own take-home pay, as well as freeing up hours of my own time to enjoy life.
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
Life After Y Combinator
77 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon C
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Dane Hurtubise, Brian Chesky, Drew Houston, Jessica Mah
event::about Programs like Y Combinator have garnered much attention in the media. Many of the startups are highlighted and critiqued upon launch, but how do these programs fare over time? What lessons have graduates of Y Combinator learned in a post-Y Combinator world? How do they turn ideas into real businesses?
event::tags Panel, #lifeafteryc
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
Social Shopping: The Future of Selling Stuff Online
116 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon H
eventtype Panel, Interactive
event::about Markets are conversations. As the web continues its neverending voyage toward Social, indie merchants must learn to engage and interact with their existing and future customers in new ways. The era of Social Shopping has begun, so get the info you need to stay ahead of the curve. Learn how to take advantage of the social web to help your indie business make more sales, connect with your community, and build devoted followers around the world. Perfect for small business owners, artists, crafters, musicians, authors and anyone else with something to sell.
event::tags Solo, #getcrafty
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
The New Sharing Economy
53 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon K
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Dori Graff, John Zimmer, Kim Gaskins, Neal Gorenflo, Punsri Abeywickrema
event::about Not too long ago, we got Zipcar, eBay, and Netflix. We got Prosper and Kiva and Kickstarter. What do they have in common? They ask people to share in one way or another. These days, sharing is an industry thanks largely to new technology. And it's critical to the environment, the economy, and the way we live together as a society. It's also an industry that we don't know much about yet. In 2010, Latitude Research and Shareable Magazine conducted the first-ever comprehensive sharing industry to establish benchmarks for awareness and adoption of existing sharing services, as well as sharing attitudes and behaviors relating to everything from information to food to transportation to workspace to travel accommodations. The study also sought to understand the new "psychology of sharing". What are the perceived benefits of sharing? What motivates someone to try sharing initially? What are the barriers to sharing, and how do we overcome them? Looking to the future, the study was able to answer what user demands exist, but aren't yet being met, in this new economy of sharing?
event::tags Panel, #Shareable
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
Your Mom Has an iPad: Designing for Boomers
118 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom B
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker John McRee
event::about It’s a cultural phenomenon that most of us didn’t see coming: baby boomers are taking over Facebook, while the millenials are abandoning it like crazy because it is so last year. After all, what 20-something wants his mom to see his status update about last night’s party? This example signifies a trend in technology overall: the assumed late adopters are now joining early adopters as technology becomes increasingly easy and fun to use. Devices such as the Wii and the iPad have overwhelmingly been adopted by the older and less technologically savvy crowd. The trend has significant design implications. As we’re designing for emergent devices, we need to be very aware that we’re definitely not designing for ourselves. User research will become even more critical, with particular attention paid to the more mature crowd as they have different needs from other generations. Security, privacy and ease of use are key attributes for this audience that we may have overlooked, thinking we were designing for younger users. During this session, John will discuss specific case studies of companies that saw the benefits of conducting the necessary user research to understand the needs, goals and motivations of the boomer crowd as well as specific design techniques that appeal to a more mature audience. In addition, he’ll also explore whether there is one, common design language that speaks to the needs of multiple generations.
event::tags Solo
11:15 AM
to 12:15 PM
The Next Rocket Scientist: You
29 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom E
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Nicholas Skytland
event::about For over half a century, NASA has inspired people across the world to look to the heavens and wonder what secrets are hidden within the cosmos. Solving those mysteries has long been the domain of lab-coat wearing scientists in government agencies and universities. However, with the advent of the internet, social web, and open source data, it has become possible for anyone to make scientific discoveries about our universe. Find out how you can actively contribute to space exploration and how the collective power of the internet is enabling the future of scientific research.
11:30 AM
to 12:30 PM
What The Government Can Learn From Amazon
39 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom E
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Adria Richards
event::about Have you ever bought something on Amazon and wondered, "Why isn't buying a passport as easy as this?" With over 300 million people in the United States, there is certainly room for improvement how their lives are recorded, updated and exchanged. If the Arpanet was created to provide a centralized, communications network, why are we not taking advantage of this access to lower costs and reduce data errors? Amazon processes, ships, and delivers packages all over the world and can now predict delivery within 12 hours of ordering. Why does your driver’s license take two weeks? We will explore what advances in digital data records and key benefits including: savings on redundant data entry and mistakes, less identity theft and fraud, rewarding efficiency and creating social benchmarks. The other side of this data coin includes managing expectations, privacy, security and opt-out from such programs. RFID’s in passports, pets and popcorn seem like the stuff of science fiction. GPS location tracking in cell phones are common place and you can throw a device into your kid’s backpack for peace of mind they made it to school. With over 170 million smartphones sold in 2009, there is clear evidence people are eager to manage their lives on the go and personal records maintained by the government is a great starting point.
12:30 PM
to 1:30 PM
Surviving the Hockeystick Growth: Blessing? Curse?
25 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon AB
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Alexis Ohanian, Ben Huh
event::about Rapid growth is a survival challenge that's killed off many seemingly successful companies (Pointcast? Kozmo?) How can u ride the rocket without falling off? This panel will bring together people who have lived through the ups and super ups and survied to tell you how to build a company that will thrive through the challenges of rapid growth.
event::tags Panel, #GoBigOrGoDead
12:30 PM
to 1:30 PM
The Lean Startup: Pirate Metrics for Design & Distribution
70 schedule::attendees
Location
AT&T Conference Center, Room 204
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Eric Ries, Dave McClure, Ian McFarland, Janice Fraser, Laura Klein
event::about Dave McClure debuts ‘Startup Metrics for Pirates: The Sequel’ – it’s your chance to better understand design, distribution, and proper use of expletives. Following Dave’s talk, you’ll get to hear case studies from some of the most effective ‘Lean UX’ designers and developers this side of the Mississippi. This session is sponsored by 500 Start Ups.
event::tags Solo
1:00 PM
to 2:00 PM
Felicia Day
52 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom D Foyer
eventtype Panel, Interactive
event::about Felicia Day, the creator and star of The Guild will be stopping by the SX Bookstore to meet fans and sign copies of The Guild dvds. Photo by Jeff Lipsky, courtesy Felicia Day
event::tags Bookstore Appearance, #sxbookstore
1:30 PM
to 2:45 PM
3:30 PM
to 4:30 PM
Know Your Meme
60 schedule::attendees
Location
Hyatt, TX Ballroom 5-7
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Andrew Baron, Brad Kim, Don Caldwell
event::about This presentation is a high-level explication of contemporary memes. Through entertaining examples, the following topics will be addressed in a fast paced, throughly visual, entertaining and academic presentation: How does a viral video become a meme? Distribution factors. What is the categorical ceiling of a meme's reach? Quantifying the value of transmitters. The boundaries of legal gray areas. Forced memes (i.e. How does one force or identify a forced meme?) The psychological effects of exposure to a global audience. Tactics vs. Strategies for extinguishing memes. The qualities of timeless memes vs memes of yesterday. Life cycles of memes. Aggregating realtime statistics for predicting. Predicting memes. Memes in the future. The presentation will be organized according to several larger threads that play through almost all memes. While the definition of a meme can include the extremities of logic from the micro to the macro, this presentation will assume a definition related to today's internet culture, as described by the Know Your Meme Internet Meme Database.
event::tags Panel
4:30 PM
to 5:30 PM
100% Viable, 1% Visible - Minority New Media Entrepreneurs
17 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom E
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Kiratiana Freelon
event::about While minorities (Latinos and African-Americans) are consumers and producers of the content on new media platforms, why aren’t they creating internet companies as often? A recent article said that only 1% of internet firms are founded by African Americans. Is the number similar for Latinos? Furthermore, studies show that minority teens are beginning to close the digital literacy gap through the mobile web. Will they also soon close the gap in digital entrepreneurship and development? How can we guarantee that minority youth (and adults) will consider digital entrepreneurship and web development as a fruitful career, just as they have done with law, journalism and medicine? In this one-hour conversation, we will discuss how to propel more minorities in new media entrepreneurship and further increase VC funding for them. The ultimate goal of the panel is to shed some light on the best practices for developing minority new media entrepreneurs. This conversation is ignited by the recent pledge by Comcast to give $20 million toward a venture capital fund for new media businesses led by minorities you digital education. It is also ignited by a recent article that said only 1% of Internet Start ups were founded by African-Americans.
event::tags Future15, #100Viable
5:00 PM
to 6:00 PM
Lurkers: Your Most Important Community Members
67 schedule::attendees
Location
Hyatt, TX Ballroom 1
eventtype Panel, Interactive
event::about Your lurkers are a vital and necessary part of your community and they often make up a majority of your membership but are dismissed as valueless members of the community. Treating your lurkers as if they have no value could be a fatal mistake in managing your community. Many community managers discount the value of lurkers when in fact, they are usually the cornerstone of your community. The panelists will help you understand the measurements you need to use to both understand the value of your community lurkers and how to translate that value back to the business. We will also share ideas on how to keep lurkers engaged and coming back to the community and how they can turn from lurkers into contributors. In this panel, you will learn why your community lurkers are valuable and how to measure their value by understanding how they are contributing to your community, what they are learning from your community, and how they are providing value back to the business. This will be a moderator-lead discussion with plenty of time for Q&A. Learn from a panel with a combined 32 years of community building and management experience.
event::tags Panel, #sxswlurkers
5:00 PM
to 6:00 PM
Metrics-Driven Design
121 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom A
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Joshua Porter
event::about For every design change you make affecting your user’s experience, do you know if you’re having a positive or negative impact? Are you adding to your organization’s bottom line or eroding it? Are you sure? Or, are you like most design teams who release work through a ramshackle process made up of politics, prayer, and paralysis? The health of the business must be the highest priority for designers. With a plethora of fast and cheap analytics tools available that bring us the ability to measure almost anything, we have no excuse not to be measuring every design change we make. From a/b testing small interface tweaks to measuring time-on-site for new users to measuring user satisfaction over long time periods, we can know more about the people who use our software than ever before. In this talk, Joshua Porter will provide you with a simple, easy framework for metrics-driven design. By using a combination of research methods as well as powerful new tracking tools, Josh will show you how to align your design priorities with what keeps you in business. You will come away from this talk with a clear idea of what metrics are most important, which ones to focus on, and which ones to ignore. So don’t drive blindly: use metrics-driven design to make sure the impact you’re having is a positive one.
event::tags Solo, #metricsdrivendesign
5:00 PM
to 6:00 PM
Web Anywhere: Mobile Optimisation With HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript
146 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom C
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Bruce Lawson
event::about Web apps, mobile phone apps, websites that work anywhere, SVG, HTML5, Widgets, location-aware sites, Media Queries. Beyond the buzzword assault is a revolution in the way sites are made, what they can do, and how they are accessed. We're going to talk about what the buzzwords actually mean and how they all fit together. We'll explore different methodologies for making websites that users can access on mobile phones and other devices, and how to optimize your existing website for mobile. Then we'll put all the buzzwords together into a coherent vision that works now, with real code snippets that you can use right away. Finally, we get out our crystal balls out and look at what's coming around the corner in HTML5 and the W3C APIs that allow websites to access native capabilities on devices.
event::tags Solo, #html5mobille
5:15 PM
to 6:15 PM
Unpacking Gender: Men, Women, Technology and More
40 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom E
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Debbie Chachra
event::about Describe someone, friend or stranger. The very first thing you say reveals whether they are a man or a woman. Gender affects how we perceive everyone around us and how we express ourselves, often in ways we don't realize. Why do your son and daughter behave differently? Why is technology dominated by men? Why are women so often caregivers? This talk will use ideas from psychology and education, including gender schemas, identity threats, and micromessaging, to investigate how we perceive and respond to gender. It will give you some tools to understand how you think about gender, along with information that puts that in greater social context. Whether you're a hiring manager, a parent, a technologist, or just curious, you'll learn concepts and vocabulary to help understand yourself and our society.
event::tags Future15, #unpackgender
9:30 AM
to 10:30 AM
Death of the Relational Database
65 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon F-G
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Hank Williams
event::about People have begun to realize the enormous gap between the relational database abstraction and the way people actually think about information. To be clear, I am not suggesting that relational databases will stop being used or that they are going to go away, but that developers are going to stop thinking of their data in relational database terms. Everyone from regular users to sophisticated developers thinks about information in a pretty simple way. There are objects, and there are connections or relationships between objects. For example if you have two objects, a cup and a table, the relationship between them might be “sitting on”, indicating that the cup is sitting on the table. What makes this model so sturdy is that we can continuously add new objects: tables, cups, chairs, floors, table cloths, etc. And we can add infinite relationships, such as sitting on, sitting under, covering, etc. Computer scientists, and now, thanks to Facebook, everybody else, refers to this structure as a graph. New data models such as the graph provide new ways to think about persisting data. The death of the relational database means the death of the relational database *abstraction* as a way that programmers think about data. What programmers need is to model data in the most natural way possible, and we are starting to see storage abstractions that are closer to how humans think instead of how computers need to.
9:30 AM
to 10:30 AM
My Prototype Beat Up Your Business Plan
99 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon AB
eventtype Panel, Interactive
event::about The business plan, as a tool to lure potential investors, secure early customers, and guide the direction of your business, is a dying construct. Smart entrepreneurs realize that a prototype is worth a thousand business plans. This panel will focus on prototypes as a tool to accelerate the success of your business, and will have a particular emphasis on the role of prototyping in business modeling, fund raising, product development, and sales. We'll talk specifically about how prototyping can allow you to more efficiently allocate resources (both talent, time and money), discover customers’ unmet needs, outsmart the competition, and move potential investors from interested to infatuated.
event::tags Panel, #MyPrototype
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
The Five Startups You Meet in the Deadpool
54 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon AB
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Charlie O'Donnell, Christine Herron, Emily Hickey, Ben Lerer
event::about Former entrepreneur, current investor and innovation community leader Charlie O'Donnell will discuss five different patterns of failure often seen in startups that don't make it. It will cover how entrepreneurs can derisk their ideas, maintain momentum, and take advantage of opportunities early on in a company's life cycle. Patterns of failure include: 1) Failure to zero in on a sector's most pressing pain point. 2) Not leaving enough time or financing to iterate on an idea. 3) Failure to create short term milestones that create value. 4) Failure to capture industry attention and mindshare. - 5) Failure to build a realistic customer acquisition engine.
event::tags Panel
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
Tired of @#%ing Social Media Experts?
51 schedule::attendees
Location
Hyatt, Hill Country CD
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Sam Decker, Sean McDonald
event::about You cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a “social media expert” (that is an expression, I am not suggesting kitty homicide). These “experts” are self anointed, often re-publishing sound bytes. But perhaps the best answers come from practitioners, like you. Join this session to get real answers from your peers on the toughest questions in social media. Format will be a quiz game show where audience volunteers are asked a question. The worst answer will lose their seat. There will be a final round to anoint the “social media expert”. The winner (determined by the audience) will win a valuable prize, in addition to the glory. You will learn real answers to real questions, but perhaps most importantly learn that the real experts getting business results are not necessarily the ones who who spend the most time to pimping themselves on Twitter.
event::tags Core Conversation, #sxswtired
11:30 AM
to 12:30 PM
The Creative Process Illustrated: How Advertising's Big Ideas are Born
74 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom G
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Deborah Morrison, Glenn Griffin
event::about So how does your creative process look? We asked dozens of writers and art directors to visualize how their personal process shows their thinking. The answers come in a series of artful and compelling process pieces that give insight into how creativity actually grows. Our book (August 2010) lays out 30+ of these along with creative theory that's accessible and usable. Authors Glenn Griffin and Deborah Morrison explain the project and give insights into understanding how you create.
event::tags Book Reading, #pureprocessSXSW
12:30 PM
to 1:30 PM
Big in Japan: Outreaching to a Unique Market
49 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon D
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Akinori Koto, Fumi Yamazaki, Marcus Nelson, Robert Laing, Ryan Holmes, Steve Mock, Rocky Eda
event::about Japan has ubiquitous high-speed coverage and a voracious appetite for tech gadgets, however, their tools have developed with entirely different features than other countries. For example: Japan's ""Galapo-phones"" commonly include streaming TV and multi-character sets, Mixii and Gree each have more than 30 million users on their social networks, and Yahoo is a whole different experience from US counter-part. With meteoric growth in Twitter and network tools, Japan aims on becoming the regional leader for emerging social web technologies -- much like their early leadership in consumer electronics and gaming industries. This presents opportunities for collaboration and partnerships but localizing requires more than translation. This panel will discuss the unique characteristics of Japanese web and mobile market including tactics for connecting to markets, identifying opportunities, and outreaching to audiences, plus understanding unexpected cultural nuances and consumer expectations.
12:30 PM
to 1:30 PM
The Man in the Van Needs Geo Location
19 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon F-G
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Marcus Nelson, Chris Hutchins, Ryan Kuder, Ryan Graves, Stacey Epstein
event::about There are lots of obvious geo-location use cases for consumers. But how can enterprises benefit from geo-location apps? Everyone knows the man in the van – they are installing your cable, technicians fixing heavy equipment in the field, landscaping office parks, repairing medical devices on-site and more. Shouldn’t those businesses be able to benefit from mobile apps that are geo-location aware? Whether they need to pick up and install a new fetzer valve or simply need to know where there next job is, there’s no reason why they can’t benefit from what Gowalla, DoubleDutch and foursquare have done for consumers.
event::tags Panel
12:30 PM
to 1:30 PM
Viral Marketing with The Oatmeal
138 schedule::attendees
Location
Hyatt, TX Ballroom 1
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Matthew Inman
event::about I'm the author, artist, and founder behind the one man operation known as The Oatmeal (http://theoatmeal.com). In less than a year, my website has grown to nearly 5 million unique visitors a month, I got a book deal, appeared on TV, and was named one of the best blogs of 2010 by Time Magazine. This presentation will cover a ton of examples of my work, explaining how and why they were virally successful. It includes tips, tools, and the process for generating and promoting viral content. There will also be poop jokes.
event::tags Solo
12:45 PM
to 1:45 PM
Using Free Agents to Solve Our Problems
17 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom E
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Jake Brewer
event::about Traditional organizations are like giant boulders in a river of ideas and information, disrupting flow and causing drag. By and large, organizations are static, inefficient, and structurally resist change, resulting in an inability to adapt. Perverse incentives arise, where solving the big problems organizations were created for contradicts the survival instinct of the organization, lest they become obsolete. Over time, organizations become invested in their structures for structures' sake - and even hold their commitment to obsolesence in high regard by touting their "sustainability" as a paramount priority. While this may be the best humanity has come up with so far to achieve the necessary scale required for global problems, they are far from an ideal structure to harness the best of what humanity can do together. With today's technology, people can come together and self-organize around specific goals, and dissipate those associations when the project is over - a project-based system, with more room for change and innovation, and more efficient composition of ideas and skill sets. Put simply, it's a world where everyone is a free agent citizen - capable of devoting primary, secondary, or even passive energy to a problem. What does this world look like? How does it scale? How does it affect productivity, the economy, and individual lifestyles? Where does this model break down, and what could be done to address those issues?
event::tags Future15, #FreeAgents
3:30 PM
to 4:30 PM
Using Text to Predict The Real World
26 schedule::attendees
Location
AT&T Conference Center, Room 203
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Noah A Smith, Philip Resnik
event::about How can we use text to tell us what is happening in the real world? Text-driven forecasting is the challenge of making concrete, testable predictions about future events and trends from publicly available text data. Text-based modeling methods make it possible to discover the agendas and attitudes behind the words people use. In this panel, we consider some recent success stories that use various kinds of text (expert-written analysis, blog posts, tweets) to tell us interesting things about the future and about the people behind the texts in various domains (finance, political discourse, and public opinion polls). Session co-organized by the McCombs School of Business and the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce (CREC).
event::tags Dual, #textworld
5:00 PM
to 6:00 PM
Cure for the Common Font
84 schedule::attendees
Location
Radisson, Town Lake Ballroom
eventtype Panel, Interactive
event::about Hundreds of new typefaces are released every year by hundreds of vendors. Some of these fonts are good for nuts-and-bolts text, some for showing off. Some work well on the web, while most are just awful. A select few are destined to be classics. The sheer volume and variety of options can be overwhelming. So, understandably, most designers just stick to the same old safe standbys they’ve always used — the ones that came with their computer or they learned about in school. The panelists, all typographic experts, will show how they broke free of tired text, sharing their secrets for selecting type, including best practices and personal case studies.
5:00 PM
to 6:00 PM
Recommendation Engines: Going Beyond the Social Graph
86 schedule::attendees
Location
Hyatt, TX Ballroom 5-7
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Garrett Camp, Tom Conrad, Hunter Walk, Liz Gannes
event::about Do your 500 "friends" on social networks really know what you will like? How many of your friends' shared links that you click each day are interesting to you? The social graph brings trust and meaning to the web, but often creates information overload from over-sharing. And because real-time updates and feeds emphasize recency over relevance, rare gems often fall through the cracks. This talk will discuss the issues and considerations when designing a personalized discovery engine, one that combines the social, peer and taste graphs to produce relevant, peer-sourced recommendations and serendipitous discovery of new online content. StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp will go over the concepts and mechanisms behind such recommendation systems, and highlight findings from analysis of StumbleUpon's database of over 15 billion personalized stumbles.
event::tags Panel, #DiscoveryTalk
5:00 PM
to 6:00 PM
Shopping as a Revolutionary Act?
18 schedule::attendees
Location
Hyatt, TX Ballroom 1
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Tara Hunt, Adriana Lukas, Christopher Carfi
event::about We've been called "consumers" for decades, but we are also producers - of data. Lots of it. Everywhere we take our business, we leave a trail of data, little of which we manage, and almost none of which we control. Most of that data, however, is produced without our knowledge or control. What happens when we take control of that activity? What happens when "the marketplace" is not a collection of customer fish in a sellers' barrel, but a truly open space where relationships are genuine, meaningful, and mutual? This is the start of a revolution. The Shopping as a Revolutionary Act? panel will look at some of the leading developments involved, where they are likely to head, and what changes these will bring to our economic, social and personal lives.
5:45 PM
to 6:45 PM
It's Not Scalable and That's OK: One-Shot Campaigns
57 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom E
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Michelle Broderick
event::about Crazy parties, bobble head swag, content audited by human beings: None of these things are scalable, but they can make a huge impact on the feelings and affinity people have towards a particular company. This Future15 will discuss marketing strategies that helped some of the best companies build a true personality around their brands. These types of campaigns might not be scalable, but that's O.K. because we end up loving them.
event::tags Future15
9:30 AM
to 10:30 AM
You're Dead, Your Data Isn't: What Happens Now?
53 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Room 10AB
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Adele McAlear, Daniel "Dazza" Greenwood, Evan Carroll, Jeremy Toeman, John Romano, Jesse Davis
event::about The Web has changed your life, your death and what you leave behind. Your heirlooms like photos, videos and letters are now stored in digital form and - in many cases - on servers that you don't own like those of Flickr, YouTube and Gmail. What should happen to your "legacy" data? With over 285,000 Facebook users set to die this year, you really should think about it. The Internet generation is coming of age and this issue is only growing. We have to respond with new legal frameworks and standards to support this change. The good news is that entrepreneurs, attorneys, archivists and scholars are already working on solutions. Join us to learn what happens to your digital life after you die and what's being done to give you a say in it.
event::tags Panel, #digitaldeath
10:00 AM
to 11:00 AM
Web Designer's Guide to iOS Apps
80 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom G
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Kristofer Layon
event::about This book teaches web designers how to use HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript to build native iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad applications. By leveraging their existing skills, web designers can do the same specialized and content-specific work for Apple’s mobile platforms as they do for the web. And by combining their design skills with the NimbleKit code framework (the only Objective-C library that is featured as an Apple Development Tool), designers can focus exclusively on interface and content design without needing to write Objective-C. Don’t just emulate the iOS look and feel with other options: use NimbleKit, HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript to create fully native Objective-C apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
event::tags Book Reading
10:30 AM
to 11:00 AM
SXSW Accelerator: Introductions
18 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon AB
eventtype Panel, Interactive
event::about
The third annual SXSW Accelerator presented by Microsoft BizSpark kicks off on Monday, March 14 this year at the Austin Hilton Downtown and it's sure to be a competition unlike any other. Day One of Accelerator will see thirty-two companies, eight within each category, battle for your taste-making, trend-setting attention and a spot in the round 2 judging finals.
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
Big Data and APIs for PHP Developers
33 schedule::attendees
Location
Sheraton, Capitol E-H
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Bradley Holt, Eli White, Julie Steele, Laura Thomas, Dennis Yang, David Zulke, Laura Thomson, David Zuelke
event::about Big Data creates problems and opportunities that do not exist when dealing with smaller datasets. You will learn how to scale, utilize, and visualize Big Data as well as create and integrate Big Data related APIs. We will talk about how to scale your data, expose your data through APIs, integrate existing data from the data marketplace, and communicate your data through visualization.You will find out what techniques and strategies work best when working with Big Data. Many developers have learned how to scale their systems for high levels of concurrency. However, scaling for Big Data has its own unique challenges. Sometimes strategies that would make no sense for smaller systems work great when dealing with larger datasets. This Workshop is geared towards PHP developers, but all are welcome.
event::tags Workshop, #BigDataAPIs
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
CSS / CSS3 Meet Up
19 schedule::attendees
Location
Palm Door, Palm Door
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Denise Jacobs
event::about As the SXSW Interactive Festival continues to grow, it often becomes harder to discover /network with the specific type of people you want to network with. Hence a full slate of daytime Meet Ups are scheduled for the 2011 event. These Meet Ups are definitely not a panel session -- nor do they offer any kind of formal presentation or AV setup. On the contrary, these sessions are a room where many different conversations and (and will) go on at once. This timeslot is for registrants to network with other SXSW Interactive, Gold and Platinum registrants who are interested in CSS / CSS3. Cash bar onsite.
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
How To Hire And Manage A Software Developer
38 schedule::attendees
Location
Marriott Courtyard, Rio Grande A
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Steve Zehngut
event::about This presentation focuses on breaking down the communication barriers that can make working with a developer more difficult than it needs to be. The presentation will cover Interviewing Your Potential Developer, Planning & Project Management, Using A Version Control System, and Bug Reporting. The session will give the audience a reality check on how to go about working with a developer to get a web site (or any digital project) built on time and on budget.
event::tags Core Conversation, #HiringADeveloper
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
Japanese Mobile Leaders Forum
23 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon H
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Takahito Iguchi, Eiji Araki, Serkan Toto, Taisei Tanaka, Takuya Miyata, Tak Miyata
event::about "Japan" "Mobile" "Social Media" - what do you see when you have these words together? Cyber utopia? Shrinking Galapagos? Ninjas with high-tech swords? It's about time we know what the real scenes are in Japan. With the leaders of the mobile social media in Japan, we will discuss what the Japanese mobile social media world looks like, where they are headed, and how the "outer world" will affect / or be affected. Needless to give examples like the explosive rise of Twitter in Japan, the question is not whether the country is the "land of the rising sun" in mobile social media or not - it's how high has the sun risen, and why.
event::tags Panel, #jpmobilesummit
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
Online Mom Communities = Hotbed of Local Influencers
43 schedule::attendees
Location
Hyatt, Hill Country CD
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Jennifer James, Lindsay Maines
event::about Digital influence is going hyper-local, especially in the mom market. There are a myriad of online communities geared specifically towards mothers. Within that demographic, the structure silos even further into green mom influencers, fashion oriented influencers, literary, music moms, etc. What we learned in presenting last year's SXSW Core Conversation about marketing to tastemaker moms: Marketers want to know how to tap into the power of these online enclaves, without violating ethical word of mouth marketing standards or the mores of communities. But beyond working with these online influencers in the digital sphere, there's an opportunity for brands to identify thought leaders and extend partnerships into local markets. One successful example of this concept in the past year include Chevrolet's "Girl's Night Out" in Houston program, which brought together carefully selected local women bloggers for a series of events in Chevy vehicles, which the women then digitally documented. There were no strings or conditions, and the authenticity of the content is engaging. It was a win for the brand and the bloggers. More automakers, restaurants, and clothing brands are utilizing this concept of partnering with online influencers to create local events- which then circle back around end extend the power of engagement digitally. How can your brand leverage it?
event::tags Core Conversation
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
Stop Working Nights / Weekends and Get a Life!
54 schedule::attendees
Location
Marriott Courtyard, Rio Grande B
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Ryan McMinn, Wesley Hodgson
event::about The myth of the tech world is that working 80+ hrs week is required to keep up and innovate. While you worked 80+ hrs this week I have been riding a bike down the US coast and am more successful than you. The time you spend away from your office and in the real world is the source of real inspiration and innovation. Come learn tips, trick and lessons on how to get a life while still having an awesome career.
event::tags Core Conversation, #sxswgetalife
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
Worst Website Ever II: Too Stupid to Fail
165 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon D
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Andy Baio, Jeffery Bennett, Jonah Peretti, Josh Millard, Ze Frank, Gina Trapani, Mike Lacher
event::about In a highly-anticipated return to SXSW, an all-star lineup of designers, coders, and entrepreneurs compete to pitch their worst business ideas in short lightning rounds. Winner gets funded by a real VC.
event::tags Panel, #worstwebsiteever
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
Your Ignoring Multicultural Markets Will Make Me Rich
11 schedule::attendees
Location
Hyatt, Big Bend
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Sheila Marmon
event::about People of color (Asians, Blacks and Latinos) in the United States represent one of the most dynamic consumer market opportunities. The multicultural population in the U.S. has grown 24% over the last 9 years versus 2% for the White population. A higher percentage of Black people are on Twitter than any other group. Asian Americans are richer than any other race. And our Hispanic population growth will lead the multicultural market to become the majority of all consumers by 2050. If you apply resources to these underserved market segments your business can flourish. There is a gold mine here to uncover. Yet even with these attractive characteristics, there are few large scale efforts in the digital space addressing the unique needs of multicultural consumers. What digitally driven advertising, e-commerce, subscription and other business models might exist to capitalize on this dramatic shift in U.S. demographics? Where are the largest opportunities? Where have we seen success stories? In this core conversation we will address how to create value at the crossroads of technology change and the disruptive demographic growth in U.S. multicultural markets.
event::tags Core Conversation
12:30 PM
to 1:30 PM
Apps, APIs & Syndication: Creativity in the Post-Website Era
78 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon K
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Oren Michels
event::about The days of consumers sitting at a full-sized monitor browsing a website populated with your content alone are quickly evaporating. In order to succeed you need to take your experience and your brand to where your users are – mobile devices, collaborative applications and mashups, gaming consoles and third-party platforms. Branded websites as we know them are fast being replaced by mashups of content from multiple sources layered together or targeted experiences that take advantage of the immediacy, location awareness and ubiquity of mobile apps. This change is no cause for panic. In fact, for those that remain innovative, nimble, and open to new ways of developing business it can be one of the best opportunities to come along since the web itself. This session presents how to engage end users with your brand when designing online experiences means placing your data or functionality on others’ web properties (ones you don’t control) and vice versa. We’ll explore how others have been able to build their brand while embracing the concept of platform and how you can redefine partnerships and engage developers creating the apps that define the next wave of digital engagement. The session will cover concepts critical to online success like web services, platform development and APIs including a tour of some of the best examples of brands and pervasive experiences proliferating the digital network.
event::tags Solo
12:30 PM
to 1:30 PM
Gamification in Action
35 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom G
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Nadya Direkova, Christopher Cunningham
event::about Gamification is everywhere. From badges on Foursquare to shopping challenges on Swoopo and slot machines run by Chase Bank, brands big and small are using game mechanics to create and engage their communities like never before. Gamification in Action (O'Reilly, 5/2011), by Gabe Zichermann and Christopher Cunningham, is a practical handbook that teaches you game mechanics and how to apply them to non-game services and applications to increase user engagement, loyalty and monetization. Presented by Christopher Cunningham, this session will help attendees discover winning strategies and proven tactics used by meta-game designers to generate better user engagement, loyalty and retention. Attendees will take-away a clear understanding of how to apply game-based thinking to their customer engagement process and the key tactics needed to be successful with gamification.
event::tags Book Reading
12:30 PM
to 1:30 PM
Platform Success: Earning Developers’ Trust, Hearts and Minds
6 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Room 12AB
eventtype Panel, Interactive
event::about How can developers thrive in the age of the mobile revolution? Platform innovators must cultivate developers on many levels, from ease of development to promotion of apps to potential to make money.
event::tags Sponsored Panel
2:00 PM
to 3:00 PM
Keynote: Felicia Day
313 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom D
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Felicia Day, Liz Shannon Miller
event::about
Also simulcasted in:
ACC Room 9ABC, 18ABCD, Ballroom A-G
AT&T Conference Center Grand Ballroom
Driskill Ballroom
Hilton Salon C, H
Hilton Garden Inn Sabine
Hyatt TX Ballroom 1-7
Radisson Town Lake Ballroom
Sheraton Capitol A-H
The future of entertainment is one of uncertainty and opportunity. As traditional formats like television and movies lose eyeballs to video games and user-generated content, where is this creative revolution taking us? Join one of leading voices in scripted internet content, Felicia Day, in discussing the journey that took her from a video shot in her garage to a four season production deal with Xbox and Sprint. She will speak about harnessing social media to build her show "The Guild" to over 100 million views, and building upon her success to produce her upcoming web series with EA/Bioware, "Dragon Age: Redemption". There has never been a better time to be an independent creator, learn from one of the innovators. Bottom Line: The time to break through traditional barriers is now.
3:30 PM
to 4:30 PM
Checking into Chinese Location Based Services
19 schedule::attendees
Location
AT&T Conference Center, Room 204
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker David Liu, Yuancheng Yang
event::about Jiepang is the leading foursquare-like LBS service of China. Through many creative location-based marketing campaigns with global brands in China, we have observed that virtual badges can be a strong incentive for user check-in activities. In the case when the badge is associated with real-world benefits (e.g. discounts), such responses will be even more obvious. However, it is always controversial to measure the performance of a LBS marketing campaign. Jiepang will present an interesting model to analyze the online and offline results and also compare the difference between US and China LBS services. Session co-organized by the McCombs School of Business and the Center for Research in Electronic Commerce (CREC).
event::tags Dual
3:30 PM
to 4:30 PM
Congratulations, Your Robot Just Accepted Your Friend Request
14 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton Garden Inn, Sabine
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Rich LeGrand
event::about Telepresence is a straightforward application of robot technology -- a robot becomes your eyes, ears and possibly arms and legs which allows you to become "telepresent" in a remote location. But telepresence is only one example of how you might want to interact with a robot over the web. We are using social networks to interact with robots and physical devices so they can become part of your custom information network. We use Google technologies such a Gtalk and Android to form the basis of the network. And we plan on making middle school, high school and college kids our first users. This project is open source.
event::tags Solo
3:30 PM
to 4:30 PM
Critical Thinking for UX Designers (Or Anyone, Really)
138 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom A
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Christina Wodtke, Russ Unger
event::about Love creative problem solving, but need something more practical--something specific to User Experience? Russ and Christina will share with you the exercises they use to solve the REAL problems. You'll flex your critical thinking muscle through a series of jumpstarter activities. Even better, attendees will be encouraged to participate, if not embarrass themselves in front of a room full of their peers as they challenge themselves to see past the first, obvious--and often incorrect--answers, and start to flip problems on their heads to see solutions from a different view.
event::tags Dual, #critthink
3:30 PM
to 4:30 PM
CSS3: Beyond the Basics
107 schedule::attendees
Location
Sheraton, Capitol E-H
eventtype Panel, Interactive
event::about Think you know what's in CSS3? Think again. CSS3 brings a wealth of new possibilities -- as well as limitations, and cross-browser bugs. We've done the grunt work, finding out what works and what doesn't, and we lay out all the best new tricks, including new selectors, advanced animation and gradients, and even automatic layout changes when mobile devices change orientation. Learn techniques that you can use today in real browsers, without the painful trial and error
3:30 PM
to 4:30 PM
Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty
37 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom G
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker David Kadavy
event::about There are plenty of tools and tips available for technically applying design to an application or website; but the classical fundamentals that make websites and products beautiful and engaging remain a mystery. David Kadavy - freelance designer to Silicon Valley clients such as oDesk, UserVoice, and PBworks - will provide a sneak preview of content from his book, "Design for Hackers: Reverse-Engineering Beauty." David will explain important differences to be aware of when choosing fonts, as well as present "all of the fonts you'll ever need.
event::tags Book Reading, #d4h
4:00 PM
to 5:00 PM
Designing for Mobile Web
73 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom E
4:00 PM
to 5:00 PM
Social Location Marketing
45 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom G
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Simon Salt
event::about Social Location Marketing is the latest in a long line of Social Media "shiny new objects" but is it really relevant to marketers? Can they convert Checkin's to cash? Which platforms work best for which markets and how does all this sharing benefit the customer? Attendees will leave knowing why they should be including this in their marketing mix, how to construct a scalable Social Location Marketing campaign and where all this is likely to go next.
event::tags Book Reading
4:30 PM
to 5:30 PM
Designing for Android
35 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom E
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Amanda McGlothlin
event::about It's time to stop creating "Android versions of iPhone apps" and start creating apps made especially for the unique technological and design features of Android. What many designers are approaching as challenges - the multiple devices, the buttons, the lack of rules and constraints - others are taking as an open invitation to innovate without bounds. Most users aren't comparing iPhone and Android apps side by side, and neither should the designers making them. Whether you're porting an app or creating something original, this session explores why you should approach Android with fresh eyes and stop designing with iPhone in mind.
event::tags Future15, #UXAmandroid
5:00 PM
to 6:00 PM
Be Evil: Does Corporate Responsibility Matter?
21 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon D
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Siva Vaidhyanathan, Catarina Conti
event::about In this age of radical transparency, can corporations that mistreat their users or cause harm in the world get away with it? Does the market discipline companies so that responsibility is now an essential part of doing business? Or is corporate responsibility just a clever trick to gain a slight marketing advantage and defer state regulation? Is the first and only duty of a company to provide value to its shareholders? This debate will consider these issues through the lens of Google, the most significant promoter of a corporate moral ethos. It will consider the ethics of doing business in authoritarian places such as China, pursuing environmentally sustainable infrastructure, and treating labor fairly.
event::tags Dual
5:00 PM
to 6:00 PM
OAuth, OpenID, Facebook Connect: Authentication Design Best Practices
67 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom B
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker James Reffell
event::about Authentication on the web wasn't simple even when it was mostly usernames and passwords. Now, with 3rd-party authentication services like OAuth, OpenID, and Facebook Connect, creating good user experiences has gotten a little weirder and a little harder. I'll give some examples, and present a pragmatic approach to designing identity and authentication on the web.
event::tags Solo, #authenticationdesign
5:15 PM
to 6:15 PM
User Experience and Cross Platform App Development
62 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom E
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Carlo Longino
event::about Developing across different mobile platforms has long been a pain point for mobile developers, but what about designing for the same apps and services to run across multiple types of device form factors? New form factors don't just offer bigger screens or keyboards over mobile phones; users also interact differently with them. The most prevalent example of this is with iPhone apps moving to the iPad: creating a app for the tablet isn't simply about adapting it to a bigger screen, but utilizing the differences in hardware to offer users a better experience. This scenario is just the tip of the iceberg, though: Android is making its way into all types of devices, like Google TV, which will allow developers to create apps for both phones and televisions. GPS maker TomTom has announced that its future devices will run a version of WebKit and support third-party apps. Nokia's Terminal Mode and Continental's AutolinQ projects look to extend the app experience into automobiles. This panel seeks to build a high-level understanding of what successful cross-form-factor development entails, beyond simply adapting content for different display types. Attendees will learn best practices -- and educational failures! -- from leading designers and developers, and how they can incorporate emerging form factors into their apps and services to create an enhanced user experience.
5:45 PM
to 6:45 PM
Designing for iPhone
60 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom E
10:00 PM
to 11:15 PM
9:30 AM
to 10:30 AM
Ditch the Book: Running a Business YOUR Way
51 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon D
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Espree Devora, Giang Biscan, Ian Sanders, Lewis Howes, Shane Mac, Liam Martin
event::about The perceived wisdom for business success is that you need to follow the rules. Sure, there’s room to be a maverick but you still need to have a 5 year plan, a marketing strategy, a HR department, a path to profit. Now the rule book is going out of the window as people prove you can be a success by putting passion and authenticity at the heart of their business, and doing it their way without compromise. Ideas like business unplanning and freemium models are busting the myths and disrupting the status quo. Now there’s a new generation of role models from Gary Vaynerchuk to 37signals who are proving that by keeping it real and eschewing a big strategy, they can still be a success. Ditch the rule book is for freelancers, start-ups, executives and entrepreneurs. It’s for anyone who needs an injection of fresh thinking to shake things up: to be a game-changer whilst staying true to their DNA. It’s brought to you by a bunch of guys with their own stories of how they ditched the rule book. These stories will educate, inspire and hopefully entertain. But we also want to create a forum for participation and interaction with contributions from the floor. Ditching the rule book can bring you breakthroughs in your business whilst making sure your business stands out in the crowd. Ditch The Rule Book is for 'rebels without a suit' and anyone looking to revolutionize their business by doing it YOUR way.
event::tags Panel, #ditchrules
9:30 AM
to 10:30 AM
Hacking RSS: Filtering & Processing Obscene Amounts of Information
45 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom C
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Dawn Foster
event::about Information overload is less about having too much information and more about not having the right tools and techniques to filter and process information to find the pieces that are most relevant for you. This presentation will focus on showing you a variety of tips and techniques to get you started down the path of looking at RSS feeds in a completely different light. The default RSS feeds generated by your favorite blog or website are just a starting point waiting to be hacked and manipulated to serve your needs. Most people read RSS feeds, but few people take the time to go one step further to hack on those RSS feeds to find only the most interesting posts. I combine tools like Yahoo Pipes, BackTweets, PostRank and more with some simple API calls to be able to find what I need while automatically discarding the rest. You start with one or more RSS feeds and then feed those results into other services to gather more information that can be used to further filter or process the results. This process is easier than it sounds once you learn a few simple tools and techniques, and no “real” programming experience is required to get started. This session will show you some tips and tricks to get you started down the path of hacking your RSS feeds.
event::tags Solo, #hackingRSS
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
David vs. Goliath: Internet Startups Battle Money Giants
17 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon D
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Sean Harper, Felix Salmon, Shamir Karkal, Mitchell Jacobs, Suchitra Padmanabhan, Suresh Ramamurthi
event::about The financial services industry has been shrouded in mystery for decades. The internet is finally transforming the financial services landscape by empowering consumers and businesses to research, compare, and demand better prices and service by knowing the competition. Mint.com, LendingTree, TransFS and BillShrink caused paradigm shifts which put power in the hands of the customer instead of big institutions cashing in on a lack of knowledge. This panel will leverage the experience of thought leaders in the industry to explore the trends which have led to their success: transparency, honesty, free for user models, disseminating information, etc. The panel will also explore what’s at stake in the future both for consumers, small businesses, and big institutions. Is there such a thing as too much transparency? Does the acquisition of startups spreading transparency undermine their value proposition?
event::tags Panel
11:00 AM
to 12:00 PM
Is Crowd-sourcing the Enemy of Innovation?
29 schedule::attendees
Location
Hilton, Salon F-G
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Robson Grieve, Michelle Gass, Jeff Howe, Polly LaBarre
event::about The great democratization called crowd-sourcing is quickly becoming a debilitating hurdle for innovation. Without an understanding of how to use public opinion, C-suite officers are ditching vision and conviction and risk turning critical business decisions into popularity contests. Do “we, the people” have too much power? How should you use the crowd? This session is sponsored by Creature.
event::tags Panel, #csuitecsourcing
12:00 PM
to 1:00 PM
How To Be A Badass Online
44 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom E
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Erica Reitman
event::about Do you long to let your inner badass out online, but are afraid of the consequences? Do you edit yourself, because you think you have to? Are you afraid of your commenters? Stop living in fear, and learn how to blog HARD at this discussion about all the ins and outs of online bad-assery. Believe it or not, you can be who you want to be, curse, share your real opinions, and lay it all out on the line on your site—-and people will still like you! (well, some of them, at least). Hear from some of the biggest badasses online about how they make it work on their own sites, and all the tips and tricks you’ll need to create your own bullet-proof badass persona.
event::tags Future15, #beabadass
12:15 PM
to 1:15 PM
F***cking Old Spice Guy: Race, Sex, Micro-celebrity
68 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom E
12:30 PM
to 1:30 PM
Real Tech Rockstars: Engineers or Designers?
60 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom B
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Aaron Patzer, Jason Putorti, Jessi Hempel
event::about User interface (UI) and design are crucial to any software’s success. But, many startups ignore UI, relying fully on back end development. But UI is more than just a pretty face; it can instill consumer confidence in your startup and differentiate you from the competitors. Such was the case with leading online personal finance site Mint.com. Though founded by an algorithms engineer with expertise in the deepest technology, from the early stages of development, the Mint team designed easy to understand charts and graphical representations of people’s finances, making the previously intimidating and frustrating task of money management quick and painless. Early challenges included bringing meaning to an unknown brand in a security-sensitive industry, differentiating from the dullness and palette of banking sites while respecting the seriousness of people’s money, and creating an experience free of negative emotions often associated with budgeting and financial management. Each decision has been intentional, down to the hue of the logo (which was lightened in order appeal more strongly to female users). This dual presentation will feature Aaron Patzer, VP/GM of Intuit Personal Finance Group and Founder of Mint.com, an algorithms engineer with several patents at the core of his product who also recognizes the value that perfectly pixilated, easy-to-understand charts and graphics brought to Mint. Along with web design expert Jason Putorti and moderated by Fortune Magazine's Jessi Hempel, the presentation will discuss the value of design to both early stage startups and developed companies, how to successfully merge front end and back end development and specific design advice.
12:30 PM
to 1:30 PM
Real-time Marketing in a Connected World
56 schedule::attendees
Location
Austin Convention Center, Ballroom F
eventtype Panel, Interactive
Speaker Adam Lavelle, Siobhan Quinn, Angela LoSasso
event::about Brands must learn to connect in real time or get left behind in today's on demand environment. They must think like real-time publishers, where timely messages are attuned to consumers’ current needs. This session explores what it means to be a “marketer in the moment,” and how brands need to reinvent themselves to remain relevant. This session is sponsored by iCrossing.
event::tags Panel
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