Aaron Burch (theburchyburch)
For those of you who are not familiar with SXSW (South by Southwest), let me break it down for you…
SXSW is one of world’s largest Music, Film, and Interactive festivals attracting over 17,000 registrants to beautiful Austin, Texas each year. SXSW runs from March 11 through the 20th. It is the premier destination for discovering new creative content and emerging technologies. Each year, hundreds to thousands of musicians, film makers, start-up companies, and industry leaders invade Austin for SXSW’s awesome panels and keynote discussions, impendent films, original music, emerging technologies, social media, networking events, and awesome parties.
To truly understand its importance, think Twitter, think Foursquare (both platforms launched at SXSW). This year there has been talk of big brands luring bloggers out to Austin with free travel and other paid expenses to cover the event—it’s that big!
SXSW offers 3 Conferences/Festivals: SXSW Music and Media Conference, SXSW Film Conference and Festival, SXSW Interactive Festival. I recommend attending all 3 SXSW Festivals but if you can only make one, you really need to go to the SXSW Interactive Festival (March 11-15).SXSW Interactive features 5 days of some of the best presentations in emerging technology, networking events and parties, Trade Shows, and awesome programs showcasing the best new video games, wireless applications, digital mash-ups, and innovation.
SXSW and the MR Guru
You might be thinking to yourself, what does SXSW Interactive have to offer the Market Researcher? My answer to you is everything. While SXSW Interactive is not your typical MR event, there are tons of panels and discussions that are directly tied to our industry, all you have to do is think outside the box and open your eyes. With the explosion of social media, mobile and new cutting edge technologies, there are huge opportunities for Market Researchers to stay ahead of the curve and adopt non-traditional MR technologies and find ways to add these new technologies to our MR toolbox. Many are already aware of some of the possibilities new emerging technologies have to offer us with the introduction of things like MROC’s and Insight Communities, Mobile MR and Mobile apps, Social Media Monitoring and Social Market Research, Data Mining, Webscraping, other Online Qual tools—the list goes on.
Attending SXSW
Okay, so like I said SXSW is HUGE, and as a newcomer to SXSW Interactive one problem you are sure to face is getting around. Navigating SXSW and deciding which one of the thousands of panels, discussions, keynotes, events and vip parties to attend can be quite overwhelming but don’t worry I’m here to help.
While it’s pretty hard to not take away something valuable from this epic festival, to make things easier for my fellow ahead-of-the-curve researchers I have outlined some panels, discussions, parties and events that I think tie in to the current innovative trends in our industry. These are by no means the only worthwhile events so please don’t limit youself. These are simply some panels & discussions I think you will find valuable (of course it will be impossible to attend them all). Take a look and you’ll get the vibe…
Advanced Integrations of Social Media Analytics
All Grown-up: Brand Mascots in the Digital Age
An Interview with Mythbuster Adam Savage
Analytics and Social Tools in Practice
App Savvy - Think First, Code Later
Apps vs. Mobile Web: Which to Reach Consumers?
Apps, APIs & Syndication: Creativity in the Post-Website Era
Are Your Customers a Crowd or a Community?
Augmented Reality for Marketers: Future of Consumer Interactions
Banking on Big Brands/Celebs for the Web
The Behavior Change Checklist. Down With Gamefication
Believe Me or Your Own Eyes: Eye-Tracking Entertainment
Benefits of Highly Responsive Community Engagement Strategy
Beyond Wordclouds: Analyzing Trends with Social Media APIs
Big Data for Everyone (No Data Scientists Required)
Brave New World: Debating Brands' Role as Publishers
Broadcasting Value: How Twitter Users Communicate Relevance
Building Community in a Blogger-Eat-Blogger World
Building with Twitter – How to Dominate the API
Chatter Matters: Using Twitter to Predict Sales
Checkin 2 Checkout: Mobile Audience Engagement in 2011
Clients Are Not the Target Audience. Users Are
Coming of Age Social: Opportunity of Teens Online
Community Engagement Strategies: Rational Debate or Herding Cats?
The Crisis of Trust in a Social Age: Issues and Opportunity
Crowdsourcing: Innovation and/or Exploitation?
Cultivating Community Through Video
Customer Experience: Future Trends & Insights
Data Customization and Privacy – Can They Coexist?
The Death of the Brand Website
Designing Stuff Kids Will Use and Love
The deviantART Sandbox (*Cool Alert*)
Diving Deep: Best Practices For Interviewing Users
Engineering vs. Psychology in Social Media: A Conversation
Everyone’s Wrong about Influence. Except your Customers
Fan to Fanatic: True Blood's Marketing Hook (*Fun Alert*)
Five Secrets to a Killer Elevator Pitch
Flexible Morality of User Engagement & User Behavior
Free Your Content! Who Really Owns UGC?
Future Fitness: The Power of Personal Data
Future of Mobile Gaming/Entertainment
The Future of Touch User Interface Design
Game On: Design Patterns For User Engagement
Gamechanging: Turn Your App Into A Cooperative Game
Games User Research: Oh no! You're Doing It Wrong!
GoogleTV to iPad Apps: The Connected TV Experience
How Brands Are Monitoring Your Online Conversations
How Brands Are Using Entertainment & Social Media
How Brands Respond to Facebook Attacks
Influencer Throwdown: Proving Influence Once and For All
Influencers Will Inherit the Earth. Quick, Market Them!
Kicking Community Ass: Building Better Influence
Latin America's Digital Middle Class: Six Key Insights
Local Online Communities: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
Local: The Next Big Thing in Online Advocacy
Lurkers: Your Most Important Community Members
Machine Learning and Social Media
Measuring Social Media – Let’s Get Serious
The New Frontier of Social Gaming
OAuth, OpenID, Facebook Connect: Authentication Design Best Practices
OMG, My Customer’s Pissed and Uses Twitter
Online Mom Communities = Hotbed of Local Influencers
People Power: Leveraging Personal Stories to Build Influence
Power of Socially-Interactive Content in Virtual Environments
Q&A With Google & Bing On Website Ranking
Real World Moderation: Lessons from 11 Years of Community
Seed & Feed: How to Cultivate Self-Organizing Communities
Sentiment of Two Women: Sentiment Analysis & Social Media
Sexy Dirty Data: Making Your Metrics Matter
Social Media Data Visualization: Mapping the World's Conversations
Social Media: Driving Brand Activation and Loyalty
Social Media: The Next Generation of Business Engagement
Social Ranking: Finding Interesting User-Generated Content
Status Update….or Status Upgrade?
The Steroid Culture of Social Media: You Use?
Stop Listening to Your Customers
SXSW Newcomer / Veteran Meet Up
Tech Power to the People! Digital Community Engagement
Tips for Getting Your App Approved
Tired of @#%ing Social Media Experts?
A Twitter Based Prediction Market
Under 25 and Rebuilding Communities Using Social Media
Understanding Humans: New Psychology and the Social Web
Unwritten Rules: Brands, Social Psychology and Social Media
User Experience and Cross Platform App Development
Using Online Video to Build Your Company's Audience
Using Twitter to Improve College Student Engagement
UX Research & Web Analytics: X-Ray Insights
Value of a Facebook Fan: Does it Matter?
Video Analytics and the Future: Mastering the Data-Stream
Parties You Should Attend
The 3rd Annual MashBash SXSWi 2011Party is a must attend event. This awesome party/networking event will take place this Sunday 3/13/2011 from 10pm-2am at Buffalo Billiards, 201 6th Street, Austin, TX.
Register on Eventbrite
Chinwag's Global Grill @SXSW Interactive supported by UKTI
The Crowdtap Launch Party: SXSWi's Can't Miss Party at Austin's Hottest Venue
Funny or Die & Tumblr's LOL Reblog party
Groupon Presents: SXSW Hangover Brunch for the Freely Hungover
The Interactive Awards Pre-Party
The Interactive Awards presented by Adobe
Kick off Party at SXSW 2011 – Hosted by TechSet
Marvell Presents: 2011 SXSW ScreenBurn Opening Ceremony
NING PRESENTS THE OFFICIAL INTERACTIVE OPENING NIGHT AFTER PARTY
Rackspace + OpenStack Arcade Bash: Drinks, food and games
SXSW 2011: Happy Hour Sponsored by Razorfish
SXSW Trade Show Happy Hour by .CO
SXSWMR
As you can see, SXSW offers the innovative MR junkie some awesome panels, discussions, networking events and parties!
The Touchstone Research team will be attending SXSW Interactive and will be tweeting cool and interesting info related to MR as it is discovered using the hashtag #SWSWMR (should have some pics and vid to share as well!)
We encourage all fellow attendees and researchers to tweet any valuable research related content you come across during the event using the hashtag #SWSWMR We hope to see you there!
SXSW GO Mobile App
This year SXSW attendees can download the official SXSW 2011 mobile app, SXSW GO for iPhone, iPad and Android. The app allows you to view/build your schedule, see a map of what’s happening and how to get there, search for events, venues or exhibitors, and check in to events with Gowalla or share favorite events via Twitter or Facebook. You can even monitor the SXSW Twiter feed and Facebook page directly from the app.
Download SXSW GO:
blog comments powered by Disqus
