My SXSW wrapup
I had an incredible fix of SXSW madness. During the 4 days in Austin I have met some of the most innovative individuals in social media and startups. I have to revisit my foursquare checkin history to remember what I actually did.
First off, here are some awesome people I met.
Carmen Magar from chocri>> German chocolate startup. Order your own custom chocolates straight from Germany. Online. The NikeID of candy.
Gary Vaynerchuk>> Extremely open and warm guy. Loved talking about startups he's an angel in as well as marketing ideas.
Pete Nofelt from foursquare>> One of the coolest dudes on the foursquare team. We talked about potential features for my favorite blackberry app.
Sean Percival>> Coolest techie from LA. Chatted about MySpace and coding. We met ~2AM at a hot dog cart that was very good.
Jim Lauderback>> I'm an long-time fan of ZDTV, which became TechTV and then G4. Jim was the host of one of my favorite shows, Fresh Gear. We met on the street corner outside the convention center.
Avner Ronen>> This dude can dance! Saw him breaking it down in the rain at the foursquare party. Ran into him a few times and talked about IPTV/OTT stuff.
Yipit>> Loved meeting Jim and Vince from the local deal startup, Yipit. They gave me some good advice for my career and were really outgoing and friendly.
Real quickly, a few key trends: I met a ton of people trying to build at the intersection of location-based mobile services and shopping deals, digital UGC content overlaid on top of maps with an added social layer, and product descriptions along the lines of "it's foursquare combined with _______".
Friday
boxee showdown>> This was a good start to the weekend ahead. It got pretty heated at times, and seemed to mostly head in circles. Avner fundamentally believes in the long-term IP distribution to the home while Cuban sees the current platform as sufficient (due to economics and architecture). He argues that the telcos can do anything better than the internet. At one point, Cuban made a pointed remark at Israeli-bred Avner saying that he had no problem if Ronen wanted to stick to online and make "a few extra sheckles" as opposed to real bucks on traditional media.
nokia party>> Met Larry Chiang, who despite criticizing my Twitter handle still manages to have the longest domain name in the history of mankind: http://www.whattheydontteachyouatstanfordbusinessschool.com/
hive awards>> This was the more "creative" part of SXSW, awarding agencies for various digital campaigns. I enjoyed talking to Toby Daniels (@tobyd), the founder of Social Media Week, about core aspects of innovative tech conferences.
Saturday
appvertising session>> I watched Tristan Walker of foursquare and some other panelists (including a chick from Razorfish and a dude from Big in Japan) talk about the future of in-app mobile advertising. The conversation focused on both pure branded apps (e.g. Charmin's public toilet app) and partnerships to embed apps (e.g. Foursquare leaderboard). Mobile apps seem to be an extremely ripe opportunity for brands to engage with consumers. In 2009, $2.6 billion was spent on mobile advertising. That number is expected to increase by 62%.
actual game of foursquare>> can't get any nerdier than this. look at the pic of Andrew Mager crushing Dens!
square demo fail >> After reading one of Jack Dorsey's tweets, I ran down outside the main convention center hall to find a demo of Square, the new mobile payments startup. I tried to donate to Charity Water, but no dice. It took way too long to authorize and never went through ;(
interview>> My partner in crime during SXSW, Yujin Chung, and I were interviewed for the Cisco Eos blog by Chuck Fishman!
ll cool j>> I watched LL Cool J's interview over Skype in the Pepsi lounge. He's starting a collaborative music production platform called boomdizzle.com. Good name.
TWiST>> Tried to watch Jason Calacanis' live broadcast of "This Week in Startups," but it never started on time. While waiting, I met the founder of Spark Capital-backed Postabon and the founder of SCVNGR.
ceonyc>> Enjoyed listening to Charlie O'Donnell talk about what he learned from Entrepreneurship and VC. Key points: it's not easy to hire people, don't raise VC money
belmont>> Unlocked the Swarm badge on the foursquare, ran into Scoble, drank scotch with Yujin, and met Mark from Plancast (or "foursquare from the future" as Larry Chiang calls it).
Sunday
dan ariely>> I love his book Predictably Irrational. He spoke mostly about how we focus too much on short-term decisions as opposed to doing cost-benefit analysis weighing future benefits and disadvantages. Key point: it's extremely easy to be lured into temptations now, not focusing on long term disadvantages– given this disposition, what can we do to restrain ourselves?
boxee bbq/kegger >> awesome gathering outside of an RV. Definitely the most chill party I went to. The coolest part was that it was parked outside of a guy's house nearby whom Boxee found via a blog post call-to-action!
town hall meetup>> nerdy foursquare meetup combined with the beerfest party organized by my friend Faris Yakob.
powered media party>> met Joe Jaffe, founder of new media consultancy Crayon (acquired by Powered Media) and author of "Flipping the Funnel."
anyclip/bliptv party>> I forgot what AnyClip did, but now I remember the TechCrunch post on them the other day. Met tons of people here from the NY tech world.
Monday
garyvee>> The raw GaryVee you'd expect. Extremely open, no-holds-barred. He straight up told a woman who worked in Proctor + Gamble's social media team that she didn't get it. His overall point was that people don't spend enough time thinking about the power of caring and engaging, and how that can be more powerful than evaluating metrics or analytics. He says we will all be in the customer service business eventually. Oh yeah, can't forget about the impromptu rap from Kosha Dillz (another fellow Jewish rapper) at the end!
ev>> Whoever picked the interviewer for this keynote should be slapped. The best part was his recognition of big ideas coming from small companies outside of Silicon Valley. He thinks this is the future, and I agree.
guy kawasaki + scoble>> Fairly boring. Guy calls foursquare "Four Space." Scoble talked about how he wants to curate tweets and shared some features he really wants Twitter to incorporate. Panelists also included the founders of TweetMeme and Objective Marketer.
wired party>> Met up with some well-connected MBA's and got free beer.
foursquare party>> Ashton Kutcher, Ev Williams, Dogpatch Labs, open bar and Philly DJ Paul Blizzard. Nuff said. (It did rain though, not that it mattered).
I'm so grateful to have gone to SXSW and met so many creative, cutting-edge individuals. It was definitely a spring break for geeks. Once you're in, you're golden. It's extremely open within but very closed off to the outside. You can turn around every minute, introduce yourself, and make a new connection.
