sahu @ sxsw

2006-03-16T21:50:00.000-05:00

Yaris!! No it is not Pashto profanity.

What the hell is Yaris? Yaris is new car by Toyota but that is not important what is, at least on this blog, is that the people who are marketing Yaris are doing a great job here at SXSW.

Firstly, they developed a great interactive guide/itinerary builder for SXSW Music. The guide uses google maps to locate venues. Also the site has a bunch of stuff you can download (music, pictures, videos, etc.).

The guide has received a bunch of other blog posts. And they have advertised on ohmyrocknesss.com's sxsw guide. They also created their own blog called "What Yaris did last night."

They have had a car at the convention center and other key locations with computers in the trunk so people could not only come and play with the car but they could come and interact with the site.

Lastly, I just got a knock on my door and someone gave me an envelope saying here is "a random act of kindness." Inside was a card for a free iced coffee served in front of the hotel. Incidentally, this is what lead to this post.

The only thing they have not done right is have a link to yaris sxsw site on their toyota yaris site.

2006-03-16T20:51:00.000-05:00

Here is the Bernie Burns Keynote podcast

2006-03-16T20:50:00.000-05:00

Here is the Burce Sterling podcast

2006-03-15T00:36:00.000-05:00

Tuesday Panel #5:

The panel title - Bruce Sterling Presentation: The State of the World

Random Blogger's POV

My Thoughts: Bruce Sterling is great writer and an excellent orator. His speech here was mainly a rant about us. How we impact the world. The basic idea was: Make no decision out of fear. He also had a great quote from ~~Carl Sagan~~ a poem by the Chicago poet Carl Sandburg, written in 1937 (thanks James for the correction), that was really powerful. ~~When I find the quote I will post it.~~

Here it is:

The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
"I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
I could read and study
and talk things over
and find out about things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time."

The people is a tragic and comic two-face: hero and hoodlum:
phantom and gorilla twisting to moan with a gargoyle mouth:
"They buy me and sell me...it's a game...sometime I'll
break loose..."

Once having marched
Over the margins of animal necessity,
Over the grim line of sheer subsistence
Then man came
To the deeper rituals of his bones,
To the lights lighter than any bones,
To the time for thinking things over,
To the dance, the song, the story,
Or the hours given over to dreaming,
Once having so marched.

Between the finite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
Yet this reaching is alive yet
for lights and keepsakes.

The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
They are in tune and step
with constellations of universal law.
The people is a polychrome,
a spectrum and a prism
held in a moving monolith,
a console organ of changing themes,
a clavilux of color poems
wherein the sea offers fog
and the fog moves off in rain
and the labrador sunset shortens
to a nocturne of clear stars
serene over the shot spray
of northern lights.

The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
"Where to? what next?"

2006-03-15T00:30:00.000-05:00

Tuesday Panel #4:

The panel title - RSS: Not Just for Blogs Anymore

Random Blogger's POV

My Thoughts: I thought this was going to be a good discussion about how people are using RSS but if mostly a bunch of techno babble.

2006-03-14T23:54:00.000-05:00

Tuesday Panel #3:

The panel title - Burnie Burns Keynote

Random Blogger's POV

My Thoughts: Burnie is the guy that talked to us during game day at web 2 zone. He didn't really focus on red vs blue or rooster teeth but focused his talk on an issue that is going to affect content providers: Net neutrality. This is the basic concept that VZ, at&t, and the cable companies are putting forward to charge content providers like google, yahoo, apple, etc. based how much bandwidth they are using. This is a horrible idea that will stifle growth and cause small content creators like rooster teeth rethink how they distribute all the video. Looks like we need another way to monetize copper. So now we will be able to charge customers to get access to the net and then charge content providers for delivering content. I doubt that this would result in any cost savings to consumers but I guess as long as our quarterly revenue increases all is right in the world.

2006-03-14T18:04:00.000-05:00

Tuedsay Panel #2:

The panel title - Convergence and Advertising

Random Blogger's POV

My Thoughts: This was a discussion about how people are not paying attention to advertising. How it now easier for people to get the content they want and avoid the ads. So what to do? This is where the discussion turned to advergaming (the guy from wild tangent showed a bunch of examples) and stuff like filmloop where people are sharing photos and videos though a software that also has ads.

The wild tangent stuff is the only thing that was shown that makes any sense. Creating games with the brand interwoven into the game is a good way to reach all types of gamers. I am just not sure if those gamers care about the brands or if their perceptions about the brands are changed.

I have no idea why anyone would use the filmloop stuff.

2006-03-14T17:00:00.000-05:00

Tuedsay Panel #1:

The panel title - Behind the Scenes: Developing OS X and Longhorn

Random Blogger's POV:

My Thoughts: A discussion with the lead project managers of Mac OS X and MS Vista. Each talked about how their respective organizations developed the Operating System. Apple is very top down and design oriented where as MS is very developer oriented and developing applications with as much info. as possible. The screen shots they showed of Vista actually look interesting and somewhat exciting.

2006-03-14T16:12:00.000-05:00

Monday Panel #5:

The panel title - What People Are Really Doing on the Web

Random Blogger's #1 POV

Random Blogger's #2 POV

My Thoughts: This was a very interesting panel. The discussion was putting metrics around what people are doing on the web. I will get the deck that the Nielsen BuzzMetrics guy presented and post that. There were way too many numbers being thrown around to post. And since I missed most of this discussion as well the RB#1 and RB #2 POVs are really good.

2006-03-14T15:09:00.000-05:00

Monday Panel #4:

The panel title - Creative Subplot: The Viral Edition

Random Blogger's POV (this will be updated when i find something)

My Thoughts: I was planning on attending this panel but missed for a conf call.

2006-03-14T14:07:00.000-05:00

Monday Panel #3:

The panel title - Craig Newmark Keynote Interview

The podcast

Random Blogger's POV (will update when I see someone post something)

My Thoughts: I missed most (for a conf call) of Craig's talk with the guy who created Wikipedia so catch the podcast.

2006-03-14T13:04:00.000-05:00

Monday Panel #2:

The panel title - The Future of Darknets: Can Hollywood See the Light?

Darknet is a book written by JD Lasica about "Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation is a new book that offers first-person accounts of how the personal media revolution will impact movies, music, computing, television and games."

Here is the podcast of the panel.

Random Blogger's POV

My Thoughts: This was probably the liveliest panels. JD Lasica the moderator started the session with a great 4 min video that explains what draknets are and how they are used. Then each panelist stated their position on darknets. There was a lady from the MPAA was saying some gibberish about how Hollywood was embracing new technology and online distribution (but if you recall from the previous panel discussion about doc distribution they don't want have anything to do with the internet). People asked questions about creative commons and fair use. Creative Commons is an organization created by Lawrence Lessig a Law professor at Stanford to create a system of licensess that easily provides a flexiblee range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators. Fair use is a doctrine that exists in current copywrite law that is probably the most misunderstood part of copywrite law (an audience member professor from AmericannUniversity informed everyone about this.

The industry insiders (MPAA PR Lady and Mark Ishikawa, who is the CEO of a company that tries to track down copywrite violators) were basically writing off how powerful this technology is and stating that any use or copy of what is essentially information/data is illegal. They were totally disregarding fair use.

Ultimately, because Hollywood is tied to the arcane system of theater/DVD/TV release schedules they are totally discounting and misunderstanding how they can be making money online.

2006-03-14T12:40:00.000-05:00

Monday Panel #1:

The panel title - Remixing Business for a Convergent World

Here is Robert Scoble's personal blog and his professional Microsoft blog channel 9

Random Blogger's POV

My Thoughts: As companies start to interact with the changing world of internet and the notion of web 2.0 where individuals have a lot of power, in how they interact with brands and create content that could positively or negatively impact the brands, they need to really see they can incorporate such feedback into design. Scoble uses himself as the prime example he has convinced Microsoft to allow him for freely walk around with a camera and blog what people are working on. This created a culture of blogging at MS where there are 9,000 bloggers. Scoble theorized that this is making MS more responsive in designing products and more companies need to this so that they don't need to be reactive when products piss people off.

2006-03-14T12:05:00.000-05:00

Here is something random that was happening yesterday:

2006-03-12T16:15:00.000-05:00

Sunday Panel #5:

The panel title - Doc Distribution - Broadband vs. TV vs. Theatrical

Random Blogger's POV - this was a film panel so i doubt I will find a blogger pov

My Thoughts: The discussion started on topic each panelist talking about their respective organizations (hbo, ifc, BBC Channel 4, etc.) and what their documentary strategy is. Then the conversation quickly devolved to people asking questions about how best to distribute their specific doc. The one interesting thing that came out was that the net was NOT really seen as a channel that these insiders saw as a viable distribution method.

2006-03-12T16:12:00.000-05:00

Sunday Panel #4:

Picutre via Karmalized

The panel title - Keynote Conversation: Heather Armstrong / Jason Kottke

Here is the podcast of the discussion.

Random Blogger's POV

My Thoughts: Jason Kottke has been blogging for about 8 years. He blog style is very distinct. He primarily posts links to other stuff (mainly stuff that interests him) and comments on them. Last year Jason quit his job and decided to blog professionally. Rather than place ads on his site he decided to ask his readers to become "micro patrons" about 1,500 of his readers contributed (me being one). Heather Armstong has been blogging for about 5 years and her claim to fame or infamy is she was fired for blogging about her work environment and her personal life. She currently is blogging professionally making money off of the ad revenue from her blog.

The discussion revolved about how each have coped with blogged as a profession. How each dealt with their respective cults around their blogs. Kottke had a different problem as he felt that once he went pro he suddenly had 1,500 bosses. Because of this he will not be continuing his micro-patron experiment. He will be investigating an ad model. I think it would be interesting for an advertiser to work with Jason to sponsor him for a year and having 100% SOV on his site. Because Kottke is a design wonk this type of advertising could be done tastefully so as not to piss off his influential readers and support a leader in the blogosphere.

2006-03-12T16:10:00.000-05:00

Sunday Panel #3:

The panel title - Tagging 2.0

Panelist Prentiss Riddle's blog and his comments about the panel. Also he lists his 6 dirty secrets with tags.

Random Blogger's POV

My Thoughts: This was an interesting panel as they talked about the current state of tagging and the future of tags. Again tags are classifying information added to documents or files to give them context. John Vander Wal the panelist who coined the term folksonomy noted that tags only work when there is context put round them. So tags on my flickr pictures have context when you look at them in totality. When you see what I label as "street art" you can see my context.

Currently tagging is very fragment and as I discussed in the comments of the first panel discussion the real killer app for tagging will be when a software is developed to aggregate all the different tagging applications. I don't know if Windows Vista will do this or do it well but it will be interesting to see the impact of tags when vista comes out.

2006-03-12T12:05:00.000-05:00

Sunday Panel #2:

The panel title - Meet Judy Jetson: How Technology is Transforming 21st Century Teens

The moditeratorl's blog
There were 2 teens on this panel here is one's blog

Random Blogger's POV (I will post as soon as I find others comments)

My Thoughts: This panel was a discussion with 2 teen girls about what/how they interacted online and with digital media. This would have been interesting if the selected girls were more ordinary. One was from Oklahoma (her blog above) in a small town of 3,000 people and she was a blogger and had written articles for salon on fashion and had gone to fashion week and considers herself a journalist. She is a senior in HS. So here is a highly motivated person who at a very young age doing extra-ordinary things. It is like saying look at this child prodigy and extrapolate this kids activity to the rest of teens. It is not fair. I would say there is probably a similar bell curve of tech adoption among kids as there is among adults. In other words just because we target kids or teens doesn’t mean all are going to be tech savvy.

2006-03-12T11:13:00.000-05:00

Sunday Panel #1:

The panel title - Design and Social Responsibilty

Random Blogger's POV

As soon as the podcast is live I will repost.

My Thoughts: The discussion here was about designing products and more specifically web application for the disabled. The overall thought was that if one designs with simplicity in mind and incorporating accessibility in early planning of projects accessibility should not add any significant cost to projects.

2006-03-11T17:54:00.001-05:00

Saturday Panel #4:

The panel title - How to Develop for (Convergent) Personal Devices

Random blogger POV (will update as soon as I can find someone)

My thoughts: The discussion here started about currently companies develop products with no real regard for how people will eventually use them. So the best example is the PSP. It was developed by Sony to play games and watch movies (only using UMD a Sony proprietary file format) but as people started using it and saw the potential they hacked the software and developed classic games and even a web browser to fully utilize the wi-fi capabilities of the psp. Sony subsequently released updates to the software making it more difficult for people to hack it and use the full potential. The general consensus was that as more companies get burned in the blogosphere for bonehead decisions about product design or product updates the market will have to listen. Digital convergence here was more in reference to how we are moving to one device to do everything and how people are going to develop software and programs for one devise and the problems that will create. I think this is a long way off as I think the biggest impediment to one devise will be battery life. I have one phone and the last thing I want/need is that phone to be dead because I was using it as a web browser or listening to music. I would rather have several devises each working and designed perfectly than one half assed product that keep dieing.

2006-03-11T16:55:00.000-05:00

Saturday Panel #3:

The panel title - James Surowiecki Presentation: The Wisdom of Crowds

Here is James' Book and here is a discussion James and Malcolm Gladwell had about Blink and the Wisdom of Crowds.

At this SXSW all panels will be podcast and I will update the panels I attended as the podcasts go live. Here is this podcast for this panel.

Random blogger POV

My thoughts: James' thesis is that group thinking is the best for decision making under the right circumstances (generally when individuals in a group are independent. I think this is probably very try but also a difficult thing to do in live groups but can be a big advantage in virtual or online groups. In most cases groups make better decisions than any one individual in the group (even when there is an expert on the subject in the group). The argument of the wisdom of crowds is not that experts are not relevant but that experts add to the collective intelligence of the group and that seeking one or the expert on a subject is not the best solution. Generally experts have trouble seeing the blind spots in their own fields.

2006-03-11T16:47:00.000-05:00

Saturday Panle #2:

The panel title - Daniel Gilbert Presentation: How to Do Precisely the Right Thing at All Possible Times
Interview with Dan and here is his Stumbling on Happiness

Random blogger POV

My thoughts: Dan has written an interesting book (which i have not read yet) discussing how people perceive different things and how people make decisions on those perceptions. In most cases people would choose to do something out of convenience rather than something that is beneficial to them. The example he used was if you were offered $50 today or $60 in a month most people would choose the $50. But if you were offered $50 in a 12 months and $60 in 13 months most people would choose the $60. He gave several different examples like this and posited that it is not that we are stupid it is a case of our brains having evolved over millions of years still being in a mode of survival. So for a long time our brains were only thinking about making the best decision for survival and so $50 now vs. $60 in a month is about survival. The random blogger has some more examples.

2006-03-11T16:37:00.000-05:00

Saturday Panel #1:

The panel title - Beyond Folksonomies: Knitting Tag Clouds for Grandma

The panel set up a blog to stimulate discussion. Here is the official definition of Folksonomies

Random blogger POV

My thoughts: The concept of folksonomies is the opposite of taxnomies. Taxonomies are a top down hierarchal structure of classifying language. Folksonomies don't rely on this or any hierarchal structure. The basis of this user generated naming or in this case tagging (a concept that will come up often on this blog). The problem with this type of folksonomy is that it is only useful in one application. So I can tag (in this example I took this picture at a place called Hut's Hamburger here in Austin and the I tagged the picture with bull, Austin, huts, huts hamburger, and sxsw) all my pictures in flickr but how do these tags relate to any other tags in other applications I may have? If I used del.icio.us (which is a social bookmakring site that utilizes tags, see here if you don't know what that means) how would my tags on flickr and del.icio.us interact. Right now they don't at all, but the question is should they and if they should how?
I do think at some point someone will develop a software that makes all your separate tags interoperable. When windows Vista comes out (the next version of windows) there will be an added element of tagging all documents (this is currently available on macs). This will help tagging go mainstream but I don't think it will be widely used until the interoperability issues are ironed out.

2006-03-10T10:17:00.000-05:00

Here is an interesting interview from the webmonkey podcast with Shawn O'Keefe the interactive conference festival coordinator.

Today is registration day and opening comments I am not sure if there will be anything worth posting about...but then again you never know. Also I will try and take a bunch of pictures and possibly video with my phone and/or camera and post that as well.

Going to go eat breakfast.

2006-03-09T18:58:00.000-05:00

I just got here and it is 80 degrees...need to head over and get my conference stuff. I doubt I will live blog during the conference. I will probably post once or twice a day.

When I get my shit together I will post the full schedule and highlight the pannels I will attend.

Have fun in NYC!!