It’s nothing new to hear that social media was all the buzz at SXSW this year.  As the launching pad of social media giants, Twitter and Foursquare in previous years, it’s pretty much one of the top over-arching themes EVERY year at SXSW.  This year was business as usual with Social Media being talked about in tons of sessions.  One session I attended, “Voices Carry: Why Authentic Brand Voices Matter” shared an AP YouTube video that highlighted the impact of social media on today’s society and just how fast a story can travel.  You can watch the video here.

Knowing how impactful social media is for consumers, many sessions covered the importance that authenticity and quality plays in your brand’s story. They discussed engaging your consumers in a meaningful way because just being “in the space” is not enough to capture your audience’s attention.  You need to reach out to them, engage them and give them something meaningful to relate with. 

One session looked to television to see how media drives TV ratings.  Marketing Executives from Bravo Networks, Food Network and MTV discussed the multiscreen viewing experience that is so prevalent today and commented that while it’s not easy to measure ROI on yet, there certainly seems to be a correlation that increased social media activity during primetime television is trending with increased ratings.  By allowing audiences to follow their favorite celebrities and in some cases their favorite characters, they feel connected to the faces on their TV screens in a way that hadn’t been possible prior to social media. 

In a panel discussion with the Bravo team behind Top Chef 9 and this year’s first season of the online-only, extension show, Last Chance Kitchen, we learned that transmedia is the future of the entertainment industry.  Networks are creating different but related stories across many different platforms, allowing their consumers to essentially interact with their brands no matter where they are spending their time.  The stories all follow the same brand narrative so a consumer can easily pick up in a new platform without being lost or confused, but also without being bored with the exact same content.

Newcomer to the social media field was Ben Silbermann, creator of Pinterest, discussing how he came about creating this new social media phenomenon and his surprise at the success it has experienced in the past few months.  An avid collector himself, his original intent when creating this new platform was to give people an opportunity to show off their collections, the things they cared most about.  He talked about going to his friends’ homes and looking through their collections of books and albums and feeling like he somehow knew them better, or had a better understanding of who they were by seeing their collections.  He admitted that with time he’s witnessed pinboards being used in ways he never could have imagined.  For example, strangers sharing travel tips about shared, favorite destinations, and businesses sharing not just their products, but the things that inspire them to create those products, or the causes that they support, are just a couple of the surprises.          

But with all of the new platforms available, most speakers were very clear that if you’re going to engage in the platform you need to have a creative plan in mind for what you’re going to do there.  They cautioned against just joining for the sake of being there and reiterated over and over the importance of having something good to say, that your consumers will be interested in. 

Saturday Night we attended the Bravo TV Party where Jessica was in her own personal, Reality TV heaven.  The theme was a Bravo Picnic, and snacks included Mazel kettle chips, sliders, s’mores brownies, and refreshing Fresquila drinks, complete with Andy Cohen swizzle sticks. The night was made complete when Jessica got to meet Andy Cohen in the flesh, and managed to keep her cool long enough to snap a photo.  

After the Bravo Party we headed to Swan Dive for the launch party of the new Vivogig iPhone app.  Vivogig allows you to post photos of concerts, tagging the band and venue in each picture, providing a cool, one-stop site to check out photos of your favorite bands, and check out past concerts that have played at your favorite venues.  In true SXSW style there was a good mix of new music with new technology as we listened to Wild Child and other exciting bands while we watched our pictures being posted to the site in real time.

Before we headed home for the night, we made a quick stop at one of the MANY free food trailers to try the Today Show’s biscuits with bacon jam.  It was as delicious as it sounds!

Other great food included Artz Rib House, because Jessica felt that Jeremy needed to broaden his Austin BBQ horizons.  This meal came complete with a good old-fashioned bluegrass band and finger-licking good baby back ribs.

On Monday, Skype hosted their “Eat. Drink. Be Human with Skype.” party that offered not only a delicious lunch from La Condessa, but also included a concert featuring the Parlotones  and the Neon Trees. The weather was perfect that night and the Austin skyline was beautiful.

The Interactive session ended on Tuesday, and Jeremy headed back to Portland on Wednesday, but the SXSW fun didn’t end there. The Music session continued through the weekend, so it was a great opportunity to see some favorite bands!

Wednesday night – Plow Monday at Stompin’ Grounds

Thursday night – Texas Renegade at Rebel’s Honkey Tonk

And for the Saturday night finale, I attended the outdoor screening of Emmett Malloy’s documentary film “Big Easy Express,” that chronicled the journey of the Railroad Revival Tour, a concert series featuring Old Crow Medicine Show, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and Mumford and Sons.  The Austin office attended this concert last April, and it was so great to relive those moments through the film.  The stage was set on the lawn of the LBJ Library on the University of Texas campus, and the night couldn’t have been more perfect.  After the film screened, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and Mumford and Sons played a full set concert drawing an end to another fantastic SXSW experience!

As SXSW Interactive attendance has grown to an overwhelming & unbelievable size, the session offerings have had to grow with it to keep up.  With the exception of the crowds, lines and just plain insanity of it all, it does mean that there is a greater wealth of content to choose from and absorb. Sessions can really be hit or miss, but I attended two branding sessions this year that stood out to me.

The first was called Brands as Patterns, and it drove the message that brand recognition requires constant repeated messaging with familiar logos, colors, typefaces, etc. but that the human brain gets easily bored with being inundated with the same message, sound or image over and over again.  They offered a solution that repetitions with variations are not just easier for our brains to pick up on but are pleasing to our brains, creating a desire for more.  They likened it to visual and musical patterns that we are naturally drawn to, noting that the repetition provides familiarity while variations on those repetitions keep us interested.

They included examples of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony that repeats the same 4 notes 45 times in the first minute of the piece.  The same 4 notes in one continuous order would be very boring to listen to, but rearranging those 4 notes in various patterns creates a melody that is so familiar and recognizable to almost everyone.  They challenged the audience to consider how to stretch our own brands, and to not be tied to rigid brand standards.  They noted that the most iconic brands have to keep moving to keep up, and that brands need to be iterative and responsive as platforms change, not static like they use to be.

The second Branding and Marketing session that stood out to me was A Brief History of the Complete Redesign of Google.  This one was fascinating from a process standpoint as one considers the massive undertaking to take all of the Google properties (Search, Maps, Gmail, Google+, etc.) and attempt to give them all a new and cohesive look and feel.  They likened the project to trying to change the engine and shell of an airplane in mid-flight because all of these properties are in consistent use world-wide. 

They also discussed tracking people’s response to the changes over a period of time accounting for change aversion.  In the first few weeks of a new design, it is very normal for the response to be negative as people have to learn new placement of items and get use to the new look, but they noted that after about 3 weeks the response started to turn to the positive.  They encouraged anyone going through a redesign to wait a month before making any drastic changes based on user feedback. 

Although, they did point out that even after a month, they were still hearing complaints about the new wider line spacing in Gmail and they knew it was an issue that would need to be addressed. They implemented a new option to choose your line spacing preference, and from there the vast majority of the response has been positive. 

The internal process changes needed to make this project happen were huge, but none of it would have been possible without the buy in from management and the teamwork across properties as other projects were put on hold to make this the top priority for the entire Google organization.

Several talks and panels dealt with the cultural effects Facebook, Twitter and other Internet phenomena are having on the global population. Although no two philosophical arguments were the same, some interesting shared trends emerged from them:

• We have to remember: data and information comes from people, not the computer.


• Individual contribution and content must be valued; by users and by the companies benefitting from the data generated.


• Facebook must eventually value user information in a way that doesn’t impoverish the users themselves.  Think of Facebook as following the Wal-Mart pattern of globalization…user information and privacy (instead of falling prices!) is de-valued as the system grows, and the people that will be affected the most will be the people who use the system.


• The metaphor used was the “end-game” for Wal-Mart…by increasing their global supply chain, streamlining and demanding resulting falling prices, the balance would eventually tip toward the very poor and those who lose their jobs as a result of Wal-Mart’s global and systematic influences and  efficiency. “Falling prices can’t match the zero income from being unemployed.”


• Is the Internet an “Intelligent Being?” This was an interesting question, because it can be argued that the Internet is “aware,” a sum of its parts, using people as a tool to accomplish goals with “intent.” (We thought this was really deep, but also had some fun thinking about it and discussing the thought with Artificial Intelligence experts!) Is computer code “Intelligent?”
  
  Already, systems are able to penetrate the financial sector and evolve to help predict market performance and portfolio evaluation. On the flip-side, viruses have been able to adapt and “mutate” in order to accomplish destructive goals. The recession that began in 2008 can be traced to an unintended outcome from this kind of software. Thought provoking!

Trans-media is changing the way we consume our entertainment.

From television shows incorporating live Twitter feeds along the bottom of the screen to live text-in voting for reality TV competitions, it’s important to engage your consumer base through small, simple and incremental ways online. Trans-media strategies must be SIMPLE. Must be CLEAR. And we, as developers must be prepared to turn on a dime to keep up with the way our audience ends up using our simple tools. Allowing the audience to dictate the ultimate functionality of your tools can be highly beneficial in gathering more participation.

The browser wars continue.
As developers, we are constantly checking our watches, waiting for Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 to die. These browsers are not standards compliant and are very difficult to program online software for, but there is hope. With IE 10, Microsoft will finally be instituting automatic software updates so users won’t be left behind like they have been for so long. But since this will take a while, we still have to be prepared to develop for the rest of the field of browsers with a strategy for “graceful degradation” into the older versions of IE. So many great new features available in HTML 5 and CSS3, but there will definitely be a percentage of our audience that won’t see the “shiny” and “new.”

Links have secret lives, and just want to help us!

Did you know that one of the largest predictors of failure in any online shopping experience is the browser’s “Back” button? It’s true. It’s the button of DOOM. In usability studies, an overwhelming majority of users who used the Back button during an online shopping experience failed to complete their purchase. This is due to what is referred to as “Pogo-Sticking” on your site. It’s when users click and then hit “Back.” Click something else, and hit “Back.” What this means to case testers is that you aren’t providing accurately named links to the content of your site! Another sign you have improvements to make to your interface is by checking your site’s Search Logs. If it’s full of terms that should be simple for your users to find on your site, you may have a problem in your link names/labels. Additionally, these search logs can be mined for valuable information as to WHAT your users are looking for! Links are your friends, and they just want to help you!

Buzzword Alert: “Gamification!”   

With no overwhelming “products” or technologies launching this year, we experienced an increase in buzzwords with regard to web strategies. “Gamification” came up more than any. Looking to motivate teams? Have you thought about introducing elements of game play into your workflow or workplace processes? How about in your shopping cart…have you considered how to make the online shopping process more like a game with progress bars, badges, leveling up or with bonuses and awards? In mobile and app design, games dominate in short bursts of attention, and provide more clues as to how we can best optimize our mobile interfaces to mimic the games people play. Not to mention, “gamification” of our daily lives enriches our human experience by injecting joy in otherwise mundane tasks. In this, we feel KEEN Footwear is an industry leader by introducing Recess and Playtime back into our daily lives!

Privacy and your identity.

One of our conference panels was interrupted by a planned verbal protest by the Occupy Austin group, who demanded answers from a panelist about online privacy and the perceived invasion of sensitive online data. This was the most volatile demonstration of how important the topic of online privacy was to nearly every panel, but the topic was definitely a recurring theme throughout the rest of the conference. One interesting idea was the thought that “Anonymous” and other “activist” hacker groups are actually achieving the exact opposite of their goals by hacking large private systems and servers to prove the fallibility of the 1%. Does it seem logical that global governments and large corporations will advocate and support an open and free Internet if the result of that system is getting hacked and losing hundreds of millions of dollars? Probably not, and the danger presented to us is a highly regulated and constricted flow of information in the future, since big business and government tend to “win” when financial and political success is threatened.

Weather

In classic SXSW fashion, the week started in the low 40’s with driving rain and wind, making it virtually impossible to attend evening events which spread outward from the convention center all over Austin. But the last three days were gorgeous and sunny with highs in the low 80’s and plenty of sunshine! Just enough to keep us all coming back next spring to get a “break” from the rain and grey of Portland!

I attended a session on Monday presented by Helen Klein Ross, the creative mind behind @bettydraper, a twitter account that maintains the voice of AMC’s mega-popular character Betty Draper, played by January Jones, in the hit show Mad Men. Everything about this twitter account is spoken in the voice of the character from the show. Not the actress, not the writer, but the character is perpetuated in this easily accessible and massive platform.

She provides a connection for several thousand fans of the Mad Men brand, and gives them an opportunity to interact with her in a way that helps them feel personally connected to the show.

Social media allows you to stay connected to your consumers, but it’s not just about having a twitter account or Facebook page. Those are simply the platforms for building a connection with your brand. You have to give consumers a REASON to connect, because just being present in these spaces is typically not enough.

Whether it’s maintaining your brand recognition and story throughout the off-season when consumers may “forget about you,” or just perpetuating your brand in new arenas, it’s a way to broaden your market and at the same time strengthen your connection with your existing fan base. Creating content that engages your consumers creates an emotional connection and gives them a reason to want to share that experience.

As you begin to craft your story, consider your audience. Think about who you are trying to reach, and instead of considering how many people you are trying to connect with, think about WHICH people you are trying to connect with. Think about the stories you can tell that will resonate with your customers, and if you’re ever in doubt, use Betty Draper’s recipe for successful storytelling.

Create the content (the more the better), keep a consistent and continuous voice for your brand, keep it simple and always make it easy for others to share it with their friends.

Real-time Marketing Strategy

One of the first presentations I found interesting was on Real-time Marketing Strategy. It said being good at marketing now doesn’t mean you need a big, concrete plan. Instead, companies need to have a playbook filled options of things to do. You can then adapt to any set of criteria instead of doing only a few specific things.

We learned we need to produce content at lightning speed and be completely nimble about getting it out there in all the different mediums. Of all the communication channels, email is STILL the most important and valuable wayto share information. Facebook is second and Twitter third.

Business Startups

Another session was on startups and it gave some valuable advice. The main message was to find a way to keep momentum, and always have something new and exciting to say, even if it’s small.  They said to isolate the minimum viable product and go to market with that; nobody ever became big by being comprehensive.

Figure out what it is people want, and create a story around that.  It will make it so much easier for customers and press to understand. The absolute highest priority should be customer
acquisition.  Find a way to get people passionate about your product and to build a community around it.

Metrics-Driven Design

Still another session focused on metrics-driven design. It talked about how the most important thing to measure is daily active users, followed by time on site and frequency. What is considered least important may surprise you since it used to be considered most important, and that is page views and visits.

It’s all about engagement, not just number of people looking at your site. Conversion isn’t just visitors to purchasers, but also tryers to buyers (if you have a product that will allow a trial).

Guy Kawasaki

And of course a fan favorite, Guy Kawasaki, did a great presentation on Enchantment: Becoming likeable and trustworthy.  While some of his pointers could be considered common-sense, like smiling and perfecting your handshake, others really gave us something to think about.  Our hope is to continue to show our customers that we are trustworthy and provide work above and beyond what they expect.

Contrary to this little guy's blue appearance, that was one tasty cake.  Half vanilla and half chocolate.  Don't mind if I do!

Chris even made a surprise appearance at our impromptue awards ceremony.  And a big congratulations to Jessica for winning the 2008 March Madness bracket challenge.  Your prize is DEFINITELY worth the wait.

Lauren enjoying her watermelon cookie.  Yum!

I don't care how smart this concept may be, this is so NOT okay.

Spotted:  Jeff Jarvis (Creator of Entertainment Weekly)

Doesn't this look so fun?!  Wish you were here.

Notes from Guy Kawaski's presentation.

Nothing beats a Saturday afternoon at Iron Cactus on 6th street.

Justin's favorite part of SXSW: party at the HP Mobile Park.

Everybody loves Chomp the Hipmunk. 

Flash Content vs the iPhone

With HTML 5 on the horizon, we were surprised to learn in an informal poll in a panel entitled “Flash is Dead! Long Live Flash!” that 90% of the attendees “like Flash” compared to only 10% in the audience who “hated Flash.” Although mobile devices are driving developers to strip out multimedia content, the satisfaction people get from a rich media experience isn’t going anywhere, and, if anything, we as developers have to gear ourselves toward developing targeted content for each platform.


Gaming is Healthy

World-renown author Jane McGonigal had some impressive stats that seemed to fly in the face of everything we think as developers, and even more so as parents: Playing video games is healthy! According to McGonigal, extensive studies show that people actually become more creative, more collaborative and more helpful to your own community when they play up to 28 hours of games per week! Of course, the caveats to this statistic are that you:

a) aren’t mean to other players within the games you play
b) don’t play with others who are mean
c) don’t play MORE than 28 hours per week.


Worst. Website. Ever.

In the most entertaining panel, we heard all about a made-up company that is building “apps” for the Brother Intellifax 2800. Mike Lacher entertained the crowd with a fake pitch to a venture capitalist for this incredibly stupid website idea. Our favorite quote from the presentation: “Get out your jean jackets, and prepare to be-dazzled!"


Critical Thinking About User Experience

We enjoyed a small activity in a panel this year that asked us to role-play answer questions of users as if we were a browser and a user was trying to use us to navigate a website. Each time the user encountered an error, we had to say out loud what the problem was, without offering any explanation if none was provided in the real online user experience. On the flip side, we learned that is was really hard to hold our tongues when users WERE doing the right things, like filling out forms correctly, etc. and it got us thinking about how we could do a better, more friendly job of providing friendly feedback to our customers for just about every interaction.


Which is Better When in Austin? BBQ or Mexican?

This year, we tried our best to settle the debate but the water remained muddy after a sunshiny visit to Rudy’s BBQ was one of the best team lunches we’ve ever had, and a Mexican dinner at Polvo’s delivered some of the most amazing fish fajitas we’ve ever tasted. Tough call. We’re pretty sure we’ll have to return to both just to be sure there isn’t a clear winner!

 
SXSW Attendance

We’re pretty sure attendance records were smashed this year. We’ve been attending for the past 5 or 6 years, and have seen the conference grow dramatically each and every year. This was no exception. Instead of running into many of the same people we’ve seen every year, we mostly met lots of new and interesting people with some great stories to tell. And maybe, just maybe next year, we’ll fork out the extra few bucks to keep Jeremy in town through the music portion of the conference! (It’s getting harder every year to be the “nerds” standing at the ticketing window at the airport on our way out, watching all the “rock stars” come in!)

iPad Design Headaches

In this session we discussed the widespread use of tablets such as the iPad and how we’re just now finding out how people are using them as they are becoming more mainstream and in the hands of “normal” users, not just early adopters. We discussed how designers, when faced with designing for this platform, have areas in which they have difficulty. Such as:

• Trying to use EVERY pixel of space instead of balancing their design with whitespace.
• Making their design too complex and overwhelming – The idea is to feature the content, not the design.
• Getting away from design metaphors.   For example: If the design looks like the page of a book, it needs to turn like the page of the book; if it doesn’t, change the wait it looks.
• Squishing content into tiny boxes called "Popovers".  If you can use the full screen, use it.
• Making buttons too small which require the user to concentrate on where to click and not on consuming the content.

Inclusive Design and Accessibility

In this session we talked about how you need to plan, execute and follow up on the design of a website to make it accessible for as many people as possibly. Websites need to be beautiful, but also give an end meaning to all users. Here are some things that all sites should be:

• Welcoming and not discriminative
• Flexible and give users options
• Simple, intuitive, and clear
• Informative, timely and descriptive
• Instructional and provide help
• Tolerant and supportive

Secrets of Mobile Applications

In this session we learned about how mobile is becoming the battleground of this decade. People look at their phones over 150 times a day!  The competition to create apps and games for mobile devices will become more and more intense. The emergence of mobile came about because consumers value one thing the most: time.   Mobile is also about providing users with a unique experience. It’s interesting to think about how some people will steal music, but pay $200 concert tickets for the experience it provides.

Metrics Driven Design

In this session, we learned about how design can be driven by site metrics. Designers often struggle with metrics because design isn’t a logic problem that can be solved by data. Designers often say “trusting your gut” rather than using data can encourage the best design.  We discussed the “41 shades of blue” test where Google, over the course of several weeks, testied 41 different shades of link colors to determine which one a majority of users preferred. Several benefits of metrics include:

• Measure the effectiveness of your site using simple numbers
• Reduce arguments based on opinion and design choices become testable
• Give you answers about what really works through testing
• Show where you’re strong (and weak) as a designer
• Clients LOVE metrics – you can show clients which design is effective not just the one you like best

If metrics are going to be useful you have to use the information you glean and make design designed decisions based on them.