Moosylvania sent its first contingent of SXSW Newbies to Austin this year.This envoy from the Embassy was suitably impressed, inspired and basically blown
away. Just ask us anything about the Interwebs now.
A mad mashup of technology, sociology, trendology and
general nerdology come together for five days. The energy generated from such a
large group of presenters and attendees was surely visible from space. There
were presentations by internet celebrities including Gary Vaynerchuck (“Wine
Library TV”) & Christian Lander (“Stuff White People Like”). Creativity,
marketing and design were well represented by the Behance Network, Alex Bogusky
and David Carson to name a few.
The big wave to catch will be anything that starts with the
word “User”. User experience, user-generated content, user user user. Time
Magazine had it right way back in 2006 when they named “You” as person of the
year. Marketers who get this right will find themselves in the first class
seats of the superfast train to the future. For all appearances, the audience has already taken control of
branding and content. This is now a two-sided conversation. Our take—it’s a lot
more fun, get used to it.
The biggest loser, as anyone following SXSW have learned was
AT&T. Austin was descended upon by thousands of maniacally Tweeting iPhones
that immediately overwhelmed the hill country cell tower matrix. It did not get
fixed or get better as the days progressed. Seriously, AT&T and Apple (no
innocent bystander), only AIG could claim worse PR than that.
What was blazing hot and now cooling off? Blogging. Twitters
are definitely the new blog. It seems like our collective attention span is now
too short even for the blogosphere. A question was asked of a panel of
celebrity bloggers about whether this kind of writing was addictive, making it
even more difficult to write long, like a novel or even an essay. This was a
big yes. In fact, Ana Marie Cox (former Wonkette) has given up blogging
altogether and now spews content only on Twitter. Which Moose highly recommends
following for those who enjoy a good Tweet.
For a good contact high, much of this is available online.
SXSW.com has podcasts. YouTube also carries some of the video. NYTimes, AdAge
and many others have reports that can be easily Googled. Take the time to plug
in, and enjo
Lynn
