Tag : sxsw

I'm not going to beat around the bush pretending that I'm just telling you about some talks.

Nope.

Honestly, I'd really like it if lots of people voted for these two panels that I'm hoping to be part of March at SXSW Interactive 2012. They're both really fascinating and relevant topics and both should appeal to a broad spectrum of people who are interested in making more successful and engaging digital products, services and experiences.

Do read on...

In recent months we have hosted a few events at our London HQ. We've held a couple of show and tells, plus some panel chats and presentations on different technologies and ways of working. These have been fun: bright people sharing ideas with a very engaged audience usually makes for a good time. Also, each event offers an opportunity to meet new people, which is great.

At the end of this month we're hosting a talk by the hugely inspirational Cindy Gallop, and then in early October we're welcoming a panel of highly interesting characters for Storywarp 2. Read on for more info on these events, and how to RSVP.

Serendipity (and a poorly communicated change to the SXSWi programme) dropped me into an intriguing session entitled "Our devices: how smart is too smart?" presented by Genevieve Bell from Intel (referred to here as 'Intel's Secret Weapon').

2011 was my first time at South By South-West. Before I left I'd been given a range of advice, from drinking my year's quota of tequila in 5 days to avoiding most of the panel based sessions harder than I'd be avoiding healthy eating. It's passed in a whirl, with each day blending into the other until now that it's all over it feels like one helluva long day has just ended, not a whole week.

So did it meet my expectations?  Yes it did, and more. It was an incredibly stimulating, vibrant and inspiring experience which has left my brain spinning. But, because there has to be a but, my only issue was that it did take me a day or two to perfect picking out the good sessions to attend. I'd been warned to expect more breadth than depth, and to stay away from sessions that were too close to my day to day work, but I was initially tripped up by sessions which sold their topic very well in the programme and then turned out to be nothing more than an exercise in selling the speaker and his/her start-up/book/app during the session. If I'd wanted to listen to a marketing pitch, I didn't need to fly  10 hours across the Atlantic to find it. A good talk should put sharing value first, and self-promotion second.

Two of the better talks I’ve attended at SXSW this year have been about games. No real surprise that it seems so hot right now, but as Duncan said on Twitter the other day, what does our future with games hold? What is it going to involve into and will it change our day-to-day lives?

As I write this, ten twelve of the Many are packed into economy-class seating on their way to Austin, Texas for South by Southwest.

I’m not. I wasn’t invited. On the downside, I miss out on drinking my liver into a foie-gras-like state and eating burritos the size of Wales for breakfast¹. On the upside, I get to avoid the charmless shopping-mall ambiance of Heathrow airport², the legendarily unwelcoming demeanour of US immigration officials, and the scrotum-groping attentions of TSA goons, and I get to write snide blog posts about it. So it’s not all bad! And, in fact, despite the fact that I’m not going, I’ve ended up being involved with one rather fun aspect of the trip.

If you go to http://madebymany.com/ right now, you’ll see something a little different from usual.

Last week our new iPad app, the SXSW-themed Holler Gram, hit the app store. Today we’re introducing the Holler Gram to the world with a post on the design story and an in-person show and tell over a beer at MxM HQ this evening.

The Holler Gram is a cheeky, disruptive little number we’re calling “a physical messaging platform”. It turns your iPad into a glowing sign you can use during the sessions and parties of SXSWi 2011 this coming week. It’s fully wired up to Twitter and stacked with pre-set messages and a big numbers score-slider so you can unleash your inner armchair critic pretty much whenever and wherever you please. Intrigued? Read on...

So this week is the beginning of the week-long party conference that is SXSW Interactive. Austin is going to be submerged with geeks from across the globe, including, of course, some of us from Made by Many. A lot of tequila will be drunk, and a lot of interesting conversations with people we otherwise only know on Twitter will be had (I anticipate ‘you look nothing like your avatar’ and 'you look exactly like your avatar' being oft-used phrases!).

Last weekend I participated in the Guardian/Rewired State SXSW (or in hash tag form #gSxSW) hack day event.  I had a fantastic time, met some great developers and journalists, and was part of the team that came away with the prize for best hack.  Surely this is worthy of a blog post?

The days are ticking down until the mother of all networking, tech-goggling, idea-exploding, tequila-swilling events, SXSWi.

Last year we headed West en masse, but this year we're taking a slightly smaller contingent (note I did not say 'keeping a lower profile' – there'll be none of that!). However, in keeping with last year, we're kicking off our Austin mission with a London tweet-up.