This Friday, a couple of us intrepid SmartBriefers are heading to the Lone Star State to bring you the best of South by Southwest (SXSW). The forecast calls for sunshine and temperatures in the low 70s, as well as nonstop big ideas and “holy cow!” discoveries, a taco-only diet and very little sleep. Wish us luck, y’all.
SXSW, as many of you know, is a weeklong interactive, film and music festival that takes over one of the coolest cities on Earth, Austin, Texas. Our goal is to attend, blog, tweet and video the most interesting stuff going on during the Interactive part of the festival — with special attention on what matters to SmartBrief on Social Media readers (but you’ll also notice a number of generally fascinating sessions we just plain couldn’t resist.)
Our preliminary agenda (outlined below) is absurdly ambitious, but SmartBrief Editor Rebecca Pollack and I would love your input! Any must-attends on this list? Have we missed anything from the full agenda you’d like us to cover? Are you heading down and looking for an opportunity to guest post? Comment below and we’ll work to get you, our readers, the most out of the mayhem that is SXSW.
Friday:
3:30 How Your Brand Can Succeed in the New Web
3:30 Crime Scene: Digital Identity session
5 Beyond BBQs: The Future Of Corporate Culture
5 Cooking for Geeks
Saturday:
9:30 ActivityStrea.ms: Is It Getting Streamy In Here?
9:30 Why Keep Blogging? Real Answers for Smart Tweeple
9:30 Innovation Overseas – The European Startup Environment
11 How to Create a Viral Video
11 Can the Real-Time Web Be Realized?
12:30 Is App-vertising the Answer
12:30 Debunking the Myth of Social Media Fundraising
2 Keynote: Privacy and Publicity
3:30 Media Armageddon: What Happens When the New York Times Dies
3:30 Moon 2.0: The Outer Limits of Lunar Exploration
5 Open Leadership: The Upside Of Giving Up Control
5 Engines of Sociality: 2010 and Beyond
Sunday
9:30 Our Digital Future: The National Broadband Plan And You
9:30 Exploiting Chaos — How to Spark Innovation During Times of Change
9:30 Social Gaming
11 Monkeys with Internet Access: Sharing, Human Nature, and Digital Data
11 Extending Your Brand? There’s an App for That
12:30 Social Media and China: Different Than You Think
12:30 CrowdControl: Changing The Face Of Media Or Hype?
2 Keynote: Valerie Casey
3:30 Fans, Friends & Followers: Creating Your Own Cult (of the Non-Apocalyptic Variety)
3:30 From Trolls to Stars: The Commenter Ecosystem
5 Improving Social Media With Live Streaming Video
Monday
9:30 Don’t Get Sued! A Guide For Content Creators
9:30 Future of Context: Getting the Bigger Picture Online
11 Web Series 2.0: Big Campaigns on Digital Dollars
11 Results Only Work Environment (ROWE): Why It Works
11 Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit? Donations 2.0
12:30 World Cup 2010: Engaging U.S. Soccer Fans Online
12:30 Gary Vaynerchuk Presentation
2 Keynote: Evan Williams Keynote Interview
3:30 Social Business By Design
3:30 Twitter Indispensable Tools Seminar
5 Customer Support in a 140 Character World
5 Can Social Media Help Banks Rebuild Trust?
Tuesday
9:30 Is Too Much Math Killing Marketing?
11 Hulu and Hollywood: Love on the Rocks?
11 When Swine Flew: Embracing Innovation in H1N1 Response
12:30 Hiring and Recruitment Goes Social
12:30 How Telemedicine is Healing Haiti
2 Keynote: Daniel Ek Keynote Interview
3:30 Social Health Summit 2010: What We Learned
3:30 Richard Rosenblatt Interview: Content On Demand
5 Here Be Dragons ‘ Open Source Textbooks in K-12
5 Sick Clicks: The Evolution of Health Online
As you can imagine, Twitter will be overrun by #sxsw and #sxwsi (hash for SXSW Interactive) tweets next week. You can follow ours — we promise to keep them smart and brief — at @SBoSM.
We look forward to dusting off the ol’ cowboy boots and taking you along for the ride.