Marci Ikeler

SXSW Days 3, 4, 5, etc.- I’m a Procrastinator

Okay, so my daily SXSW wrap-up idea didn’t end up happening. I guess, given my history of procrastination, that’s not too surprising. So that I don’t get so overwhelmed with the idea of these posts hanging over my head that I stop blogging altogether, I’m doing a quick, one-post wrap-up.

Before going into the details of what I saw, did, etc., some stray observations:

AgencySpy has a pretty good summary of the zeitgeist of the event, courtesy of David Bryant. Themes: Failure, Snark, and Weirdness. Yeah, that’s about right.
Working towards happiness was a common theme, highlighted by Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com in his opening keynote. The first lady of happiness, Gretchen Rubin, has a good wrap up of how SXSW itself can teach us about happiness.
Some people are way better at taking notes than I am.
Videos of a bunch of the panels are online. So are the slides.

Marci’s Final SXSW Wrapup:

Sunday 3/15/09

Journey to the Center of Design - Jared Spool rocked my world on this one (slides). Highlights:
- “User-centered design never worked.” Whoa.
- How Design Teams Work:
  - Process = how you get something done
  - Methodology = common rules for processes
  - Dogma = unquestioned beliefs/ practices
  - Techniques = building blocks of processes
  - Tricks = what you do when the right technique is too hard
- Unsuccessful companies increase their methodology while successful companies use lots of tricks and techniques
- We need to ditch UCD dogma in favor of informed design:
  - Vision - can everyone on the team describe the experience of using your design 5 years from now?
  - Feedback - in the last 6 weeks, have you spent more than 2 hours watching someone use your design or a competitors design?
  - Culture - in the last 6 weeks, have you rewarded a team member for creating a major design failure?
After listing to Mr. Spool (and watching him dance) I punked out and napped like a maniac. In the evening, I hooked up with some NYC peeps for BBQ at Stubb’s and some aimless party-hopping.

Monday 3/16/09

What Can We Learn From Games - Increased complexity in games creates opportunities for user-based designs (implicitly, through the choices they make). This has been common in games for some time, but is now happening in other media, e.g. the way in which ARGs related to Lost.
Advertising is Entertaining - Who’s Selling Out? - This conversation was kind of silly, as it was moderated by content providers and I more frequently find myself on the advertising side. It seemed to populated mainly by advertising douches (“why won’t The Onion feature my movie in a sketch?”).
The Decider Party - Best party of SXSW, mainly because I got to pat Eugene Mirman on the back (even though I arrived to late to see him perform).

Tuesday 3/17/09

The Future of Visual Storytelling is Interactive - Or Is It? - Cool discussion on interactive storytelling that primarily focused on interactive video and ARGs. I do think that as computers continue to take over mainstream media channels (most notably TV), these sorts of distinctions will be less relevant.
- “Filmmakers think that digital is trying to displace their medium and we’re not.” - Victoria Ha. I completely disagree with this - I think digital WILL displace traditional film/ TV as they are now.
- Types of interactivity discussed include:
  - Choose-your-own-adventure-style storytelling that adapts through audience participation (e.g. lonely girl15)
  - Environments in which users can create their own story through their interaction with a open-ended environment (e.g. sandbox games)
  - ARGs (alternate reality games) incorporate live elements and live events that users can selectively participate in.
- An amusing afternote to the panel was a very irate audience member who didn’t like how their definition of “interactive” varied from the one she used in her thesis, or something.
Tuesday Keynote Interview - Chris Anderson interviewed by Guy Kawasaki - Inspiring (and ambitious) discussion about the meaning of “free” and how it’s affecting businesses and user expectations online.
- The way to be free: Step 1. Create Celebrity, Step 2. Monetize Celebrity
  - Which is harder: achieving or monetizing popularity?
  - Our job is to build an audience the right way: by providing value.
- What is “free”? It’s a very loaded word. Atoms get more expensive as they increase, bits get cheaper.
- Models for free:
  1. Media model: advertising subsidizes costs.
  2. Freemium - give away 95% to sell 5%. E.g. MMORGs. Only 5% conversion is necessary for profit. People misunderstand how hard it is to get 5% of any population to pay. Switching from Free to Freemium breaks a social contract.
- Is there any scenario in which this generation will pay for digital content? NO, but people will pay for convenience.
- FREE/ CHEAP has no negative connotation on the web.

SXSW Day 2 - Beef and Booze

As I should have foreseen, I am already behind on my SXSW roundups. Here’s a quick look at the awesome on Saturday 3/14/09:

Curating the Crowd-Sourced World - Okay, I have to admit: I ended up at this panel accidentally thanks to conference room confusion. But I was psyched to hear Gina Trapani.

Opening Remarks by Zappos.com’s Tony Hsieh - So many people have written volumes on Tony Hsieh’s speeches that I don’t want to go into too much detail. But some of my favorite points were:
- A company’s culture becomes its brand.
- Chase the vision, not the money: whatever you’re thinking, think bigger.
- Happiness is the ultimate life goal for EVERYBODY - so take time studying your own happiness.

From Freelance to Agency: Start Small, Stay Small - So far, my favorite panel of SXSW. This is a topic that has been near and dear to my heart recently, as I figure out what my own business path will be. Whitney Hess is my better-known, better-spoken döppleganger.

Comedy on Television and the Web - Fun and funny panel with some celebrities (web and IRL). Interesting how people still differentiate between media channels - to me, both the web and TV are distribution channels, nothing more.

Fogo de Chao - Awesome Brazillian churrascaria with @Bescka and @Chateau.

SXSW Interactive Opening Party Hosted by frog design- Quick stop by the big frog opening party, which was pretty much how all big parties are: crowds, plastic cups, loud music, strangers.

OK! Happy Cog’aoke - Fun, backyard-keg-party feel sponsored by the cool kids at Happy Cog.

SXSW Day 1 - Panels and Party RVs

I am endeavoring to take notes on the conferences, panels, and parties I find interesting at SXSW, so that I might say that I got more out of the event than a series of hangovers (which I’m already dreading).

I arrived late Thursday night, so a lazy Friday morning putting the final touches on my new web site seemed in order. By the time I got to the convention center at 1pm, the line for badges was about an hour long. Fun!

Much later, badge in hand, I attended my first session: Oooh, That’s Clever! (Unnatural Experiments in Web Design). It was presented by Paul Annett, of Clearleft Ltd., and discussed the “clever little tricks” and easter eggs that can make design fun and bring consumer opinions up from satisfaction to delight. Lots of great examples, and the main idea, although simple, is something that people tend to forget in the realm of daily client projects.

The next session was a topic near and dear to my heart: Try Making Yourself More Interesting. All the panelists were fantastic, but Kristina Halvorson, of Brain Trust, completely blew me away with her insights on interactive brand engagement and the concept of building brand love as an indirect way to foster eventual consumer transactions.

Sessions complete, I parked myself next to a power outlet to put out some work fires and mess around with Twitter (I’ve had several people ask me my Twitter username before asking my real name, a fact which makes me feel old). While browsing through the #sxsw feed, I saw this:

Um, okay. People who know me will instantly understand why this made me excited, for those of you who don’t, suffice it to say that I am very into video games, Rock Band/ Guitar Hero, feminism, and party buses.

At 7:45, the party bus was no where to be found. I circled the (enourmous) conference center a few times, all the while weirdly nervous that I would see a party bus leaving without me. Finally, I found a parked RV on the side of road. Feeling a bit shady, I rapped on the window. Luckily, I had the right vehicle, and not some travelling porn video studio or child molestation outfit.

The party commenced, and although my bragging about my Rock Band skills overrepresented their actuality a bit, good times were had. Nachos, Jack Daniels, and Bon Jovi is an equation that can’t go wrong.

The thing I hate the most about advertising…

The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists.

Banksy

Via Home of the Vain (Nikola Tamindzic).

Kanye West’s “Welcome to Heartbreak”

KANYE WEST “Welcome To Heartbreak” Directed by Nabil from nabil elderkin on Vimeo.

Fantastically gorgeous and creative video from Kanye West for his song “Welcome to Heartbreak”. I love that the imperfections of digital technology are used to create a new kind of art.

Via Best Week Ever.

Saving the Spark: Developing Creative Ideas

A List Apart’s ideas for developing encouraging creative thinking.

Via aaronrutledge.com.

Patching ancient walls with legos

Via Boing Boing.

Yahoo’s Design Stencil Toolkit

Nice design templates from Yahoo’s design team. What particularly impressed me was that they included a bunch of nice patterns (in addition to the standard controls), like carousels, mobile design patterns, and standard ad sizes.