SXSW has finally posted the full audio podcast of the panel I moderated called Using RSS for Marketing. In addition, a short highlight video podcast was posted as well.

Check them out to get a feel for the content at the SXSW conference and learn about marketing with RSS from the panelists which included Emily Chang, Bill Flitter, Greg Reinacker, and John Jantsch.

Since Using RSS for Marketing was the panel I moderated, I don’t have any actual live notes. As a 10am Sunday morning panel, I was worried no one would be in the room due to the daylight savings time change (and the late night partying). I was relieved to see we had a packed room by the time the panel started.

The panel went quite well in my opinion as we accomplished my goal of covering the topics we laid out in advance. With such a limited time for a broad topic, our objective was to bring certain issues and ideas to the forefront on RSS and its marketing uses. I think all the panelists would agree that with more time, we would have enjoyed diving deeper into examples and specifics on RSS marketing tactics.

My strategy for assembling the panel was to get a group together that I wanted to have a conversation and with some advance discussion, I feel this came across in the panel as we had a nice rapport.

John was attributed with this great quote during the panel:

If you have a crappy marketing message RSS is only going to make it easier to spread your crappy message.

Amen. Remember that RSS is only the distribution medium and not an end in itself.

I also found numerous reviews and live blogging accounts of the panel. Check them out for a full recap.

Center Networks
Permaquid Crunch
A View of the World
EchoSXSW
Read/WriteWeb
karmalized
Traces of Inspiration
10,000 Marshmallows
antonolsen.com

Thanks again to my panelists as well as all the attendees. I had a great time doing the panel.

Technorati Tags: conferences, sxsw

Another great SXSW conference wrapped up last week and I’m finally getting a chance to transfer some of my notes to the blog. So beware, the next few posts will mostly be SXSW recaps! Once again, I’m glad I attended this year. I truly believe this is a must attend event for anyone in this industry. If you’re involved with anything related to the web, design, technology, or entrepreneurship in this space it’s the best conference to attend each year. It is for me anyway. The simple fact that the best and brightest in the industry attend really supersedes the content in the panels. And the content is great by the way.

Overall the panels were excellent this year, but it’s always obvious which panels actually took the time to talk in advance and prepare ahead of time. Of course, my panel prepared thoroughly! But the best part of SXSW is the ability to easily meet new people and make some connections. Many new ideas and potential projects were ignited for me last week and I hope to be writing some all of them soon.

Technorati Tags: conferences, sxsw

Just like last year, I’m not sure how much real-time blogging of the SXSW conference I’ll actually be doing. I’ll probably end up twittering most of it and then taking notes on good old fashioned notepads. I’ll then transcribe some of the most useful of those notes into posts on SXSW later.

If you’re here for SXSW, check out the panel I’m moderating Sunday morning at 10am, Using RSS for Marketing.

Technorati Tags: sxsw

As I previously mentioned here on my blog, I have a panel at this year’s SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas. One of the panelists, Emily Chang, has posted an invitation on her blog today for feedback and insights into RSS and using RSS for marketing to help shape the discussion of our panel.

Please visit her post and add your thoughts (even if you can’t attend this year). One of the ideas I’m specifically interested in hearing about is how your business uses RSS for marketing or unconventional ways. Let us know what you’re doing with RSS and we can share it with a large audience at SXSW.

Technorati Tags: conferences, sxsw, rss

Back in September, I wrote about my panel proposal for the 2007 SXSW Interactive Festival. I’m pleased to announce my panel “Using RSS for Marketing” was accepted last month. Now that the panel is set with a time and some great speakers, I decided to provide the details for those interested in attending SXSW this year.

The panel is set for Sunday, March 11, 2007 from 10-11am. Our speakers include:

Emily Chang – Ideacodes, eHub

Greg Reinacker – NewsGator

John Jantsch – Duct Tape Marketing

Bill Flitter – Pheedo

Look for some posts in the upcoming months as we bounce some ideas off our readers to see if we can enhance the value and content of this panel. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know.

SXSW also has a list of the confirmed speakers and panels for the event.

Round two of the 2007 SXSW Interactive Panel Proposal Picker is now live and ready for your voting. The public is able to shape the panel programming for the 2007 SXSW Interactive Conference this year and I’d like to encourage readers of this blog to vote (for my panel!)

Yes, I proposed a panel this year and after attending SXSW last year, its a topic I feel will be well received. Despite the fact that RSS is truly the glue of the new Internet, there was only one panel on RSS last year (and one on XML). The last few talks I’ve given on Marketing with RSS have had great responses from the audiences, so I though it would be fun to do this topic as a panel at SXSW.

My proposed panel title is “Using RSS for Marketing” and is listed under the “branding / marketing” and “web 2.0″ categories. Here is the panel description:

Using RSS for Marketing

Now that RSS is starting to hit the mainstream, how can it be used for more than just syndicating blog posts? Savvy businesses are starting to use RSS for a variety of marketing purposes including advertising, iRSS, and podcasting. This panel will discuss the current trends and examples of RSS marketing, specific steps to use RSS for marketing, and RSS publisher best practices.

Anyone can vote even if you are not planning on attending the conference. If you’re doing anything related to the Internet, web technologies, interactive design, or entrepreneurship though, you absolutely need to attend this conference. Last year’s conference was a great experience – highly informative and motivating. Additionally, the whole event was highlighted by all the great people I met.

Overall, I was very impressed with SXSW Interactive 2006 especially given the event is mostly a volunteer effort. After the initial confusion with signs and registration on Friday, everything else ran incredibly smooth as far as my experience. My goals for this event were to learn and gain new ideas, to get some creative and business inspiration from the panelists and attendees, and to essentially recharge my batteries. The more I talked to people at the conference, the more I realized how much we’re all still working in a vacuum despite the Internet and all the communication tools at our disposal. Even those working in technology hotbeds like Silicon Valley and Austin, need to interact with their peers face-to-face at events like SXSW. From all the conversations and interactions, you really begin to acquire a better sense of how much is going on in the industry and hopefully cross pollinate ideas.

I also had some interesting observations of the crowd and the conference. The dress was very casual – jeans and t-shirts were predominant. I liked this as it was very low key. Even the panelists and speakers were dressed casual. There were Mac laptops everywhere. Honestly, I think over half the crowd had their laptops out while the panels were in session and my best guess would be that 70% of them were Macs. I knew there was a good population of web designers there, but it was still surprising to me. I probably stood out with my shiny new Dell laptop!

There were large crowds for most of the panels and keynotes, especially for the popular ones such as Jason Fried of 37 Signals. The content of the panels was fantastic. There was only one panel I attended that I left and went to another. Since there were four to five panels occurring simultaneously, there was never any boredom and I honestly couldn’t get enough. It also helped that the panels were the right length – one hour each. Even if a panel wasn’t great, it would be over soon enough. I’m not really a note taker, but I took copious notes during each of the panels and keynotes I attended.

On a business note, I especially loved the fact that when meeting people I could give a much simpler description of EvolvePoint and what we do with RSS. I usually have to preface the pitch with a brief description of what RSS is all about. At SXSW, everyone was Internet and new technology savvy.

The evening after-parties were fun to say the least. How can you complain about free food and free beer? Need I say more?

SXSW 2006 was a very productive conference. I can’t recommend this event enough for someone working in the Internet/web/new media industries. I’ll definitely be back next year.

Cashing in or selling out? Great title for a panel, but it was the last one on the final day so my notes are understandably shorter than the others. The summary from SXSW on this panel was:

You slave independently to build great things, so great that everyone wants to buy your creations. What approach do you take when big money comes calling?

The panel included Jane Wells (Info Designer, Superdecent), Mike Tatum (VP Strategy & Dev, CNET), Chris Messina (Dir of Experience & Open Source Ambassador, Flock) and Jesse Sanchez (co-founder, YouAreTV).

Here are the notes:

- acquirers don’t look at companies, they look at people (Tatum)

- you need to be passionate about the business you’re building and the customers you are serving (Tatum)

- it’s a great time to start a small business or image business (Tatum)

- Messina stated that the smaller, organically grown businesses have been more successful in his experience; you only grow as needed

- it’s a great climate for collaboration

- it’s about finding the right fit, the right partner who can help extend your vision (Sanchez)

- VCs allow access to contacts (Messina )

- there’s more interest in the team over the IT; if the business has no cash loan, and it’s all about the team (Tatum)

- there are no real benchmarks for the number of users and application needs before it is acquired

The panel on tagging was excellent. As tags and tagging comprise so many ideas, this panel did a great job of covering a little bit of everything so the attendee left with a better overall understanding of the topic. From SXSW:

“Tagging 2.0″ – is tagging (user-driven description of data on the Web) *THE* key element of “Web 2.0″? What new tools can help us organize an internet’s worth of information for our own use and to share with others? Tagging systems are taking off now, what are the issues for communities of users and for those just trying to make sense of their own stuff? This session will show what’s new with tagging and get insights from a variety of perspectives, from folksonomies to the Semantic Web.

The panel consisted of Adina Levin (VP Prod, Socialtext), Prentiss Riddle (Tech Evangelist, Shadows.com), Rashmi Sinha (Uzanto), Thomas Vander Wal (Principal & Sr Consultant, InfoCloud Solutions), and Don Turnbull (Asst Professor, Univ of Texas at Austin).

Here are the notes:

- Vander Wal coined folksonomy

- folksonomy proves its own point

- is tagging the key element of web 2.0?

- are we even at tagging 1.0?

- tagging becomes my own personal metadata

- questions we need to ask: are these systems usable beyond alpha geeks? are these systems useful beyond a few types of tasks or categories or information?

- what does it take to get us to 2.0? practice, practice, practice

- uses of tags

• Re-finding information
• Creating personal metadata – on desktop, web
• The new command line
• Are tags the gateway to the next PIM
• Use tags as verbs? Buy, sell, print, *, **, ***, **** (rating system with stars); For:, user/tags

- we’re just scratching surface
- how does tagging help you?

• a focus on users view, not systems; people centric view of data; linking users by interests
• good for keeping track of things you already know about
• learn about things you’re interested in but may not have a sophisticated vocabulary about yet
• it may be more interesting to find a like mind than a resource recommendation

- issues with tags

• tag spamming and gaming; tagging optimization business?
• tags are explicit
• tags are text and can be analyzed
• tag fraud
• implicit tagging is both good and bad – your interests change, you have lots of interests, you belong to lots of different groups
• not all resources are identifiable – granular web pages, items – commercial products
• tags as identity – who shares what and what does that mean?

- tagging interfaces

• what’s the best way to get people to tag?
• how can interfaces teach us about tagging vocabulary?
• how can exploring tags be fun?
• how can re-finding info be easier?

- tag clouds are not the answer

- tagging has moved into the mainstream – washingtonpost.com, etc.

- moving beyond the early adopters

- we need to fix the re-findabilty problem

- more than a handful of sites are doing it the right way

- the folksonomy triad – object, identity, metadata

- the six dirty secrets of tagging

1. it’s the content stupid
2. ordinary people don’t get tags – tag clouds have too many words
3. it’s the UX, stupid – when tagging systems work, its because a lot of attention went into he whole experience
4. tags don’t play well with others – tagging systems are plagued with interoperability problems; delimiter wars; interoperation amplifies imprecision; hard to migrate tags across communities
5. rich functionality requires rich metadata
6. nobody wants real tags

- simple keyword metadata
- no control
- no hierarchy
- no syntax or semantics
- minimal cognitive effort by the user

- people really want tagginess

- syntax and semantics

- consensus tagging

- hierarchical tagging – using dots or slashes; problem is who decides what the hierarchy is?

- faceted tagging – buckets of tags; place, language, event, topic, and people

- tagging is social – helpful to individuals and increasing valuable to the group

- tagging for shared research

- tagging is simpler than categorization – don’t have to find the single best tag, just tag with what comes to mind

- tagging and wisdom of the crowds

- there are four conditions

• cognitive diversity
• independence
• decentralization
• easy aggregation

- tagging represents more than anything on web the wisdom of crowd decision making

- the moment of tagging is you and you alone – this is why its superior to Digg, Slashdot, etc; does not influence at moment of tagging

- you can aggregate richer data than just rating

- creates ad-hoc groups

- lots of weak social ties

- conceptually mediated ties