10 lessons from SxSW

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

March 16, 2009 [3369 views]

I have just spent three days at South by South West 09 in Austin Texas; a popular geekfest of discussion panels, late night parties, free t-shirts and social networking. I was there as a guest speaker for Hyper Island who in turn had been invited to present the Hyper Island Way as a 3 hour workshop yesterday by Crispin Porter + Bogursky and the University of Colorado.

Here are some rapid impressions of the event written from the airport lounge on my way home:

1. If you are running an event (or a course), use Twitter as a back channel

Twitter is more important that we think. It provides a lightweight structured infrastructure for public messaging that is better than either forums or chat. SxSW was completely different because of the constant use of Twitter as a way of involving people in what was being said.

2. Work out your own position on key questions especially before you sit on a panel

Everyone is confused about what is happening in our industry. The panel on Social Networks was in danger of saying nothing because the speakers appeared to have questions but no answers. Other panels where people took sides were much more interesting. We should all take a position (eg twitter rocks/twitter sucks, facebook is dead, PR is the new SEO) and then try and build an argument for it.

3. Consider the impact of crowdsourcing on your next project

Can we get work done for us in the "cloud"? Everyone was talking about this especially the design community (99Designs, CloudSpring). Is this liberating for client and designer or the death of real design relationships? Traditional designers are in danger of sounding like the music industry before Napster.

4. Design your next project to allow it to change incrementally in the future

This was part of our Hyper Island presentation (obviously) and met with great interest and some suspicion. People generally liked the idea of combining creative goals with business goals but felt that neither should dominate.

5. Multi-touch interfaces from Microsoft and others will require us to redesign everything (again)

Spent Saturday evening with 5 Microsoft's UX Evangelists (who all have iPhones). They are passionate about the continued evolution of interfaces including Silverlight; particularly as new tools extend the vocabulary of what is possible. Expect to have to redesign every site and every application regularly

6. Lawrence Lessig is right that we need to change some fundamental things (in his case campaign financing) before changing other things become possible

Lessig is a lawyer, perhaps the internet lawyer; involved with Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and issues of copyright and intellectual property. He has recently switched his focus to campaign financing because he believes that without changes in the way legislation is made many of the big issues (privacy, security, IPR and climate change) cannot be solved. I took away from his excellent presentation the possibility that many of us focus on solving the wrong problems.

7. Find ways to stand back from the current debate and look for general patterns

This was also part of the Hyper Island session but validated by other sessions trying to do the same thing. In our case we are trying to create "opportunity maps" to explain to clients and agencies where the opportunities are in the digital landscape.

8. Continue to explore mashups of both data and service

We know this but we are still trying to build things from scratch. Lose the "not invented here" mentality and experiment with all of the tools and APIs out there.

9. Clients and brands should always use digital to initiate and maintain conversations

Lots of discussions about the unique aspects of digital and the social aspects come out on top. Conversations have to be open, honest, two-way and interesting!

10. Free and low cost are very attractive

None of us are immune from the downward pressure on prices that is affecting the whole economy. Customers want to be able to try things out for free, consider alternatives for free and only then perhaps move to a premium service. Consider the impact on agencies!