Ian Schafer

Every time I come back from the SXSW Interactive conference, I get asked the same thing: "So what's the next big thing?" There seems to be this artificial pressure to "discover" the next Twitter. The next Foursquare.

It never used to be that way. SXSW Interactive used to be about academia. About teaching and learning from each other. About the future of technology and humanity. About criticism, heated discussion and debate.

This year's SXSW Interactive conference was the most attended, most sponsored and most talked-about yet. Mainstream media set up camp at the CNN Grille, and what used to be temporary brand installations were so built-out, it looked as if they were permanent fixtures in the Austin cityscape. It was spread out over miles, rather than consolidated in one location. People had to stay at hotels alongside the highway, or rented rooms and apartments rather than fit into one of the thousands of typically available hotel rooms surrounding the convention center.

So while it seems to some that the conference may have "sold out" by allowing itself to be taken over by brands, by letting in too many "beginners," or by letting itself get too big, I think it was the best one ever. Because this year, SXSW's "next big thing" was collaboration.

Sure, people discovered group messaging for the first time (Groupie, Beluga and Fast Society). People took a lot of photos with apps on their phones (Integra, Instamatic). People still checked into places on Foursquare and Gowalla and even into each other with Hashable. But if you looked and listened closely, this year's SXSW was all about finding ways to work together and building interoperable platforms. Connectivity and connections won.

Some of the most amazing things I saw at this year's conference were actually not apps, not sites, but APIs, platforms, and enhancements -- things that were meant to be built-upon or plugged into something else to make it better. API-masters The Masher even had a Circus Machismos Lounge to facilitate interactions between people and platforms, and platforms and each other.

Brands were all over it, too. American Express plus Foursquare. Brisk plus Hipstamatic. Samsung plus Twitter. Each of these brands used platforms to make their products more interesting, and more helpful. Checking into a participating location with Foursquare, and paying with your American Express card got you money back. Brisk cans featured drinkers' photos. Samsung featured stunning visualizations of SXSW-related conversations on Twitter. And there were many others.

Anecdotally, the feedback I heard about the "best" panels were ones that were about APIs and platform development, user experience and interface design, device and content convergence. All of those panels had one thing in common: connections (to people, content and information).

But some of the most positive feedback I got from the conference overall was not about its panels, but its attendees. Its size was its advantage. The sheer number of people to talk to, to learn from, was unprecedented. At any given point in time, you could be chatting with a brand manager. An engineer. A Hollywood agent. A developer. An entrepreneur. A venture capitalist. A manager for a nonprofit organization. Serendipitous conversations were plentiful, and only possible because of the collaborative and convivial atmosphere that can only be created by the convergence of so many different people with a shared passion for connectivity. Of course, as always, there were parties. But they were so plentiful and spread out, getting into them was easier than ever, only serving to facilitate serendipitous contact.

One thing the last few years has taught me is that collaboration -- not competition -- yields the most innovation and the best ideas. If, as Steven B. Johnson writes in "Where Good Ideas Come From," innovation is bred from the "adjacent possible," then SXSW made that adjacency possible for thousands of people. A city like Austin known for its live music, BBQ and bars makes for the perfect place to share ideas. It was a density of creativity and creative people where everyone mattered, and any form of elitism was rejected. People in VIP areas at parties wound up partying with everyone else. People boarded buses that took complete strangers to the Salt Lick (you shouldn't have to ask what that is), and took them back as friends. It's not normal or every day. But if that's what keeps Austin weird, I'm all for it. And I'll be back again next year. Just like everyone else, coming back smarter as a result.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ian Schafer is the CEO of Deep Focus, and can be stalked on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ischafer.

Good tips for first-timers.

SXSW 2011 Trailer Locations

SXSW is just around the corner, literally. In a little over a week, Austin’s modest coffee houses, boutiques, backyards, bars and venues will be flooded by musicians from all around the world. The sheer mass of awesomeness that will come as a result is simply mind-boggling. I’m willing to bet that like myself, many will be flocking from heavily anticipated events such as Levi’s Fader Fort to smaller favorites such as Andy D (my personal SXSW must-see) throughout the 2 week stint.

As much as we’d like to think differently, a person cannot live off of a liquid diet during SXSW. Sure, the free tall boys at various events are enticing, but there comes a time when your stomach will demand something with a bit more sustenance. In come the trailers. As if their typical nomadic nature wasn’t difficult enough to keep up with, SXSW throws another monkey wrench into the mix. Trailers will be on the move often, and their hours are likely to extend past usual. Hence, the purpose of this post.

This post will be on the home page of foodtrailersaustin.com until March 21^st, 2011. Comments will be open for trailers to post their provisional locations, events, hours, specials and anything else they desire. Comments are also open to anyone else who wants to give a location/hours etc. for a trailer. The goal is to provide a list of where the trailers are both for Austinites and visitors.

Trailer location changes and hours submitted by trailer owners will be added to the actual post in alphabetical order for easy searching!

Let’s hear it!

Trailer: Along Came A Slider
Address: 83 Rainey St.
Date: March 12th
Event: Catering a Company Party

Address: 2nd and Brazos
Date: March 13th
Event: Foodspotting SXSW Stop

Trailer: Short Bus Subs
Address #1: 5th and Brazos (Behind Buffalo Billiards)
Address #2: 5th and Colorado

Trailer: Spartan Pizza
Address: 1104 E. 6th and Waller
Date: March 11th – 20th from 11am – 3am
Serving up our best slices and drinks throughout the fest at discounted prices

Trailer: The Evil Weiner (Grand opening!)
Address: 200 Academy Dr. Suite 200
Date: March 12th @ 7pm
Event: InfeKTD (Inside venue for first 2 hours then in parking lot for the remainder of the night)

Tags: austin texas, food cart, food trailers, food truck, sxsw, sxswi, trailer

The daddy of all infographics - SXSW by the Numbers

Great crowd view from the top of SXSW headquarters

 

There are few conferences as notorious for launching startups from obscurity to relative mainstream as SXSW. Foodspotting, Foursquare, and Twitter are just a few of the companies that attribute at least part of their launch success to the conference.

“If you hit the right 100 people at SXSW with, let’s say, Twitter, you can effectively hit everyone there if you have a strong impression on 100 people,” says Tim Ferris, who presented his first book, The 4-Hour Workweek, at SXSW 2007.

What will be the Twitter of SXSW 2011? There are plenty of companies that could possibly make a big splash at this year’s conference, most of them mobile apps. Our 13 top picks are listed below.

1., 2., 3. and 4. Group Messaging Apps

 

 

 

 

Free group-texting app GroupMe launched in August as a simple way to text a group of people at once. They’ve raised $10.6 million in funding and added features for sharing current locations and photos within groups.

Since then, the group-messaging space has all but exploded with the arrival of numerous serious contenders. Fast Society, another SMS-based service, launched in September, allowing users to set a time frame for their group conversations and offering conference calls and location sharing.

IM app Kik was downloaded more than 2 million times in the three weeks after its October launch. The app functions instantly, like BBM, rather than relying on asynchronous and and often expensive text messages. This week, the app announced an $8 million round of funding, as well as group and photo features.

And then there’s Beluga, which allows users to end instant group messages, photos and location information across multiple platforms. The messaging app launched in December only to be acquired by Facebook in March.

So far there’s no clear leader among these group messaging apps (and a heap of others), but SXSW — a massive conference that requires massive coordination among teams — makes an ideal place for one to emerge.

5. HeyTell

 

 

 

 

It’s possible that all of the group-texting apps at SXSW will be out-staged by an even simpler group-communication tool: HeyTell. The free app simply turns Android phones or iPhones into walkie talkies. The app already has more than 4 million users.

The company recently rolled out a new feature that allows users to HeyTell message other users nearby. Which could either be very useful or very obnoxious in a high-density setting like SXSW.

6. Yobongo

 

 

 

 

Yobongo offers a slightly less intrusive way to make serendipitous connections than broadcasting out of a stranger’s walkie talkie. The app places nearby users into a chat room with each other (this introduces a potentially problematic provision: In order to be useful, other people in the room need to have downloaded the app). Chat members can see each other’s avatars and start private conversations aside from the group.

Creepy or useful? Networking mecca SXSW will be a great place to find out.

7., 8. and 9. Photo Sharing Apps

 

 

 

 

Apps that allow users to take and share photos from their mobile phones launched, won funding and updated like crazy throughout 2010. SXSW might help one or more of these apps enter the consciousness of the average smartphone owner.

Picplz and Instagram offer users filters to enhance the photos they take with their phones and options to share them to social networks. Instagram launched in October and quickly became a leader in sheer number of users. By December, the app was seeing two-to-three uploads per second. Picplz, which launched in May, hasn’t reported staggering adoption rates, but has earned respect — and funds — from investors like Andreessen Horowitz.

Meanwhile, Path takes a different approach, creating a selective network of 50 or fewer friends for users to share photos with.

10. Hashable

 

 

 

 

Hashable Founder Michael Yavonditte describes the check-in service as “check-ins for people.” Using the app or website, Hashable users can choose to broadcast who they’re #meeting, #raninto or had #lunch with to Twitter, or to keep it between their “inner circle” of connections. To make this easy, the app pulls in contacts from Twitter and any webmail accounts the user adds. People can also use the service to make introductions between their connections and exchange business card information.

In the meantime, using the apps will build a database of “relationship records” and allow people to learn who in their network is connecting with whom. At a conference, the app can be useful to keep track of new connections (no business cards to run out of or lose). In fact, the company intends to show off its conferencing functionality at SXSW this year, where it will send 20 of its top users to introduce the networking technology.

11. LiquidSpace

 

 

 

 

LiquidSpace gives the people who crouch on the floor with their laptops at conferences like SXSW an alternative. The startup, which launched on Tuesday, is like an AirBnB for workspaces. When users open the app, they see a list of available workspaces near them that they can reserve for a set price.

Venues range from hotels with free conference rooms to startups with extra desks. Anyone can list a space, and the venue is free to set its own prices and approve guests.

LiquidSpace is making its debut at SXSW with four pop-up work spaces that can be reserved using its app, including a tour bus outfitted as an office inside. After SXSW, the service will launch in the Bay area with about 50 more venues.

12. Lanyrd

 

 

 

 

Lanyard is a crowdsourced guide to social conferences. Sign in with your Twitter profile, and the site automatically shows you what conferences people who you follow are planning on speaking at or attending. Since event organizers and other users are encouraged to add conference panels and speakers, your contacts need not be Lanyrd users to be included. Can’t attend all of the conferences that you want to? The site also collects conference videos, slide decks and handouts in a searchable database to help absent users get the information that was presented.

SXSW will be the first test drive of Lanyrd at a major conference, and the startup is treating it as such. In February, it launched an unofficial guide to the conference that shows users which sessions their contacts will be at and allows them to search by topic for conference materials that match their interests.

13. Bnter

 

 

 

 

Launched in November by the creator of Texts From Last Night, Bnter allows users to post their messages (from last night or otherwise) on the web for others to read. Users can follow each others’ accounts and comment on the conversations.

SXSW is supposedly a hotspot of interesting conversation, but will people really want to post them to the web? As of now, witty comments like the one highlighted in the image above seem to dominate the site over, let’s say, discussions about why academic tech research matters.

On the other hand, the massive list of parties planned during the conference do present a ripe opportunity for sharing the former type of content, so SXSW could be a perfect place for this app to hit the big time.

More SXSW 2011 Resources from Mashable:

- 80+ Can’t Miss Things To See & Do at SXSW 2011
- Where to Find Mashable at SXSWi 2011
- SXSW For Startups: Top 10 Questions Answered
- 6 Successful SXSW Startup Launch Stories
- Giant Graphic Commemorates SXSW’s 25th Birthday [INFOGRAPHIC]

Photos Courtesy of Flickr, hive, fd, saxarocks Istockphoto, khz

There needs to be an easier way to edit the content - pulls the whole article in.