While I was at SXSW this year, I attended a session that focused on techniques to improve PowerPoint presentations called Presenting Straight to the Brain. I was immediately interested because presentations are a way of life in the agency world. Okay – I also might have been a little interested to see if the panel were giving any tips for mind control that I could use to help in that next big presentation. Though I may have been a little disappointed on the lack of ‘How to Be a Benevolent Svengali’ content, I did walk away with some interesting insight and reminders of how our noodles work.
If you only have time to read to this point- here’s your Twitter take-away. Great presentations add a dash of caveman thinking.
The point being is that we all still essentially think, react and remember more like Fred and Barney than the evolved post-millennial beings we all think we are. Our mind battles with our brain, constantly sending signals to process thoughts, remember information and control our reactions. In the end, our brain typically wins the fight. We are programmed to be at our peak level of awareness when we perceive a threat or when a situation evokes a strong emotion. It’s fight or flight. (more…)
I was fortunate enough to attend SXSWi in Austin for 5 inspiring days with a number of my colleagues. Out of the many engaging panels I attended I really enjoyed the core conversation session: How to Create a Great Company Culture. Sam Decker (BazaarVoice) and Jason Black (Boundless Network) were the presenters and shared their opinions and advice around their own company cultural experiences.
It is one thing to preach culture and another to resonate it. I believe that these two are the real deal and truly do take the time to understand and value the importance of their own company culture. One of the first things Black said that rang true is that investors look at spreadsheets, while he looks at the lines around the numbers. The lines are the culture and you need them in place to make the numbers work. I could not agree more with this analogy. Here are a few other key pieces to creating a great company culture that Decker and Black shared with us:
Of all of the talks given at SXSW ‘09, I loved the last 15 minutes of Tony Hsieh’s presentation the best. This part of his talk focused on The Science of Happiness and his earnest desire to spend 10% of his time studying the structured elements of what makes all of us happy. The three levels he shared were: rockstar, flow, and meaning/higher purpose (check out Slide 44 on the Slideshare presentation below). I’m now dedicated to reading and learning more about this balanced, structured approach to happiness. Comment below if you recommend a good book that speaks to you on this topic.
Ah, the vastly entertaining Guy Kawasaki started off the keynote with swagger and a few digs on Sarah Lacy’s dismal interview of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg which happened exactly one year ago at SXSW. Guy followed up with some poignant questions for Wired Magazine publisher Chris Anderson who is about to publish his book “FREE” which of course be free in its electronic version. The debate centered around whether or not freemium (new word thrown around liberally in this SXSW Kawasaki / Anderson interview) products lower the value of that product based on pricing it as FREE for the standard/limited/trial version and a cost to the premium version of that product or software. Check out the video and tweets below to draw your own conclusions.
My Kawasaki / Anderson tweets—-
#sxsw keynote – who’s going to be the star – Guy Kawasaki or Chris Anderson? Will Guy give more Apple examples or Alltop?11:49 AM Mar 17thfrom TweetDeck
Kawasaki and anderson take the stage now. Gonna be good – I feel it.12:04 PM Mar 17thfrom web
Sarah lacey jabs already by kawasaki – nice.12:06 PM Mar 17thfrom web
The big question is how will twitter make money now?12:07 PM Mar 17thfrom web
Before this presentation at SXSW, I had no idea what “whuffie” was. Check out the video, slideshare presentation, and tweets below to get the real definition, but my paraphrased version is that whuffie is good karma points but more in the context of an online community. I sat next to Portland’s social media guru, Dawn Foster, Shizzow founder Ryan Snyder, and Silicon Florist’s Rick Turoczy – so the side conversations were as valuable as the actual presentations. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, there was a huge Portland turnout for SXSW ‘09 – impressive.
Got some great ideas from the Breakthrough Innovation talk at SXSW. Instead of looking at incremental changes and feature bloat, look at game-changers (e.g. Wii, iPhone) by focusing on one thing you do really well – so well that you’d put it as the word or phrase on your super hero outfit. A phrase that does NOT work would be something like “Increased Productivity.” A lot of her points reinforced what I recently read in the book “Made to Stick” by Dan and Chip Heath. If you are in a product development cycle like we are here at eROI, this session was uber-relevant. Check out the video and my tweets below.
My tweets—-
#sxsw session on making breakthroughs – we often get into an arms race w/ competitors and hit a brick wall1:34 PM Mar 16thfrom TweetDeck
breakthroughs with ideas or performance – Kathy Sierra seems like she’s gonna be a rockin speaker #sxsw1:35 PM Mar 16thfrom TweetDeck
Presentation Based on the book by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval—-
Great examples in this presentation and the book is an easy read for the flight home – I got through it in a couple hours. The only bummer was that the authors couldn’t make it to present and sent one of their execs instead. Otherwise, lots of great examples about how paying attention to the details matter. A lot of times it is important to “sweat the small stuff”.
My tweets from this session—-
In “the power of small” #sxsw session now in Room 10 – great examples of shreddie diamonds (vs. squares), aflac, and swiffers8:24 AM Mar 16thfrom TweetDeck
great SNL spoof called “swiffer sweepers” with sweeping your floor with your kids bodies in swiffer outfits – good stuff8:25 AM Mar 16thfrom TweetDeck
To the rebel in all of us, James Powderly is our part-nefarious, part-make-the-world-a-better-place hero. As you’ll see from the video and my tweets live from the Monday keynote speech below, Powderly is intoxicating in his allure to scrawl graffiti all over a 500 foot building with amplified lasers and projectors. He even got incarcerated before the Beijing Olympics last year for 10 days for attempting to pull off an impermanent graffiti trick on mass scale. What he didn’t talk about until the last question of the session was his new project to enable a quadriplegic man to be able to do art again, but this time through his eyes (and lasers) instead of his hands. Creativity in such an authentic way – not sure you get a sense of his energy from the video below.
My tweets for this SXSW session—-
#sxsw keynote – just had 2000 people cooperatively give middle finger to speaker james powderly, grafitti research lab12:18 PM Mar 16thfrom web
This SXSW panel was great from an entrepreneurial perspective, especially with Kaiser Kuo’s insight into Chinese entrepreneurialism and how American entrepreneurs can partner with Chinese companies to enter the Chinese market. Robert Scoble has the rockstar fanfare from the SXSW crowd, but I thought Kaiser Kuo was the real star on this panel from his insights.
My tweets for this session—-
In #sxsw session with scoble – ditch the valley and run for the hills8:03 AM Mar 15thfrom web
Mike maples jr invested in twitter in the beginning – it could have only started in the valley8:11 AM Mar 15thfrom web
Kaiser Kuo: the world is NOT flat. It’s spiky with major innovation centers like San Fran, Beijing, Boston, etc. It snowballs from epicenter8:21 AM Mar 15thfrom TweetDeck
I went back through my 287 tweets from five days at SXSW Interactive with an intention to do a dozen different blog posts. Instead, I realize that I just need to share bits of inspiration instead of piecing together thorough notes for each session I attended.
Overall takeaways:
Portland interactive and social media attendees were huge – there were probably 250+ Portlanders attending SXSW and we got to spend more quality time in sessions, restaurants, house parties, and bars in Austin, TX than in Portland – funny how that happens.
eROI team-building was pretty amazing. There were 15 of us at the event and it allowed us to learn and share in a very human way, which is a lot tougher to do in the office.
Informal vibe to the event: thankfully. Couches were in some sessions, outdoor tent parties just outside the Convention Center. But, the tone that speakers and attendees had was very informal and allowed for the walls/barricades to be down to facilitate networking and learning.
Rebellious attitude – maybe this is the influence of indie musicians and film-makers filling in towards the end of the Interactive part of SXSW, but one keynote in particular exemplified this: James Powderly explaining his mass-scale graffiti art. I loved this edge to the speakers and sessions.
OK – I guess I need to do separate blog posts to show some cool visuals and videos of my favorite influences there.
I’m publishing my schedule for SXSW – it’s kind of ridiculous how much stuff there is to see and learn. This is my first time to the amazing, well-known event and we are showing up in full force – 1/3 of eROI staffers will be there, but clients, don’t fret, we will be on email and working during most of it. Cheers!
Part of me is distressed by this news and part of me is happy. Why? Because I’m eROI’s Emerging Technologies Manager; guess what I do! According to this survey, 90% of 4000 people state their leading activity on the internet is sending and receiving email. Booooooooring (shhh don’t tell my boss I said that)!!
While eROI is firmly embedded as a leader in the email marketing industry, I’m on the lookout for next thing, and enjoying every minute of it. And in the spirit of being completely honest, everything I am loving right now will probably never be as useful as email -or- maybe it’s just too similar to notice.
When people think of Texas, I don’t think rain is something that comes up in their minds, yet that’s what it did Sunday night, rain. It was unfortunate this happened our last night of the conference. We didn’t get to meet many new people and most of the night consisted of drying off between stints of running in the rain, a lot. It’s ok though, we still managed to catch a few shows and play some foosball on the way home from The Fray Cafe. Let me just say, Leslie couldn’t handle me on the table (-; After wringing our clothes out, we went to sleep. It was a nice memory that escaped me the night before.
We woke up to a sunny Austin morning and wished we had a few more days to stay, but work called, so we had to get all we could out of that day. It turns out chance favored us.
Somewhere in the conferencing 101 handbook is a blurb about going out and meeting people at the conference sponsored events. That blurb also details how to drink at a conference, or how not to drink. There was an open bar at the place I went to and next thing you know things got a bit hazy.
So hazy in fact that I was supposed to call my girlfriend, and when I woke up in the morning I called her to apologize for not calling, and it turns out I did call her. Oops. Now she’s onto just how much I was drinking. You can take the kid out of Alaska, but you can’t take Alaska out of the kid.
The cool part about this whole SXSW thing is all the conversations that occur away from the event itself. I had no idea how much value would come from just meeting and talking to people. Last night I got to meet some of the people whom I respect and follow on the web. Welcome to Geek’s Paradise.
Great Welcome Email - Every once in a while I get a nice surprise. I was told the other day that Levis had a great new welcome email and that it lived up to the promise on the home page. What was this promise? Well if you look at the home page at the footer they state “Sign up [...]
I am excited to join a great panel for an upcoming Software Association of Oregon event called 
