HPB Voices Reloaded
March - April 2007
A touch of Southern hospitality
In March 2007, Vanessa attended the South By Southwest (SXSW) interactive conference, made new friends and learnt new things. She shares her story with us.
Sections:
A little background history: SXSW started off as a music festival in 1987, as an opportunity for undiscovered bands to get signed by recording labels. In 1994, film and interactive conferences were added. SXSW draws people from all over the United States and other parts of the world. I attended the Interactive portion of the conference, which was relevant to my work in the New Media Unit.
Before the conference…
Austin, the real lone star?
Austin may be the capital of Texas, but I’m told it was the only city that voted against its former governor, George Bush, during the presidential elections. The theory is that more former Silicon Valley people have moved to Austin in recent years, thus spreading more liberal views.
Austin is a little more quirky than other cities in Texas. For instance, you can go for daily tours of the city … on a Segway!
Whole Foods Market
I always wanted to visit the Whole Foods Market, rated by Forbes as the 5th best company to work in. Their headquarters is in Austin. If you’re a fresh food lover, it’s a dream come true.
Free samples galore. I tried various cheeses, crackers, and even shrimp! Everyone was disciplined and only took one piece each. I doubt they’d do this in Singapore. We might just ‘tapow’ the whole lot!
Want fresh peanut butter? Choose from a variety of nuts, ground on the spot:
They even eat cactus!
Lovely tomatoes … and other vegetables
Desserts! Chocolate fondues! Bars of chocolate!
Pre-conference meetups
I registered and attended a pre-conference party, called Break Bread with Brad. The custom here is to meet new people so that your conference experience is more meaningful. After talking to them and exchanging contact details and ideas, you move on to the next group, and so forth.
We all had to wear name tags. Being geeks, we didn’t write our names on the tags, but our blog addresses! If you think this is weird, I can assure you it does work! Last year, at the same event, I spotted an Englishman whose blog links to mine. I introduced myself and he bought me a drink! This year, I also met a few other Americans who read my blog. It was nice to see them in person.
I met the people behind the Howard Dean 2004 campaign. Dean was a Democratic nominee for the US presidency. I heard that the web team behind Barack Obama’s campaign was also at the party. His campaign relies heavily on social networking tools (similar to Friendster) to raise funds for him.
I also met the Dell blog team. Dell set up a blog to improve customer relations last year. They were initially swamped with negative comments. It took them eight months of constant communication with readers before opinions became more positive! It was surreal meeting the customer service rep who had responded to my complaints a few months ago.
The conference itself
This year’s turnout was the largest so far, with lots of newcomers.
We were told that everybody had to have a Twitter (www.twitter.com) account. Twitter allows you to update friends on what you’re doing. You can display your Twitter status on your blog, and send and receive updates via your mobile phone. It is spreading like wildfire among bloggers, worldwide.
You also know this is a geek conference when many of us are typing away on laptops, fiddling with Blackberries and talking in code!
This year’s panels covered issues like the future of video, mobile technologies, virtual worlds, online branding and customer service, and how public relations and marketing is changing with the advent of new media. There was a panel on teens which was keenly attended and discussed. There were also technical panels for web developers and designers.
Probably the most health-related panel was by the American Cancer Society, which was represented by their new media team. They shared that the Society has a lot of goodwill, so their volunteers write positively about them in their own blogs, and even defend them in online forums! They also use a plethora of Web 2.0 applications in their outreach to the public.
One of the Society’s main priorities is fund-raising. They shared how they built a virtual centre in Second Life, where visitors can easily donate Linden Dollars (virtual money), which can be converted into US currency. They raised over US$40,000 last year. I think virtual worlds are something we can move into, as well.
One of the funnier panels was on how to create a campaign in an hour. This was by 4 creative directors. Within 60 minutes, they got the audience to propose an existing product that badly needed marketing. We chose ‘Banana Guard’, a product that protects your banana (yes, the fruit!) from getting squashed. We also had to decide on a target audience, look at existing competitors and possible mediums to use.
Our slides should look as exciting as this!
Meeting celebrities
In Singapore, we have celebrity bloggers like Xiaxue and Mr Brown. In the US, there are many more famous bloggers... and they were at this conference! It felt like the Oscars for geeks.
I met the guys behind ‘Askaninja.com’, a popular video blog. They were more than happy to pose for photographs.
I also attended a talk by Dan Rather, one of America’s most respected news anchors. We gave him a standing ovation.
Team Singapore!
We also cheered on Singaporeans who were nominated at two annual award ceremonies, the SXSW Web Awards and the Weblog Awards. For the former, Malaysian-born Jonathan Yuen won the ‘Best Personal Portfolio’. He works at Singapore’s top interactive agency, Kinetic. Jonathan emailed to inform me that he was too busy with work to attend the event.
Each Web Award nominee wore a T-shirt with two checkboxes stating either ‘Winner’ or ‘Loser’. I got these three guys to pose for my photograph. In the US, it’s OK to lose and try again. That is something we Singaporeans should learn!
It’s OK to lose…
For the Weblog Awards, Singaporean teenager Angelique won ‘Best Teen Blog’ for the second year running, with her blog ‘It’s Raining Noodles’. Well-known blogger Popagandhi, however, lost out to a Japanese blog for the ‘Best Asian Weblog’ award.
For the SXSW Music festival, I heard that two Singapore bands were playing. One of them was Electrico, Singapore’s most popular band. It was exciting to see our homegrown talents making it to the global stage. [A bit of trivia: The Haze Podcast which we produced in Oct 2006, featured their lead singer David Tan.]
Overall, it was a great experience being in Texas with great weather, good food, and friendly people.