SCHED* SXSW 2011

While brands have become increasingly networked, they fail to maintain the fluidity and agility of the average user, many major brands are at risk at failing in their marketing efforts, or succumbing to more agile competitor. This session lays out the new marketing landscape, and demonstrates how brands will need to reinvent themselves.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP6940

Side projects are crucial to remaining relevant in our industry. The web is constantly changing—new conventions, techniques and technologies—and one of the best ways to keep up is to do something for the love of it. Side projects facilitate a unique blend of experimentation, creativity and play that arenʼt always possible during billable hours or client projects. Weʼll be grilling our panel to bring practical advice and a candid take on their past experiences. After all, getting the most out of a side project is easier said than done. Proper planning pays off when an exciting new idea and collaborative relationship collides with careers and family lives. Business and life-long friendships have been built upon rallying around tasks and ideas that donʼt always fit into the 9 to 5. We hope attendees leave with solid ideas and a heap of inspiration for starting their own side projects. A few things weʼll cover: • Planning and successfully launching a side project • Benefits of a side project? • How to manage collaborative relationships in terms of equity, roles and responsibilities • How can side projects make your employees more valuable • How to balance a side project with your career and family life
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP6793

Why doesn't Toucan Sam Twitter? Where's the Pillsburry Doughboy to poke on my mobile phone? And which one of the Snuggle Bear Facebook pages is real? Join us for a pow-wow on how you take your brand characters out of the 1980's TV commercials and place them in the social and interactive world. There's no napping when your characters are in the digital age. We'll talk about preparing your characters personality, environment and lingo for the demands of the "always-on" consumer. And what about the character's of tomorrow? We'll look at concept to completion, how a brand creates and introduces a new cast of characters ready for today's digital stage and beyond. Similar to my grandmother who doesn't understand these "crazy kids and their internets", mascots need to take up residence in the digital world, make some friends, and tweet about their day.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP6033

Join marketing writers and humorists Steve Lundin and Richard Laermer for a rollicking conversation on some of the most notable examples of interactive marketing programs gone awry. These incredible, disturbing, and (unintentionally) hilarious stories will leave you scratching your head and wondering out loud: “someone actually approved AND paid for that?” From Edelman’s “WalMarting Across America” campaign that served to coin the phrase “Fake Weblog,” to Pepsi’s “Amp up before you score” social networking debacle, the world of interactive marketing has already yielded a rich crop of disasters to study. If anything can be learned from the numerous gaffes made by marketers, it’s that mistakes are repeated. They’re reported in the press and then disappear, rarely cited in marketing books or publications. Why? Because according to the former editor of B-to-B magazine, “we don’t like talking about the negative stuff.” In short, as far as the world of marketing is concerned, “all is always well.” The lessons that these stories impart are invaluable and should not only be repeated, but analyzed (and hopefully never repeated again). Interactive Marketing Horror Stories provides an in depth look expensive mistakes, coupled with an explanation of why they happened and what we as marketers can do to avoid them. This promises to be a fast moving and provocative conversation that will provide attendees with some of the most important information they can use: a way to avoid nightmares.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP8219

Ever wonder what keeps so many people from launching a new endeavor or scaling a creative venture into something exponentially more impactful? More often than not, the answer isn't a lack of ideas, money, a team or a plan...it's far more primal. The answer is fear. Instead of brainstorming new ideas, in this session you will discover how to move from ideation to action, overcome the three greatest fears that hold creatives, artists and entrepreneurs back, and find a more stable path to success.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP6125

In the real world, coming up with a breakthrough idea doesn’t mean it will get to market. By nature, innovative ideas are different and represent new ways of thinking. Getting stakeholders to recognize the value of these market-shaking ideas, buy into and support them, and agree to build them, requires a new kind of design skill: facilitation. This session will show how leading innovation workshops (collaborative design workshops) not only brings UX to the strategy table, but it invents a new table at which strategic ideation and dialog can take place constructively. In this session, two designers will show how they have lead very different types of innovation workshops to generate creative new ideas, get stakeholders aligned around those ideas, and drive those innovations to market. They will share their favorite methods for getting cross-functional groups to ideate, filter ideas using the innovation funnel, and align organizations around a common vision for breakthrough evolution. They will also post instructions for conducting successful innovation workshops.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP7120

Early phase funding is a difficult for many startup companies. VC’s are not typically interested in early phase companies. Many startups are immediately international, but many investors are still local. Crowd-funding is a new emerging funding model. It offers more flexibility for startup funding, and especially helps companies in early phase and also companies that are not suitable for traditional VC funding. Silicon Valley is the best startup ecosystem. The vision is a Virtual Silicon Valley, where all relevant parties (entrepreneurs, investors, etc) can work together around the world. It means that all best people and companies together can create new global success stories Jan van Dijk described the network society thus, “networks cause a comprehensive restructuring of society at large – they are breaking old models of organisation. In a network society, the network becomes a basic unit of organization at all levels, in a mass media society, the basic units are the large collective ‘masses’”. From a VC perspective The Go4Venture monthly report in March 2010 stated that “professional venture capital funds have become less relevant to the financing of innovation for the time being”. Crowd-funding view is you can build with money, or like the Dutch Polder model, you can build with people. We need more equal opportunities, where entrepreneurs and private investors unite to accelerate innovation in more global, transparent, collaborative, and effective environment.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP8244

Is it true that if consumers had to choose then they would prefer to lose their wallet rather than their mobile phone? Making secure transactions a reality on mobile devices relies on a complex dance between chip makers, device manufacturers, software developers, content developers, carriers and the banking industry. How is technology and the industry moving forward to ensure consumers can rely on their mobile devices as their mobile pocketbook and how will these changes shape consumer behavior and content consumption.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP8173

With a history stretching back over sixty years, Edinburgh is the world's festival city and today boasts a year round calendar of festivals which attract 4 million attendees. But in the digital age, what can Edinburgh’s Festivals do to ensure they continue to be an iconic cultural experience well into the 21st century – and does SXSW hold any clues? And given that arts festivals are historically all about the live experience, how should they best incorporate the digital? We will look at the future of festivals, share what Edinburgh has learnt from its rich history & what it is doing to evolve and explore what Austin and Edinburgh have to learn from each other. Old & new, UK & USA, arts & digital - this session will have it all - including the story of why Edinburgh in 1947, not the Bay Area, was the home of the first ever unconference!
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP6249

The regular Thursday noon Innochat has become hugely popular on Twitter. As founder of Innochat, I propose a live session with a mixed panel of innovation experts and entrepreneurs in which we'll discuss business model theory and business model innovation and design as they pertain to specific start-ups and established companies. We will gather volunteers beforehand, entrepreneurs and representatives from existing companies who are willing to discuss their process of business model innovation and eager to get advice from the panel of Innochat experts. Business model innovation is a hot topic currently because entrepreneurs are discovering that without a clear picture of their business model success remains elusive. And established businesses facing threats are discovering that redesigning their business models may be the only thing that will save them. This topic is of particular interest at SXSW because many attendees are either startups or come from companies threatened by the rise of digital publishing of all kinds -- the music industry, print media, the film industry, and the software industry, in particular -- companies that critically need new business models to survive.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP6650

From an introduction to value pricing to case studies to client relationships, how value pricing can help to abolish the hourly and find a better way to business success, for you and for your clients. Traditional business practice dictates that the way to bill your clients is to first figure out your costs by taking salaries + overhead + profit to figure out a billable rate, and multiply that by an estimate of the number of hours required to complete a project. Now, what if basing your rates on the number of available labour hours isn’t an accurate representation of the way you work or the way to bring the best value to your clients? The old model is broken, and value pricing is where we need to shift the client/service provider relationship.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP8195

Whether it’s on the front lines or behind the scenes, Project Management is critical to every discipline in web development projects. Keeping your internal project team and your clients happy while making sure that the project runs smoothly are not easy tasks, but you don’t have to be a robot to run a project! Simple humans can make sure a project is delivered on time and on budget. This session will cover the basics on how to manage your project like a pro and keep your clients happy.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP6113

Luxury, by definition, is built on exclusivity. The web is inherently democratic. In the past, this contradiction caused luxury brands to be hesitant about moving online – but in the face of the internet’s ever-increasing ubiquity and print advertising’s decreased returns, more and more luxury brands are making the transition to on-line advertising and e-commerce. While many luxury brands have accepted that a digital presence is essential, they are still figuring out how to maintain the cache, allure, and exclusivity that underpins their brand perceptions while simultaneously balancing the “democratic” rules of the digital landscape. This presentation will show how luxury brands can participate in the digital-sphere through case studies of luxury brands that have effectively communicated their 'brand story' online by leveraging the following territories: 1. Communicate the dream of the luxury brand 2. Digital as a piece of the larger puzzle 3. Tell a great story 4. Be a cultural tastemaker 5. Provide a trusted guide to lifestyle enhancement 6. Use history as a way to push forward 7. Encourage the spirit of competition 8. Talk to younger luxury consumers 9. Offer incomparable service 10. Use digital to convey exclusivity By using these strategies, luxury brands will gain just as much, if not more, from embracing digital than any other category.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP8134

Digital Product Design -- the craft of designing interfaces for digital products like the Apple iPhone or an interactive web application like Yahoo! Mail -- promises to be one of the hottest job design prospects for the next century. Nearly every product type we know about has gone or is going digital, from content rich websites like CNN.com to mobile task-based applications like Gowalla to products for the digital home like Microsoft's Kinect. As such, designers for these digital products need to be well equipped with advice from a designer who has been in the trenches since the early days of mainstream software product design. In this session, Andrei Herasimchuk, the lead designer behind the Adobe Creative Suite and the creative lead behind the current redesign of one of the internet's largest web-based applications, Yahoo! Mail, will divulge lessons learned from the trenches, and in doing so will pass on the keys to successful digital product design not learned in the classroom. and in doing so, he'll inspire a new generation of digital product designers to take the profession to the next level.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP5385

It’s likely that your consumers check Facebook, Twitter, newspapers and other online sources every week, if not every day. But how many times a week are they coming to your website? Today’s brand sites do a great job of communicating a message, but what most sites lack is fresh content that keeps visitors coming back. Major brands can take a lesson from blogging sites that do an excellent job of keeping content fresh by creating stories around their products, adding video, and integrating social networks like Twitter and Facebook. This session will examine the smaller brand sites that are already starting to structure their sites more like blogs, and the audience will walk away with actionable ideas for turning their big-brand site into a place where people want to keep coming back to. The session will also explore how to carefully add on-brand community features to your site in order to your consumers a place to interact with one another and with the brand.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP8139

Strength of brand is potentially just as powerful as the product itself. In this discussion, we'll talk about the ups and downs to refreshing a major brand and share opinions on when and why it's appropriate to create a new identity.
http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP8174