“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” – Albert Einstein.
Ok, let’s start at the top, Austin is fantastic, the people are really courteous and friendly… we will see in ten days how they feel, but today they were great and helped me every time I needed it.
This morning I went to the Austin Convention Center and picked up my badge and bags of materials, a big thank you to Erin from NY for taking me right to the registration hall, that saved me some time and frustration wondering around the convention center. After getting squared away, I spent most of the morning getting familiar with downtown Austin.
I attended a few different events and panels today. In the process, I met some really cool and interesting people who are on the move. It kind of makes me want to spread my wings again and do something in a market that is with the times, but that is a blog for another day.
I left the convention center and “caught a Chevy” to the Hyatt. I rode in one of the new Chevy Volts and let me just say GM is ahead of the game by partnering with SXSW to demo their new cars to thousands of people. It doesn’t hurt that the driver was pretty cute too, I think she was from San Antonio.
Once at the Hyatt, I stumbled upon a gem of knowledge. The Hyatt has prepared for this event by having a chef outside grilling on the patio next to the river. The best part about it…..no line. Maybe in the next few days this will catch on and it will be like any other restaurant or food joint, packed, but for right now it was so nice to have a meal in a peaceful atmosphere and talk to the chef while out there.
The first panel I saw was Marketing Budgets Have Gone Social – Is It Working? #MarketingSocial
What an amazing opportunity to listen to trendsetters talk about what they were doing three years ago and what they are doing today. This panel consisted of Julie Hamp from Pepsi, Kris Narayanan from Samsung, and David Witt currently from Hershey formally with General Mills. This panel wrote the rules for Social Media Marketing and let me tell you, they are not a bunch of kids on facebook. These three individuals have been in marketing for many years, probably more like decades. They are just savvy enough to identify a trend and get in front of it before it blows up. The biggest piece of information that was shared from this meeting was the 5% rule. It is now standard to expect 5% of marketing budgets to go towards social media, which is a huge increase from 0, some companies or campaigns are using 50% to 100% of their marketing budget for social media. So unless the internet is a fad, this stuff isn’t going anywhere but forward.
After the budget panel, I headed back to the convention center for a panel that I did not plan on attending at all. I wanted to go see Google’s Marissa Mayer, but something pulled me towards a room with four very creative and unique people. It was The Steroid Culture of Social Media: You Use? #SXSWsteroids. This panel was made up of Tim Walker, Laura Beck, Kyle Flaherty, and Troy Nalls and they talked about cheating. Basically being a cheater is wrong, but cheating is ok. The best nugget of info taken from this session was “volume doesn’t equal value” and that was a lesson learned by one of the panelists while working on a social media project for a national franchise. It is better to have 100 sold-out fans rather than a million followers who don’t care about your business. So it’s not always about the numbers, which is an important lesson that I think we tend to forget as we are focused on building a presence on the web. I am glad I found this panel, I took a lot of good information from it including that Albert Einstein quote, and Troy had some great quotes as well, including “you don’t know what a monkey eats until he shits” and “I may be kind of thick, but I’m cool.”
To end the night I installed foursquare and saw Cirque Du Soleil. If you ever get a chance to see this show live, do it! A show like this is not normally my cup of tea, but I have a whole new respect for those athletes. Yes, athletes, anyone that can hold their whole body up by one arm 50 feet in the air is a badass in my book. I’m not going to try it that’s for sure.
I learned a few things today:
1. Look for the last ever White Stripes concert.
2. It’s not called “South By South West” by the locals…..simply “south by”
3. Moby will be playing next week! – not an SXSW event but I have my ticket.
4. foursquare is pretty cool, I really didn’t care for it before, but after being here, I see how it can be a powerful tool that other social media has not focused on covering.
5. The newest and hippest things are not capitalized. Example: facebook, twitter, foursquare, etc
The downside to today. I think I am the only “PC” in this city, besides Dell. I swear, I must have seen more apple logos today than people. If you ever see me with a mac, you will know I have finally given in to peer pressure and bought the overpriced, locked down, trendy computer.
That was day one for me at “South By,” all prepped and ready for another full day tomorrow.