While at SXSW, when I wasn't drinking like a fish, I attended some good, bad, and ugly panels and discussions. The following is a quick synopsis and analysis of what I saw. For those following at home, I will be categorizing the panels on a dog shit scale:
0 Dog Shit- Amusing and entertaining as well as informative
1 pile of Dog Shit- Missed the mark slightly on either criteria
2 piles of Dog Shit- Somewhat boring on both criteria
3 piles of Dog Shit- Starting to question my scheduling decision
4 piles or Complete Dog Shit- Time to set panelist(s) on fire and riot
0 Dog Shit:
Worst Website Ever from the Saturday session- This panel by far sucked the least out of anything I saw at SXSW. This was a fake competition made up of 7 teams, trying to come up with the worst idea for a website. Above is a picture of the eventual winner as well as one of my heroes, the great Merlin Mann. He had an idea for a social networking site called flockedup. Essentially he is ripping off my ideas for creating a powerful web 2.0 tool based on the ideas of diversion and slight of hand. Merlin gets a pass for his actions, but I now see that he will be my competition. He won a single dollar from the judge who happens to be a real VC.
10 Worst Ads also from Saturday Session- You can see the trend of preferring the darker panels here. This was a panel discussion on the most egregious marketing campaigns ever put out there by companies such as HP, Cisco, Agency.com, Walmart, and others. The panel headed up by the great Jeff Jarvis showed both mortifying and amusing videos of ad campaigns by these companies, with the sole intention of manipulating the customer. Many of these offenders, paid bloggers to hump their product or service, and hide so in doing it. I mean I will sell myself out for the right price, but at the same time some of these were rather low down. For example, the winner was an Hp ad that was made by a woman who made her children break a fuji digital camera and demand an Hp camera... now thats some low down shit.
1 Pile of Dog Shit:
I Can Has Cheeseburger from Sunday- If you haven't gone to www.icanhascheezeburger.com please do immediately. This is a very funny site run by Eric Nakagawa (Cheeseburger) and Ben Huh. Basically the two spoke about how they turned a site that discussed how they have made a business out of putting funny cat pictures with captions on the internet. Now that is some fucking achievement. Now my one gripe about this talk was that at the onset they promised cheeseburgers for members of the audience, and then while the talk was going on, people from outside of the room ate our cheeseburgers. Now that is a rip.
2 Piles of Dog Shit:
Saturday Keynote with Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson-
This was an interesting if not highly optimistic discussion about the changing competencies of the next generation. Themes such as people socializing through video games instead of in person, the effort people will put into hobbies such as movies and books in comparison to the effort put into work. and other remarks that give this new generation a pass, due to some collaborative thinking concept. Honestly I don't think Mr. Jenkins sees the pure unadulterated stupidity that I have seen. It seems as though his ideals are too skewed towards the people he speaks to. Interesting talk, but full of some shit.
Browser Wars Monday- This was an interesting talk with representatives from Opera, Firefox, and IE. I really thought that all of these crazed programmers were going to hang the guy from Microsoft. I thought of the idea of putting up a dunk tank, putting the guy in there, and charging $10 a ball to get people to do it. I dont think they would have a problem. I did get bored with some of the discussion of standards, though there were some interesting discussion of how to implement these browsers on mobile devices.
Mom 2.0 Monday- This was a group discussion about ways in making computer use a better experience for mom's and dad's who do not have a background in technology. It was an interesting conversation since my mom is just now embracing using the internet on the iBook G3 that I gave her. The conversation was somewhat interesting, talking about how to educate older people, and making the UI experience easier to use. However, I felt it was a bit patronizing to older folks. Some of the people in the group felt the same way, and basically put it out there that there are a limited amount of uses that the older demographic have for a computer and just make those functions easier to use.
3 Piles of Dog Shit:
Human and Property Rights in the Virtual World- Ok now the title of this thing sounds interesting on paper, however essentially this panel was on whether or not you really own that condo you have on Second Life. The answer is NO damnit, you buy the game, you live in the universe created by the game publishers, how hard is that to understand? This panel could have taken 5 minutes, not an hour. What a pile of crap
Discussion of the Rational Voter with Brian Caplan- Now don't get me wrong Caplan is an interesting guy, an economist of all people at SXSW, but this one falls into the illogical hypotheticals department. Talking about the advantages to selling kidneys on the open market and such. He didn't even really talk about the topic very much.
4 piles of Dog Shit or COMPLETE DOG SHIT- Saturday Keynote with Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
Now this was just crap. Ok so this was a double trainwreck. The interviewer was some floozy by the name of Sara Lacy. Now mind you shes pretty hot, but unless shes stripping on stage, some cute airhead is not going to make a keynote good. So this chick had a short skirt on, laying back in her chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs, and just flirting with Zuckerberg on stage. "So you're not really worth $15 billion are you? hehehe" or "What are you doing tonight?" Meanwhile whenever Zuckerberg spoke, he either said efficient social network or platform. I proposed a drinking game to others sitting in our row. Somebody actually yelled you suck half way through. With 15 minutes to go Jen and I just walked. She said what if it really gets good, I said the only way that will happen is if she just starts to screw him on stage.What a waste of time. I am glad that this news has spread on valley wag and other sites.
Just wanted to make note that we also went to Screen Burn and the Trade show that were also in the building. Screen Burn gets 3 piles for being tiny and having almost nothing playable on the floor. The trade show gets 1 pile for having free beer everywhere and some interesting booths.
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