SXSWi 2010 – Check In
South By Southwest Music Conference and Festival, aka SXSW, is traditionally known as an annual music and film arts festival held in Austin, Texas. The festival started in 1987. Musical talents from around the world flock to Austin during the music festival to perform, get noticed, hear other musicians, network, and of course, have tons of fun.
In 1994, SXSW added Film and Interactive to the festival agenda, dubbed SXSWi. While there have probably been some pretty notable tech company launches during SXSWi, the most famous would be Twitter back in 2007, who also won a SXSW Web Award that year. Hulu took home a Web award in 2009. This year, Gowalla took the mobile Web award over location based networking app leader Foursquare.
At SXSWi this year, the ongoing theme was the battle between market leader Foursquare, and Austin native Gowalla. As I said earlier, Gowalla won the award; however, they all came out ahead. They all received thousands of new account registrations, and a whole lot of social media and press coverage.
So, if you’re an iPhone user that is into social media trends, you’ve probably used (or use) Foursquare, Gowalla or Rummble. For those of you that do not participate, these are apps for your GPS-enabled mobile device that allow you to “check in” wherever you may be, and broadcast to the network exactly where you are, in real-time. You can also see who is in your vicinity. To a majority of the world populous, the whole notion sounds pretty silly. Why in hell’s half acre would you want to let everyone know where you are and when you were there?
We asked ourselves very similar questions when My Space entered our lives. And with the advent of Twitter and Facebook, we asked ourselves those questions even more. Apparently, at the heart of it all, we want to connect to other people, and if there are tools out there that allow us to connect without much effort, then by all means, sign us up. Location-based apps fall right in there, too, appending X/Y coordinates to a verbal yawp and time stamp. I’ve not heard of it yet, but now that I’m putting it out there, I’m sure the Z axis will soon be a new column in the table. “You have checked in along with 37 others, and 24 feet above the second highest person!”
One thing I have learned by participating in social networking, and observing the landscape morph and evolve — we can no longer just be skeptical about the purpose (why we do it) or the business model (how they/we will monetize). There are hundreds of millions (if not billions) of human participants, and they’re all ready and willing to tell you what they’re doing/thinking, where they’re doing it, all in real-time. By all means, it’s time for you to check in.
Oh, and SXSWi was a wonderful experience. It’s not just a tech conference, nor is it just a wild party. It’s both, and more. The native Austinians are warm and inviting. Great food was everywhere. And 6th Street was like Bourbon Street every night, sans stupidity and overdrunkeness. The conference sessions spilleth over with interesting and useful content. But, in the spirit of social networking, SXSWi is mostly about connecting with other like and not-like minded people, which is great, because I’ve never been to a tech-theme conference that attracted such a diverse audience in such vast numbers. I will definitely be back.
