My titles are a bit misleading due to the fact that yesterday was really the first FULL day of the SXSW Interactive festival, but for all intents and purposes, we’ll call it our second day here.
The morning started off with a bang as our bright-eyed and bushy-tailed crew gathered together at Austin Java for a quick morning meet up session/debrief before beginning the day. We shared photos, videos, panel schedules and our overall game plans for the day to come. It’s nice to be here with a group because we agreed to divide and conquer with the agreement to exchange notes in the end. It’s the real entourage at work, y’all.
My first session was lead by the incredibly knowledgable and insightful Ben Lerer, who founded Thrillist Media. He spoke to us on his business model behind content and commerce and how to view media in a way that you can leverage the partnership between the reader and a brand to make money while remaining true to voice. It’s something the digital world is being forced to explore, so it was nice to hear from a success story on how it can be done both tastefully and tactfully. He was also hilarious and let his personality fly, so it kept us on our toes for the full hour.
Next up I headed to “What Social Media Analytics Can’t Tell You.” While the panel moderators were incredibly talented and well-versed in this area, I am most excited about the fact that their entire presentation is being put on the SXSW website. Sometimes (okay, most times) an hour isn’t nearly enough time to brain dump on such an eager audience as ourselves. It’ll take some time to sift through every study they’ve conducted on how WHO we are drives HOW we share and engage online.
Okay….if you’re still reading, I applaud you. Because now is the good stuff. I picked up a new word at South By yesterday, it’s called Fangirl. According to Urban Dictionary (the most reliable dictionary, no doubt), a Fangirl is “A rabid breed of human female who is obesessed with either a fictional character or an actor.” In my first full-fledged fangirl moment, I sat on the third row while Andy Cohen from Bravo moderated a panel on Super Fandom in the Digital Age along with YouTube stars Tyler Oakley and Grace Helbig and the Executive VP of Video for Buzzfeed, Ze Frank. We gained real insight into how both personal brands and media brands have handled true internet fame. We laughed till we cried with them for an hour while listening to audience submitted questions via the hashtag #AskHosts on Twitter. It was quite an experience to be in an interactive panel discussion. *Sidenote: I’m really sorry to the boy next to me at this panel for asking who the YouTube stars were, because he was having a total fanboy moment and I most certainly killed the vibe with my naivety. Apologies.
Last but not least, Hayley and I took advantage of the free SXSW Kickoff Concert sponsored by Vox Media and Umbel. For all you Local Natives fans out there, they put on quite a show to the eager crowd at Moody Theatre.
And so concludes Day 2, but the first full day of SXSW Interactive. Share along with me as I live tweet today on @starbetter or with the hashtag, #DallasOnTheMap. Day 3 is the most exciting of them all and you don’t want to miss out!
