Now that I have been back in the office for a bit, I wanted to think back on SXSW Interactive and some of the high points for me.  Overall, it was a great experience and certainly came away with a lot of information that will help us serve our clients better. 

While all of the panels and presentations I attended were great, the following were exceptional:

Privacy

 Danah Boyd, one of the world’s foremost authorities on social media and youth marketing, gave a great presentation around privacy in the digital age.  Danah gave the opening remarks at SXSW discussing concerns around privacy when thinking about youth marketing, specifically how it relates to social media.  While we’ll have to wait for the actual video presentation to come out, here is a link to the text content, unedited: http://bit.ly/cZUG0q. I also found a great video interview from SXSW - http://bit.ly/cjJVlR - where she discusses some of the same issues. 

Sustainability

On Sunday the keynote speaker was Valerie Casey, founder and executive director of the designers Accord, a global non-profit coalition of designers, educators, and business leaders working to create positive impact.  Referred to as a “Master of Design” by Fast Company and a “Guru You Should Know” by Forbes, she spoke on the interactive industry’s role in the sustainability movement and how, according to her, the interactive community had been absent from the conversation.  It may sound harsh, but it was a great call to action for our community as a whole.  Here is a link to a recent post on Fast Company about her presentation: http://bit.ly/bq5IWx.

 Convergence

Dan Shust was kind enough to post a Slideshare of his presentation on some new innovative ideas that may (or may not) happen over the next year (check it out here http://bit.ly/ck03Y4). This was a great overall series on trends in convergence, covering Internet TV, web semantics and other goodies. 

Will I Go Next Year? Yes.

All in all, SXSW Interactive was a fabulous conference with a lot of coverage on every topic imaginable. Of course, there is an infinite range of opportunities for great networking at dozens of events around Austin. I look forward to seeing you all next year (P.S. book your hotel room early).