It's one day after SXSWi. I've stopped thinking of everything in # tags. I've had time to take a breather and enjoy the sunshine in my own state. After a good night's sleep, I woke up refreshed and inspired.
Suddenly, the magnitude of the festival sunk into my brain. Like any other festival, you go for the whole experience. That's why you spend a week eating, drinking, excreting digital instead of listening to podcasts. The real value of SXSW is total immersion. It's like a meditation retreat, except the opposite. Instead of surrounding yourself with nothing, you're surrounded by everything. And although I had I considered myself an informed student, I came back speaking a new language. I have a new take on communication and social trends.
- Yes, you need to make a mobile app; put a concept and strategy in your portfolio.
- Yes, brands need to expand in relevant ways; not just expand.
- Yes, social mobile is here to stay; and it's having a baby with the "real" world. Get used to it.
The experience reinforced some things I already knew: people are still people, with idiosyncrasies, even if they're an engineer for Google mobile. "Audiences" are participants and it's time to start treating them like friends, not targets. But I also learned some new themes: Screen size really does dictate expected depth of interaction. The digital disparity between have's and have not's is wide—there is a lot of opportunity in less recognized niches. "Open" is a door, while "transparent" is a window.
Now, after the festival, I can think in both channels of media development and themes of humanity. It was like learning Mandarin in school, but never really understanding how to use it until you live in Beijing. At SXSW, doing everything media connected [Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, Gowalla, Apps, QR codes] was the norm and, frankly, overwhelming. But now that I'm back in the leisurely pace of normal life, I can refine my value of all the new media options. I can translate between Mandarin and English, I can see the beauty in the venn diagram space between high-tech and daily motion.
While waiting for a nice cold coffee at Vero in Eugene, I downloaded Gowalla [it did beat FourSquare, after all] on my iPod. And a rush of understanding swept over me. SXSW changed me in the biggest way possible— ideologically. I came back a believer in the power of digital, especially mobile; equipped and ready to enter the rapidly evolving scene of digital communication.
(From our University of Oregon SXSW blog. Check it out for more reads from Evan Schultz, Isaac Viel, Nicole Schultz, Marq Blaine and myself.)
