It All Makes Sense Now: A Week at SXSWi

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.)

Easybake Cupcakes for Adults!

Here's a new app that I found in the "What's Hot" app store section. How painfully ironic! Actually, these cupcakes will never live up to their tasty expectations... It's the new superpretend Easybake oven for adults! But so much worse.

Now if this 99cent app was for, I don't know, A REAL BAKERY that baked the cupcakes you designed, it would be a brilliant idea. Just a thought.

Interviewing Ze Frank at SXSWi

Rachel Hom interviews Ze Frank at SXSWi from Isaac Viel on Vimeo.

I saw him from the side. And then from the front, to make sure. It was, in fact, Ze Frank. He was kind enough to grant us an impromptu, unblinking interview. Isaac was quick with the camera, and I got the audio with my *new thumbtack iPod mic. Thanks Thumbtack! I was too nervous/excited to be normal, but thanks for inspiring us, Ze...and the interview.

(Isaac Viel video)

Midday Mariachi

A wonderful surprise in the Fishbowl (a commons area in UOregon's student union building) today: a mariachi band took out their instruments and serenaded the lunch crowd. They were terrific. Great singers and musicians, in the full scale outfit. I think they were members of Mariachi Viva Mexico.

While I enjoyed the musical treat, I took a quick appraisal of my surroundings. There were about 40 people present in the bowl. 9 (including myself) had laptops open during the performance. 3 of those 9 continued listening to their own music and one person talking on the phone complained that some sort of band was playing.

I was a little surprised at the lack of crowd enthusiasm. What does it take to stir these people up? I hope our elephant will do the trick in March... oop. I've said too much. I hope every Thursday is mariachi day. At least Thursdays.

Productivity + Digital

It's amazing how our productivity as a society has soared in this digital era.

Or has it?

True, we can now communicate faster than ever before, sometimes even faster than we can talk, or think. Before the words come out of our mouths they're tweeted. Maybe before the thought is even complete, it's retweeted. This is all well and good for a college student such as myself; I can update my blog while I'm walking home, send an email between classes, tweet an idea to my friends when I'm surrounded by strangers. I have, in my pocket, a device that can tell me just about anything there is to know and say whatever I want to everyone who is listening.

While this is all very exciting, I've still got grades to keep up—homework needs doing. When I find that I have to read not one, but TWO chapters of my text, my busy fingers pine at the thought of merely turning pages. My eyes weep at the monochromatic implications of reading a book that does not stir the senses. It's a waste of time. In the time that it will take me to read two chapters of a book, I could have created a whole website (thanks, Wix). And that makes me wonder: are we more productive?

I can't read a textbook without complaining to myself. What else can't I do? How else has the digital era lamed me? We're a young generation with a serious case of Alzheimer's. Each tidbit of info replaces the one before it, so that the things we learned this morning are forgotten by the afternoon. And when it burdens me to contemplate sitting down for an hour to wholeheartedly absorb information from a single, featureless source, I can't help but think that our capacity to acquire information has dulled our ability to learn.

Yes, I will read the book. Yes, I do like to read! Yes, I usually skip my reading assignments because I don't like doing assignments and I procrastinate. But it will sweeten the obligation to know that the words I read in this text will enrich my brain more than 20 Newser abstracts.