Categories
SXSW '08 SXSW '11

Unbelievable eCommerce: Increase Sales By 10000%

Presenter
Paul Boag, Dir Headscape

Tidbit of information: Brits do not care about the royal wedding!

A Case Study:

Headscape increased ecommerce for a company over 10k% in 5 years – from a reasonable base. Where is the catch?

The company sells frozen meals to elderly people (average age in 80′s). The average cost of a meal is $5-8. Wiltshire Farms

Two Lesson Areas

Business & Design

A successful ecommerce site is based on great business and great design. You have to have a great client and a great designer (you need both). They must work together.

Business (why the client is crucial in the process) @mattycurry

You are unique if you are involved in an ecommerce site. You are NOT Amazon. Even if Amazon is doing it all right, they are doing it right for them and not for you. You can’t just copy other people (even people in your own sector).

Why are you unique in frozen food industry? The age of the audience. What makes your target audience unique? The problem with Wiltshire Farms had was their audience kept dying on them.

New Users: Getting started guide shows up very large on the home page for new users (only the first time they visit the website).

Care Workers: There is a section explaining things to people buying meals for someone else.

A Franchise Model: There was no consistent pricing. You had to put in your postal code to enter the site.

Don’t be seduced by sexy
Don’t test out new stuff on your audience. Sexy isn’t always right for your website. Are you going to generate the return to make it worthwhile?

Visit Users in their Homes:
Usability testing – they realized that their audience never used a mouse before. They found out that everyone used laptops. Go into their homes and find out how they live and get a sense of their character.

Test & Iterate

A small ongoing investment on a regular basis is better than one big investment in many cases. Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug, talks about monthly usability testing.

Multi-variance Testing: You discover things that work and don’t work very quickly. (Google Website Optomizer)

A Right Relationship

You have to have a good relationship with your client. Take them out and get them drunk. You need to be able to argue and be comfortable.

Remove Clutter

Again, you are NOT Amazon. The list of meals to choose from and cut it down (added a "see more options"). If you can remove it, do it. If you can’t remove it, hide it. If you can’t hide it, shrink it. Ask yourself what you can remove, what you can hide and what you can shrink.

Product Shots

Product shots are everything. Add great shots to sell your product.

Make Buttons & Links Obvious

Make links look like links and buttons look like buttons. The links are bright blue with big underlines, and the buttons look like they are buttons. Make it obvious and bold. It’s not about design, it’s about increasing sales. On pop-up dialogs describe what the buttons are going to do.

Always Provide Help

Find out what the major questions are and float them to the top of the help. FAQ’s suck, prioritize the questions.

Handle Errors Gracefully

"Oh dear, we have a problem. Let’s fix it together." Be nice with your error messages. Give them real practical advice.

Communicate the Value Added

Show and demonstrate the added value that you provide over your competitors. A large part of the home page is dedicated to value added. Why are you different? Why are you unique. Take some space on the homepage to add that – not just products, products, products.

Presentation Video:
http://boagworld.com/talks/unbelievable-ecommerce/

Categories
SXSW '08 SXSW '11

Cure for the Common Font

Presenters
Frank Chimero, Office of Frank Chimero
Jason Santa Maria, Creative Dir Mighty LLC
Stephen Coles, Type Dir Typographica/Fonts In Use
Tiffany Wardle, Typegirl

More Information: http://j.mp/fontcure

There are hundreds of thousands of fonts available and grows every year. It gets difficult to choose types so we many times just rely on the ones we always use.

Typography Basics

Methods for Typography:
How vs. Why, practical execution in addition to theory and rationale.

Arranging the Furniture
Does the furniture fit who it’s for? – don’t put chairy in a modern room
Does the arrangement make sense? – don’t just throw a bunch of pillows in the room
Is there room to get around?

Choose a good typeface:
Good meaning high-quality and proper. Proper for the format, for the content, for the reader. You can set the tone with the word “party” and let the font tell you want type of party it’s going to be. Typopedia

Don’t use too many:
It’s a juggling act. The fewer typefaces one uses the less likely they are to drop the balls. Use faces in the right order – certain typefaces work in body and certain ones work larger.

Have a clear hierarchy:
Make more important things bigger, and less important things smaller. You’re already doing this in markup (H1, H2, H3, etc.).

If in doubt, read it:
Excellent type comes form empathy for the reader. Huffington Post doesn’t pass the read test. It is very hard to read a full article.

How to Evaluate the Quality of a Font

Are there too many choices? Not all fonts are created equal.

Does the font have a minimum character set?
Is it all uppercase? Does it include all punctuation?

Does the font have extended Latin or non-Latin?
Will you need to do anything internationally to support other languages? Find a family that includes all of it.

Does the font have siblings and cousins?
Make sure you’ve got italics and bold in your font. Do you also need condensed or something else?

Is the font well-spaced?
Don’t confuse tracking with kerning. Even well-spaced fonts need some kerning. Look for letters that depend on kerning.

Does the font look good across browsers and platforms?
Look at as many applications of the font as possible. Make sure the fonts are well-hinted.

What makes a good text face?

Pretty much all the web is text. You want people to actually read your content, and connect with it.

When we read:
Take a chunk of text and block out the bottom of it, it’s still legible. If you block the top, it becomes hard to read. Most of the font information is in the top. Find a text face that is easily discernable.

Display Faces:

  • Bauer Bodoni
  • Myriad Condensed
  • Bello

Look for good x-height.
Look for definition in the letter forms (Verdana). Look at #1 Capitol I and lower-case L (1Il).
Don’t hinder reading in any way if you can help it.
Look for workhorse typefaces that can stand up. Bodini looks good large and shrinks down to nothing when small. Meta looks good large and small. When you have a flexible typeface you can use fewer faces.
Get dirty – take a bunch of text from a project and just see what it feels like to read. See how things look at size.

  1. Versatile
  2. Sturdy
  3. Recognizable

Helvetica

It looks good in interface design. It looks good really big. Calvetica calendar lists it as a feature. It’s a versatile font, but not in branding.

Too many people use Helvetica for branding. It doesn’t set you apart. Try and do something different to make yourself stand out. 15 of the top 20 retailers use Helvetica in their campaigns.

There are other fonts that are different (newer). You don’t always have to stick to the tried and true.

Times New Roman
Alternate: Le Monde (more modern for newspapers and better for screen.

Gill Sans
Has very inconsistent width and weight (letter A)

Trade Gothic
It has inconsistent widths and weights

Helvetica
Alternate: FF Dagny – has a cleaner design, less formal
Alternate: Museo Sans

Georgia
It’s been the serif for the web forever – it was designed for the screen.
Alternate: BentonModernRE – less contrast, a bit wider
Alternate: FF Meta Serif – more contemporary serif, more condensed
Alternate: Minion – bets neutral typeface, like you’d see in a book

Frutiger
Great font for wayfinding – used in London airport and many many others.

Questions & Tools

  • Readability Bookmarklet is a handy tool to put sites into a different style.
  • Books:
    Elements of Typographic Style
    Thinking with Type
    Detailed in Typography
    Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out how Type Works
Categories
SXSW '08 SXSW '10

Cracking the Books ‘ User-Generated Content in Education

Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Presenters:
Clyde Boyer – Trinity Education Group
Ron Reed – RL Reed Consulting
Anita Givens – Texas Education Agency
Margarita Pinkos – MPinkos Education Consultants

Description:
"Age considers; youth ventures." This aphorism has never seemed more real than in a typical U.S. public school classroom: the students are operating on several levels simultaneously in media-saturated environments, while classroom teachers and publishers all seem to be standing on the sidelines, trying to catch up.

Canon YouTube Video put together by a student in Korea. Hundreds of people have learned to play this song just by this video. This is a very atypical learning (informal) learning environment.

Type 3 words into YouTube for what you’re trying to accomplish. Search for "Graphinc Linear Equations." Students post comments thanking the poster for putting the information online. Same "think you" comments from GED test-taker as well as an honors math student.

Education Trends:

  • Mobility
  • User Created Content
  • Learning Communities (youtube, facebook, social netoworking"

Culture eats strategy every day of the week.
What is the culture of these user-created learning content?

Vinton Cerf was the hero of a dark world (father of the internet)

  • All these computers in the world, but they can talk now!
  • Learning: Change = opportunity

Connections System from Rice University (http://cnx.org/)

  • CMS for educational content
  • Repository of that educational content
  • Spreads the content in various different ways (online, mobile, hard copy textbook).
  • Over 15,000 modules woven into nearly 1000 collections
  • Everything is modularized for repurpose if needed, update a module at a time, not the entire book.
  • Openness – everyone can create content! Unfortunately not everything is wonderful because of this. How do you maintain quality? Lenses.
  • Lenses – allowing for the good quality people to endorse good high-quality content.
  • Frictionless Remixing – you can put in new stuff whenever you want or need (xml and OAI). Everything is Creative Commons based licensed.
  • Customization – lightweight branding vs. full-scale branding in your own window. Zoning – community can rope off areas (k-12 doesn’t need to see medical content). Enterprise Rhaptos – states can run their own version of the software.
  • Textbooks are still the #1 way of learning in the US. Technology isn’t always available to move away from that.

Ning Network (http://www.ning.com/)

  • Build your own social network around whatever areas you need.
  • Over 1,400 educators are sharing information and practice in this network. "You met each other once at this event, come back and share more."
  • Share what you’re doing in the classroom with other teachers.
  • Mentoring happening, Find out what works and doesn’t work.
  • No course management system from Ning, so the system is still evolving.

Second Life

  • Set up a virtual island in Second Life.
  • For teaching ready to be on the cutting edge, this works really well.
  • It’s like a webinar with an avatar.

Design

  • A design asks questions, "what problem are we solving?"
  • What are we solving with open source textbooks? What do textbooks solve?
    It’s a pathway to literacy.
  • The most telling thing we’re solving with open source textbooks is cost. States don’t have a lot of money right now. Many changes are, and always will be driven by cost.
  • Not only is the cost lower for these textbooks, but many times the quality is higher.
  • Challenges: How do you get textbooks? Vetting sometimes lowers the quality of textbooks. Looking at this… do we even need textbooks?
  • What if we allow students and learning groups to define their own resources? Kids can structure their own resources.
  • Textbooks are written for the classroom (one single source) and NOT for students. A single student will have issues accessing that only source.
  • Students will probably figure things out before we (educators) do.

What states are doing the best job leveraging the best learner created content?

  • Texas is going a pretty good job. There is an open-access education initiative that puts Texas in the forefront because it allows open content to be used as the primary text. California allows it to be used, but only as a supporting text.
  • Open texts are being taken on world-wide – China, Brazil. There are many forces against it in the US.
  • The access to technology in large enough numbers may be limiting this too.

What’s being done to incent people to contribute

  • Give teachers professional visibility (teachers are busy).
  • Add e-commerce system to the system, and add some sort of payment. Trade funds for creation and/or use. What about .99 for a lesson plan (ala Apple)?
  • If you publish in an open setting, you’re more likely to get it used world-wide – tenure calls for this.
Categories
SXSW '08 SXSW '10

Mobile Content is Social

Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Presenters:
Tom Watson – Facebook Inc
Justin Shaffer – Hot Potato Media Inc
Michael Sharon – Facebook Inc

Description:
This whirlwind tour through various interaction models, content strategies, use cases and interface tweaks will be peppered with anecdotes, secrets and tips to help you create addictive social experiences on mobile. You’ll hear from Michael Sharon and Tom Watson of Facebook, and Justin Shaffer of Hot Potato.

One theme has changed mobile content over the last few years

  • Touch – changed the game.
    1.) size – bigger is better, the keyboard/buttons are gone
    2.) intimacy – you can play with this big touch screen and just tap to interact just by using our fingers.
    3.) control – we’re good at using our fingers to interact with things
  • Speed
    1.) hardware – the amazing advances recently in hardware.
    2.) software – you can get new apps, you can put stuff in the clouds
    3.) perception of speed – software taking advantage of hardware.
  • Cheating
    the network cloud isn’t as fast as it should be. New API’s and dev techniques make the device feel more responsive.

Is Mobile Content More Social?

  • Mobile content isn’t inherently social (you stand by yourself and check your phone).
  • Report: "90% of waking hours spend staring at glowing rectangles." -the onion

What does it mean to be social?

  • You want to talk/interact… people to see your stuff.

How do you facilitate this?

  • Friends
    Include your friends in your device (facebook mobile site). Facebook defaulted the view to order by recent activity. You don’t have to search for a way to be social.

    Address/Contact list in your mobile device: It’s not very social – awkward to add/edit in your device. Create a pure managed address book. Blackberry pulled in facebook info to the address book. Palm Pre created the unified address book by pulling all this contact information together. iPhone syncs photo/phonebook onto phone from Facebook.

    Doodle Jump uses Facebook Connect to provide a social graph/connections into any applications.

  • Notifications
    Active notifications (pay attention to now) or Passive (I’m interested in seeing what has been updated.
  • Sharing
    Photos are a big key to sharing (Facebook). Make it as easy as possible to get a photo into the cloud and tag/describe, making it even more social. Facebook app uses the type-ahead for tagging, making the barrier even smaller to get info in as quickly as possible.
  • Serendipity
    Having a connected device with you al the time, you can post different types of content as well as geographic information. You can see what is nearby your current position (Gowalla & 4Square).
  • Discovery
    You can get a different context for different places and times. Do I want to communicate or just see what people are saying? You can filter a larger audience and get information that is relevant to you.

    Facebook news feed exposes the popular things, and not everything, or just your own things.

  • Control
    Gowalla, Hot Potato, 4Square: all of these show location content. They all allow you to post to twitter and facebook on top of the individual app posting. The user can control where they want that information to go (internal or external). You can/should have control to where, but also the ability to remove things.
  • Intent
    Interfaces should be designed in such a way to illicit the response you’re looking for. Quora mobile interface has a bigger check box for mobile (finger click).
  • Feedback
    The link feedback from Facebook makes you feel good when other people comment/link what you post. It makes you come back and post more. It’s a circle that draws you back in and you provide info, and then get feedback, it encourages you to post again. It’s powerful to provide feedback to your users and let them know what is going on.

    4Square badges encourage you to continue using with game mechanics. You want to compete with friends and get more badges.

Categories
SXSW '08 SXSW '10

Web Video Thunderdome: Branded vs Unbranded, You Decide

Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Presenters:
Mike Arauz – Undercurrent
Bud Caddell – Undercurrents

Description:
Does your branded web video pass the "I’d rather be watching porn/kittens" test? Looking at the most viewed branded and unbranded web videos of the past 6 months, and the key metrics behind them, our audience will vote to decide which web videos reign supreme. Trophies included!
http://webvideothunderdome.com

Deathmatch! (voting on the best in categories below)

  • Brands love super bowl-sized audiences.
  • Brands have come a long way this past year – many of the most popular videos on the web are actual brand videos.
  • There have been a lot of lessons learned (by brands) in making web videos.
  • 141 Millions watched web videos in Feb, 2010 – a huge audience watching web videos!
  • 427 million hours of videos watched on the web in Feb, 2010.
  • Just because you put a video on the ‘net, it doesn’t mean a lot of people will watch it.
  • "Ah-ha we need to make viral videos!"
  • Pizza Hut Fail (they looked bad)
  • Brands failed to understand that this is OUR internet.
  • The web wasn’t built with commercial breaks. In fact, it wasn’t built for advertisers at all.
  • This is your internet, and everyone gets a vote.
  • Does this ideas pass the "I’d rather be looking at pictures of kittens" test?
  • Does this idea pass the "I’d rather be watching porn" test?
  • Everything on the internet is just a click away – videos need to hold you because it’s so easy to go to something else (better).

Best Spokesman

  • Gingers do Have Souls (Unbranded)
    This is what people use YouTube for – a guy talking to the camera saying what he thinks. HUGE number of comments. Other videos were made, he called on the YouTube community (with red hair) to respond.
  • The Man Your Man Could Smel Like (Branded) Winner!
    Just a commercial, really really well done.
  • LESSON: Be Remarkable. If you’re going to do something, do it really well.

Cute Kid Tricks

  • I’m Yours (Ukulele Kid) (Unbranded) Winner!
    Many tweets with organanic natural attention.
  • Evian Roller Babies (Branded)
  • LESSON: Play on past successes – based on the first internet meme, the dancy baby. They looked at what they could remix. Internet fame is a social phenomenon, not a magic trick. Stop using "VIRAL video!" Viral implies there is something in the video itself that will spread on its own. You can’t Make it viral.
    Why do we share? 1. Strengthen my bond. 2. Define our collective identy. 3. Give me status.

Instant Smiles

  • Surprised Little Kitten (Unbranded)
    Very re-watchable (only 17 sec long). Design your content to be rewatchable.
  • Volkswagen Piano Staircase (Branded) Winner!
  • Use the web to tell more complex stories. Volkswagen couldn’t use this content in a typical TV spot. Tricks+Stories=Magic cross-over. When combined it creates a good video. Fun can be used to make the world a better place.

Best Song Parody

  • I Gotta Feeling (Unbranded)
  • The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody (Branded) Winner!
    Many tweets/comments – loved video.
  • Muppets video collect your fans. Many brands forget that YouTube is a social space, and social network. Improve Everywhere does this very well. They’ve built up hundreds of thousands of subscribers in their base.
    Ricky Van Veen’s (College Humor) golden Rules of Web Video:
    2-3 Min Max,
    Get to the hook fast.
    Make it Topical
    Candy Corn (oh yah I remember that!)

Lifetime Achievement Award

  • The Hitler Parody Videos
    The Tom Jones of YouTube. Hitler has reacted to a lot of topics!
    These use both humor and outrage.
    Invite participation – the number of people who have the ability and have started to create their own videos is very high. It’s not just video people who can build these and put them up… many many people now have the ability to do this.
    Participation can be: Performing, copying, sharing, commenting, rating, viewing.
  • 10.5 million hours of video uploaded to YouTube in the last year
    20 hours of video uploaded every minute!
    130,000 full-length movies released every week.

Video of the Year

  • Epic Beard Man (Unbranded) Winner!
    Two guys get into fight on bus. 4Chan discovered this video, and was brought to popularity. It is sometimes a bit of a meme factory. This is a rich video for conversation – there are many topics in this for controversy. There was a lot of community remixing of the characters in this video.
  • Pants on the Ground (Branded)
    Many parodies created about this video. American Idol gave this video the potential to spread on the internet. A mass audience saw this and latched onto it and ran with it.
  • Start small riots in the niche communities.
    Court communities like constituencies. To do that: recognize them, play to their interests, give them social credence.
Categories
SXSW '08 SXSW '10

No Touching! Truly Invisible Interfaces

Monday, March 15, 2010
Presenters:
Ron Goldin – Lunar

Description:
Our devices know which way we’re moving and how dark it is outside. They look us in the face with cameras while we’re tweeting away. They sometimes even understand when we talk back to them. Learn about success stories and untapped potential in physical interactivity that doesn’t involve touching anything at all.

Designing for touch: People and Context Come First.
The technology is here. Sort of.
We change with technology, eventually.

Keyboard:
Once we get used to an interface, we get faster at it (shortcuts).

Mouse:
Mouse made it easy to interact with things on the screen.

Devices:
Getting rid of the physical metaphor completely (iphone, pre, droid) touch screens.

Games:
Nintendo Wii – interaction around the entire room.

Soft Remote:
Twist, squeeze, pull the balls to interact with things. Everyone in the room would have a different remote/color to interact in a social way.

B+O Touchless remote
You don’t have to physically touch the remote to interact with it. Video from Engaget

TouchTunes (Airduino)
Air guitar device that involves glove-like device to play guitar through the air. Make one yourself

Playstation 3 Eye
The entire living room is turned into an interface. New Playstation Move similar to the Wii Remote.

Touchless picks up the subtleties of the human body – physical targets help to sort out the noise.

Sony Ericcson Yari
Control the phone with the camera and play games (iboxing)

Medical Devices
Gestics uses gesture interfaces to compliment the surgical procedure. You can use your free hand to view things closer/rotate on the screen.

Issues:

  • Discoverability
  • Trust
  • Responsiveness
  • Appropriateness (does it make me feel silly?)
  • Physical Feedback (i can’t feel the actual interface)

State of Voice
Goog-411 good response
Google Voice has some issues.
Cars can listen soon, ask about places and get directions. It gets smarter with the sub-grammar is has.

CereBroc is able to make a voice sound correct and not like a robot when a device talks back

Successes:

  • Nike Plus – running to compete against your friend
  • Middle school kids are given step sensors, and you compete with other schools
  • FasTrak – toll payment (RFID)
  • MetroCard – deduct payment from card for subway
  • Citibank fab swipe
  • BART trials for cell phone deduction to ride train

Location Based:

  • 4Square – Please Rob me shows when people say they’re out.

Wearable

  • Skiing – don’t want to take off your gloves to change track on iPod.
  • Add sensors to clothing for doing these types of things
  • Phillips has headphones that rotate to change or interact with tracks etc.
  • What about adding voice controls into clothing.
  • CuteCircuit has added sensors into clothing to vibrate your arm when you get a call.
  • Cycling safety – add turn signals to the back of clothing, controlled by the standard hand signals.

Augmented Reality

  • Ferrari uses this technology to mimic what a wheel can look like on a car.
  • Lego – hold up a box and show in front of display to see the actual built model (rotate move around)
  • SixthSense – wearable computer with projector to show data on any surface – interact with hands.
Categories
SXSW '08 SXSW '10

Evan Williams Keynote Interview

Monday, March 15, 2010
Presenters:
Evan WilliamsTwitter
Umair Haque – Havas Media Lab

Description:
Williams has co-founded several Internet companies, including Pyra Labs (creator of weblog-authoring software Blogger) and Twitter, the now ubiquitous social media platform that hit its tipping-point at SXSW in 2007. In addition to his role as Director of the Havas Media Lab, Umair Haque founded Bubblegeneration, an agenda-setting advisory boutique that shaped strategies across media and consumer industries.

Twitter Announcement:

  • The new @ platform for integrating twitter into websites “@Anywhere
  • You can easily follow people from a link dynamically inside a website (hover).
  • You can also sign-into a website with your Twitter ID.
  • 13 partners (Digg, Amazon, etc.)

@Anywhere

  • It reduces fiction
  • You can easily tweet from the column itself.
  • You can easily follow the author straight from the byline.
  • It puts things into context of a site/story.
  • It can give you a connection back to users that wasn’t previously there.
  • I can also get more people talking about you or your content, and bring in tweets about your site/content.

Business

  • Focused on how to create the best product for consumers and businesses.
  • Business is on twitter right now, and consumers are opting into messages from them now.
  • What is Twitter?
    An information network that helps people discover what’s going on in the world that they care about and share what is going on around them. You can take advantage without sharing (just follow what you like).

How does Twitter handle iteration?

  • Twitter experiments a lot – there are a lot of people in twitter doing what they think is best.
  • People are organized into autonomous teams focused on something specific (international, mobile, etc.)
  • What is Ev’s role?
    1/2 big picture direction, 1/2 is internal culture of the company. Openness is a big value of twitter.

Openness – what does it mean at Twitter?

  • Openness or transparency – “a windows is transparent, a door is open” A door lets you come in and mess with what’s going on and not just look at what is going on.
  • Openness is really a survival technique – being open to the idea that you’re wrong, and other people have good ideas. “Assume there are more smart people outside the company vs. inside.”

Why Give the Golden Goose Away?

  • Sharing data openly: MS Bing Google get full stream. There is no business model yet, maybe it doesn’t make sense to give this data away. Decision was made on principle of giving the most value per user.
  • There are millions of tweets per day – tapping into the technology of those partners will allow more people to find/search, and find valuable information on Twitter.
  • It was a tough decision to come to… didn’t want to limit to just a few folks. Why limit it?
  • Third party developers have been able to fill holes. How are businesses going to be able to take advantage of Twitter.
  • There are real businesses to be built on top of Twitter. Twitter.com (the site) isn’t meant to be used for business. It’s a consumer interface.

Apple regulates App Store – how open is Twitter?

  • Error on the side of openness.
  • Some control is still needed. Bad things happen all the time. If were were totally fully open, it would be a disservice to our users. It shouldn’t be easy to spam on twitter – that needs to be stopped.
  • Some management is needed for the ecosystem.

Inclusiveness – Unique Uses

  • Chilean sent an email to thank Twitter for the tool to help communicate after the natural disaster.
  • Twitter is made to reach the weakest communications areas. It’s very simple.
  • Pushing really strong growth in areas (India now) with SMS access in regions where the communication infrastructure is not that powerful.
  • The value of a little bit of information can be really powerful in certain areas of the world.

What is an active user?

  • Is someone getting value out of twitter? It’s very hard to nail down what a user is (outside of just having an account).
  • It could be someone just searching on a site, or using a 3rd party app to watch a brand.
  • There isn’t as much emphasis on the “tell the world what you’re doing,” and now it’s more “there is something on twitter for everyone.”
  • As people consume information on twitter, it’s easier to get involved.
  • Robert Gibbs (white house press secretary) is using Twitter to send messages you normally don’t see in an official communication.
  • India minister is using Twitter in a way that causes some waves.
  • It reduces the number of walls from people who have influence and those who don’t (what the internet should be).
  • If you can share with the world with as few barriers as possible, that’s a big deal!

Is state-control standing in the way of the Internet (Twitter)?

  • Not all nations have the open internet.
  • The internet is a tidal wave that nobody can keep back.
  • We ultimately want to have an impact on the world (either small or large is good) – saving someone’s vacation or announcing the cookies are out of the oven.

Business Model

  • Help people make a better decisions that they wouldn’t have already made. Help people get something done.
  • Haiti awareness with the donation spread on Twitter. People want to hep out, and reducing the friction helps that.
  • Looking at how businesses are using Twitter – there is a new communication method between customers and businesses. It’s more than just clicking on a link and getting information.
  • If this channel helps a business get better, that’s very powerful. It’s even more powerful if it helps both large and small businesses.
  • If you live on the web, you are used to having a relationship with the companies you use. In the real world, it is just a black box. You can finally close the loop with these technologies.

Ambition – 21st Century Businesses have Ambitions

  • Twitter’s vision is down to fostering the exchange for information as a force for good.
  • You can help people control what they pay attention to – save them time vs. cost them time and share things with other people that they’ve learned.

Where is Twitter’s Advantage?

  • Twitter’s advantage only comes when everyone wins. They only do win/win deals.
  • Revenue generating pieces of twitter haven’t been implemented because they don’t want to sacrifice the network.
  • The advantage is having a more thriving network over the next guy – creating an advantage for other people.
  • If you’re closed there is always an advantage to work around you. When open, it just works and nobody needs to work around the openness.

What makes you keep building these things?

  • Creating things in the world that didn’t exist before. Your product should be at the end of the sentence, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if __________?”
  • People look at business and money as the goal vs. the means.
Categories
SXSW '08 SXSW '10

Buzz Out Loud Live 2010, Episode 1185

Monday, March 15, 2010
Presenters:
Tom Merritt – CNET
Jason Howell – CNET/CBSi
Molly Wood – CBS Interactive
Veronica Belmont – Tekzilla & Quore
Ben Huh – I Can Haz Cheezburger

Description:
CNET’s Buzz Out Loud will broadcast live from SXSW. While discussing the day’s tech news, hosts Tom Merritt, Jason Howell, Molly Wood and others will chat with the audience and invite special guests to talk about what’s happening at the show and beyond.

I was able to sit in on a podcast that I regularly listen to. You can hear me clapping if you listen to BOL Episode 1185, and/or maybe see me when they pan the audience if you watch the video.

Buzz Out Loud (Cnet)
Buzz Out Loud Live

Categories
SXSW '08 SXSW '10

Web Series 2.0: Big Campaigns on Digital Dollars

Monday, March 15, 2010
Presenters:
Melissa Fallon – Davie Brown Entertainment
Chris Hanada – Retrofit Films
Milo Ventimiglia – DiVide Pictures
Wilson Cleveland – CJP Digital Media
Andrew Hampp  – Advertising Age

Description:
As social media campaigns move to the forefront of the digital space, major brands and advertisers are looking for savvy producers and content creators to help them maximize their ad budgets. Learn from top producers in this new field how to produce fantastic content with digital (read fewer) dollars.
Twitter: #BCDD

How are you working with brands, and what is the economic structure?

  • It’s about making the money work for you.
  • There is a fine line between brand managment/message and entertainment. Utilize the entertainment to get the ad out. Distribution is the toughest – how do we get it out there. Where is this creative content going to live? How do we walk that fine line between brand and entertainment?
  • IKEA (IKEA Easy to Assemble): Much of the branded entertainment done is allowing brands to tell their story, and not be dependent on the traditional spot. IKEA’s entire goal is to have people watch it and remember it.

How do you market a web series these days?

  • It depends on what the brand wants.
  • IKEA said push the brand/show out there, and whoever gets the most viewers will get to be in the season finale.
  • Get the enthusiasts of the brand involved, ask blogs to be a part of the distribution.
  • It is really hard to measure how well it does.
  • How do you extend the creative content shelf-life? Get them and hold them.
  • Paid marketing more safe, but social media is more authentic

How are clients planning ahead for these types of things?

  • Big brands don’t look at digital as a less expensive alternative – they are looking at digital as a large part of their marketing mix now. Brands don’t have the same model (4 bombs with 1 success) as a studio might have. It’s a little safer to jump into something already established vs. starting some new unique content.
  • If a brand is bringing a series out, they aren’t a media company and don’t really know how much it costs (they’re new to this world). It is a new skill set for a brand.
  • Marketing executives are now production executives, “I don’t understand scripts, I can give you my input after it’s cut.”
  • The fact that a brand will even invest in a web series isn’t easy. It’s a big risk for a brand to do this.
  • It’s about the honest dialog with the producer about what you want to accomplish – where is the brand represented? What does a brand need to accomplish?
  • Getting into branded online media not about cool factor, but about strategic goals.

What is the capacity for a brand to poke fun at themselves?

  • Nissan said no villains could drive the car, couldn’t crash the car – they’re very strict with the rules.
  • IKEA is shot inside the store.
  • What are looking to do exactly? Verizon in 30 Rock getting a quick plug – what exactly does that do? They already have brand awareness. What does this accomplish for them?
  • Syndicate, syndicate, syndicate. Asking a lot of an audience to come to your microsite to watch.

How do you measure how well this is working?

  • Universal mesurement for engagement [ROI] is still illusive because all brands have different goals.

Talent: How do you attract A-list talent to these properties?

  • The stereotype against the web has changed a lot in the last few years. Technology has leveled the playing field – people are more aware of it now. Engage them as more than actors/writers, involve them more in the process.
  • SAG now says it is important, so actors are seeing it’s important.
  • Many actors are doing these because it’s fun and different. They get to be part of the creative process since many times the money isn’t there.
  • Sometimes actors are getting scale, sometimes a lot of money, sometimes it’s just a favor and “fun” hang out on a weekend and shot it.
Categories
SXSW '08 SXSW '10

Managing Your Content Management System

Monday, March 15, 2010
Presenters:
Alex Will – Spoonfed Media
Henry Erskine Crum – Spoonfed Media

Description:
An effective content management system is a must for any content-based web service. This technical session will discuss elements of designing and building a custom CMS that leverages technology and existing web data from sources such as Flickr and Wikipedia to automate research and increase time spent writing original content.

  • Most important factors when making a decision about a CMS: context of your content business and process of content production.
  • Tools to evaluate what CMS you need for your business
  • "A computer based system that allows one or more people to manage the online publication, storage and display of content."

Landscape:
Many CMS systems out there for many different types of content (from many sources). The focus of these will be mainly people-created editorial content.

The production process
This process is very important and often overlooked.

Data collection (going out and getting the raw data) >
Workflow management (assigning tasks and divvy up labor) >
Research (follow up with different sources) >
Write >
Review >
Publish!

Why did we go down the custom CMS route?

  • Events are a moving target with a finite shelf-life
  • Incentive structure for UGC in events is small
  • Opinionated content for target market

What didn’t matter?

  • Amount of data (most CMSs can handle all amounts of data)
  • Size of web site
  • Complexity of idea

What did matter?

  • Data aggregation from multiple sources
  • Workflow management between editors
  • Reducing research time per event
  • Search Engine Optimization (made it really easy in the system)
  • Lead generation and contact management

Getting the raw data:

  • Automate and aggregate non-editorial elements (have it easy to access and it comes together somewhat automatically)
  • Create different processes for different parts of the information
  • Dealing with issues of quality and duplication (example: deciding what news stories to write real-time)

Workflow management

  • Dividing tasks, vertically segmenting, prioritizing and assigning responsibility
  • Incorporate automated steps into workflow process
  • Reduce or remove the time that is spent by humans prioritizing the information (bigger events need longer lead time)

Reducing research time: the golden ratio

  • Give editors research resources without leaving the page: wikipedia, flickr, and google news
  • Rise of real-time news as part of this process increases relevancy and quality
  • Re-purposing data

Thinking about SEO

  • Tools to aid editors in the production of content for SEO (keyword research)
  • Suggested linking (try to pull in other pages inside or outside similar links to make it as efficient as possible)
  • Major benefits if you’re not using off-the-shelf systems