Tuesday was the last day of SXSW Interactive in Austin. The five-day conference brings together thousands of people, valuable information and a flood of tweets on every topic. I attended panels and core conversations (small, more interactive groups) on such topics as company culture, managing online communities and politics. And yesterday, I was very happy to end my time at SXSW sitting in on a panel about food blogging!
I snapped lots of pictures, ate some great Austin food and met people in real life that I only previously knew as tiny avatars on the web. With so much information to share and an exhausted brain, I thought a great way to reflect on my experience might be to look back at my twitter stream to see if I had any gems. But you can judge for yourself. Here are a few things that I found:
During the "Blog on Company Time and Get Promoted" core conversation. I like these small core conversation sessions quite a bit. Rather than a panel of experts talking to each other at the front of a room, these more intimate sessions invite dialogue and questions from everyone in the room. Many of the folks in the room are simply trying to convince their bosses/CEOs of the importance of blogging for their company. I handed out a few business cards during this conversation to show what I think is a great example of a business blogging --
hammock.com, of course!
During the "How to Create a Great Company Culture" core conversation. The king of cool company culture at SXSW was clearly Tony Hsieh of
zappos.com, so I was interested to see how the two guys from
dogster.com running this conversation would follow Tony's Saturday remarks. The cool thing was that they spoke from a small-business perspective, and lots of entrepreneurs in the audience were able to share helpful stories of implementing great cultures in their own businesses.
One of the speakers from dogster equated a business, especially a small one, with a close family. What did I take from his statement? A good balance of education and discipline with praise, and okay, maybe a hug, will in itself help promote a great company culture from the top down.
From the "From Flickr and Beyond: Lessons in Community Management" panel. I wish I could remember which of the panelists said this because it is a great tip! Anyone who runs an online community will inevitably hear from someone with harsh criticism or "crazy" ideas. Being a good administrator of such a community means that one of your many roles is to answers those questions and comments. All of them.
From the "Start-up Management: OMG I Have to Manage People?" core conversation. This question got quite a response from the folks in the room, some of my followers on twitter, and even at dinner with some friends the next evening. The thought behind salary transparency as I understood from the other attendees is that everyone would try harder to work up to their paycheck. If person A makes more than person B, maybe that would serve as incentive for person B to work a bit harder, longer or up to person A's example. And should we name our own raises? I think we all might take a harder, closer look at our work if we did.
During the "Building Strong Online Communities" panel. Not everyone in your online community is going to love everyone about it. Give those people a place to offer comments, suggestions and criticisms in a constructive and welcoming way.
From the Tuesday Keynote Interview with Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine, and Guy Kawasaki, Alltop. Guy interviewed Chris about his coming-soon book, "Free". The conversation was lively and entertaining. Some of the things they talked about included the semantics of the word "free," twitter charging for use of a service we all think of as free and paper. "There will always be a market for great design, great production and great implementation of long-form journalism," Chris said.
During the "Nom Nom Nom: The Secrets of Successful Foodblogging" panel. This was a fun and entertaining way to end my time at SXSW. One of my new foodie friends from Austin was on the panel and I recognized several other local/foodie friends in the audience that I hadn't seen a single time during the previous four days. The panelists gave the attendees some great pieces of advice, including a single word: Focus!
You know we at Hammock love a good t-shirt! And we love a good story, too.
There's a guy named Jason in Florida working comfortably in jeans and a t-shirt today. And tomorrow, he'll have on a totally different t-shirt. For the right price.
Here's the scoop: Jason Sadler is selling the "ad space" that is his chest. On Jan. 1, the price was $1. Increasing one buck each day, on Dec. 31 the price will be $365. Companies (or individuals like his dad) can go to Iwearyourshirt.com and pick the day of the year they'd like to dress Jason with their logo. (He even says if you want him to wear a pink Care Bears t-shirt, he will.) Send him the t-shirt and the cost of that day, and you're set. But his calendar is filling quickly.
For the money and the tee, Jason will wear the shirt all day, take pictures which are posted to flickr, tweet about the tee, blog about the tee, and upload a video in and about the tee to YouTube and Vimeo. Many of our favorites!
By my calculations – please note, I still have nightmares that they will show up at my front door to take my bachelor's degree away because I passed algebra by the skin of my teeth – Jason will bring in more than $63,000 this year. Wearing t-shirts.
I love it. And I really wish I'd thought of it.
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