Concerned Citizens

I’m in Austin this week for South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi), the techy side of SXSW. It’s probably one of the biggest social media gatherings in the nation and brings together so many creative and talented people into one single location and conference. During the next five days I’ll be sitting in sessions dealing with everything from new media to mobile to touch interfaces. Yes, as you can see the schedule is going to be busy. No, I can’t be in two or three places at the same time but I always overbook and choose the session at the last minute based on participant feedback. Sometimes I’ll walk out of a dog session and hit another based on tweets in Twitter from friends. So why would I spend these five days in this big interactive festival?

I cut my teeth on SXSWi last year on my own nickel because it just seemed to be the right thing to do. I was right and had a blast at it. I ended up leaving early at the end of Sunday’s sessions but vowed to pitch the idea to USAA the next year and make the full week. This year the pitch was easy based on my move to Applied Research and my new focus on social media. I’m still here on my own nickel regarding registration but USAA’s picking up the rest and I’m here to the end. But what does this year’s conference hold regarding themes?

Probably the biggest focus this year is geolocation applications where people will post where they are and provide additional information. The two biggest applications in this space are Foursquare and Gowalla. The excitement over this new technology is so hot that people are calling this the geolocation showdown. Throughout the five days participants are expected to be posting updates to both sites and evaluating the viability and functionality of the two. At the end you can expect the blogs to roll heavy and hard about what is good and bad.

I’m in both and will be evaluating them just like everyone else. So here’s my contact info in case you really want to see what I’m doing during SXSWi. You can follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Gowalla. Yes, I’ve kind of put myself out there but I’m hoping to see how well this technology works. Anyway, you can expect more postings as the weekend and week progress. No politics and all social media for a while.