SXSW Scorecard

I’m back in the swing of things after this year’s South by Southwest Interactive Festival and now that it’s had a chance to sink in, I wanted to take a look back at the 19 panels and talks I attended. Here’s how I rank them:

1. The Ecosystem of News Steven Johnson traced the development of tech and political news to show how they could be a model for the next stage of journalism in what was by far my favorite talk at SXSW. The author of The Invention of Air and Everything Bad Is Good For You presented one of the most well-reasoned, clear-headed, and frankly optimistic looks at how we’re likely to get our news in the future
2. Change v2 Since switching his main focus from copyright issues to reforming our political system, Lawrence Lessig has crafted an inspiring call to action for making congressional elections citizen-funded, not special-interest funded. Our representatives are not corrupt and dumb, but working within a highly flawed system. The Change Congress system and Donor Strike movement is a practical, achievable way to change that system.
3. Behind the Scenes with Mad Men on Twitter Saddled with a terrible time slot opposite the Guy Kawasaki/Chris Anderson keynote, the people behind the Mad Men characters on twitter (@PeggyOlson, @bettydraper, @Roger_Sterling) told the entertaining story of how, without the support of Mad Men or AMC, they began talking to fans of the show and extending the lives of the characters online and between episodes and seasons of the show. Instead of fan fiction, they called it brand fiction.
4. Is Privacy Dead or Just Very Confused? Just because you share what appears to be a lot of personal information on Facebook or Twitter doesn’t mean there are things that you keep to yourself. Privacy isn’t all or nothing, and the business of what’s private and what’s shared can change depending on context.
5. HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility! More accurately known as the Merlin Mann and John Gruber show, the duo mixed inspiration with humor and practical tips for getting the most out of what you put online. (Plus, Mann did a spot-on impression of Ira Glass (or maybe Alex Bloomberg).
6. UR Blog Sux and Print is Dead An entertaining look at Internet celebrities and the odd situations they’ve found themselves in. Ben Huh of I Can Has Cheezburger and Christian Lander of the sharply funny Stuff White People Like stood out.
7. Entrepreneurship in the Belly of the Beast Representatives from IBM, Google, Microsoft and Kraft Foods demonstrated that you can think and operate like a small company while working within the organization of a large enterprise. Finding supporters, working under the radar, emphasize and recruit talent and having a process in place all contribute to your success.
8. From Blog to Book Deal: How-To You can follow in the path of Guy Kawasaki, Stephanie Klein and Hugh MacLeod, but you’ve got to hold up your end of the bargain by first creating something worthwhile. Once you become known, it becomes easier for other doors to open for you (agents, publishers, marketing).
9. My Boss Doesn’t Get It: Championing Social Media to the Man The panel offered practical tips from the perspective of the company, vendor and consultant in getting a social media effort off the ground in a large organization. Peter Kim, in particular, stressed the importance of having real-world metrics (that is, real connections to savings or revenue) as a part of the plan.
10. Comedy on Television and the Web One of several panels that was fine on its own, but didn’t match up to either audience expectations or its original description. A crowd showed up to see B.J. Novak of The Office, but the panel mostly focused on serious issues of how comedy has led the way in the web video boom.
11. Building a Web Business After Hours Inspiring stories and concrete examples of what to expect when you try to launch a business on your own terms.
12. Quality: The Next Online Video Opportunity Eric Feng, the CTO of Hulu and an Austin native, smoothly navigated his way through a talk that was just this side of a sales pitch.
13. Nate Silver Silver seems like an interesting fellow (with a passing resemblance to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg), but interviewer Stephen Baker never quite got to heart of why and how the man behind political prediction site FiveThirtyEight.com found success.
14. James Powderly Another keynote hamstrung by bad planning and timing, a late start and long intro left interviewer Virginia Heffernan little time to explore why Powderly, the founder of Graffiti Research Lab, is such a compelling figure in the open-source art world.
15. Bruce Sterling As a part-time Austin resident and full-time sci-fi genius, Bruce Sterling deserves all the respect SXSW offers. But his message wandered and the audience found themselves laughing even when they were the object of Sterling’s barbs.
16. Beyond Aggregation — Finding the Web’s Best Content A good lineup of panelists (Marshall Kirkpatrick, Louis Gray, Gabe Rivera, Melanie Baker, Micah Baldwin), but my interest faded as the talk moved toward the technical and more advanced ways to find the best content online.
17. We Have Been Objectified: Identity, Consumerism, and the Future of Designed Objects I’m looking forward to seeing the movie and loved director Gary Hustwit’s previous film, Helvetica, but the panel was low-key. Bonus irony points for pointing out the panel was being filmed on a Flip camera, a product that one of the panelist’s companies designed.
18. Is Web 2.0 Killing the Sports Business? In a word, “no”, but the panel didn’t project the kind of energy that would even make it a legitimate question. Sports, after tech and politics, is an area ripe for Web 2.0-ization, but there wasn’t much of a discussion on how that might happen.
19. New Think for Old Publishers The setup: Book publishing executives want to hear from what their loyal audience wants. The execution: More than half an hour of introductions and preamble before the crowd grew restless. Clay Shirky did the best he could to pull the most important points out of the clamor, but his talent was generally wasted here. An hour of Shirky on his own would have been much better