The Jeff Beckham Weblog

At South by Southwest, the “Future of Corporate Blogs” panel talked about some issues companies have faced in launching blogs, and how they can be used to benefit the business.
The panelist whose story most closely matched with my employer’s was Lionel Menchaca of Dell, who created the Direct2Dell blog 18 months ago. That site now [...]

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Bryan Mason and Sarah Nelson of Adaptive Path addressed the challenges of getting the most out of talented people in their SXSW session titled “10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment”.
Mason and Nelson studied theater troupes, orchestras, a restaurant kitchen, a magazine and a screenwriting collective to find out how these creative groups work well [...]

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One of the most interesting panels in all of South by Southwest Interactive was “Going Social Now“, Shiv Singh’s look at social influence marketing.
Singh, who works in the New York office of Avenue A/Razorfish, points out that today’s online shopping experience is not a linear process. We need to take advantage of the social influence [...]

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For the second straight year, Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh put on an inspiring performance at South by Southwest. Zappos, an online retailer that sells mostly shoes, but also is branching out into clothing and accessories, has built its reputation and business on providing amazing customer service.
This year’s edition, titled “Top 10 Lessons Learned in E-Commerce” [...]

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On Sunday, I hosted a discussion at SXSW Interactive titled “How Accessible Should Your Site Be?“. The format was different from the traditional PowerPoint slides and panelist presentation. This session was structured to encourage discussion and interactivity. It was held in a big ballroom, with five other discussions on accessibility and web standards happening simultaneously [...]

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The podcast promoting my SXSW session — How Accessible Should Your Site Be? — is featured on today’s front page of the SXSW Interactive site.

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I recorded a podcast to help promote my upcoming session at South by Southwest Interactive, “How Accessible Should Your Site Be?“. Event organizers suggested that we put together a little preview to help promote our appearance.
I recorded my part, then discovered that Moby has offered several instrumental tracks at mobygratis.com for independent and non-profiit filmmakers [...]

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Mark Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old founder and CEO of Facebook, will be the keynote speaker at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival.
That’s a huge coup for event organizers. Facebook has blasted into the mainstream in the past year, growing from a college networking site to a worldwide phenomenon with more than 60 million users. [...]

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I got word a couple of weeks ago that one of my panel suggestions was accepted for the 2008 South by Southwest Interactive Festival.
The session, “How Accessible Should Your Site Be?”, won’t be in a panel format, however, but will instead be a part of the new Core Conversations program at the event. Here’s how [...]

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A whopping 683 panel ideas are on the initial lineup of the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival Panel Picker, which launched today.
This is the second year for the Panel Picker functionality, a tool that allows the web community to give feedback on the ideas they feel are most appropriate for the 2008 festival. Event [...]

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