sxsw

I've been thinking recently about how the ability to go "live" may affect many careers. Using the Sarah Lacy/Mark Zuckerberg keynote as our example, I want to share some thoughts with you. Whether you are a blogger or an entrepreneur, the ability to recognize when you've screwed up is critical for success.

Unlike those watching from far away, I was actually there in the room, arrived nearly two hours early so I could sit in the front and get ready to live blog the event. I watched the room fill up, people standing along the sides, cropped down, chairs changed to couches and audio tests. The number of cameras snapping photos when Mark came out was simply amazing - in fact it seemed like a press conference with the number of photographers in the pit. read more »

My second visit to SXSW is now over and it was great. Met a ton of great people and thanks to everyone for saying hi and appreciate all of the great feedback over the past week. Tomorrow we return to normal coverage and bid Austin and the birds adieu.

• Schwag Giveaway - Gary V's Sweat, Facebook Tshirts, Seesmic Stickers and More
• Hats Off To The Twitter Team
• Hey Far Away Haters, Here's Why I Enjoy SXSW
• Video Interview - Kyte.TV Explains The Difference With Seesmic, Qik and Flixwagon
• The (Apparently) Two Sides of Mark Zuckerberg
• Panel Recap: Good Analytics Can Get You Booty
• Startup Pricing Suggestions - Reduce And Raise
• Facebook Garage Live Blogging w/Mark Zuckerberg
• Kyte Pulls a Twitter
• Viddler Dinner Recap: Lots of Celebs and Kevin Rose / Gary V Are CN Fans!
• Stickam Demo Video
• The Ninja Accepts
• Web Awards Winners
• Exclusive: Bitstrips Demo Video - Launching Today
• Keynote: Mark Zuckerberg - Live Notes Plus Post-Keynote Crowd Reactions
• Contextual Web Session Recap
• The SXSW Bag, "We Waste Paper"

SXSW has come to a close and sadly there wasn't that much to pick up for ya'all this year. If you watched my SXSW bag video, you will see that the bag was loaded with a lot of paper and almost nothing else. I prefer pens and mints over everything else but there were no pens to be found! Anywhoo, here is what I grabbed for you. If you would like one of the items, send in a note with which item you'd like and next Wednesday I will pick a lucky winner. If you've already received an item from CN, let someone else grab one.

view the items »

Lots of people (including us) were wondering how well Twitter would handle SXSW after some brief outages at FOWA. The Twitter team explained how they would handle the surge in messages before we boarded planes for Austin. Though the chatter on Friday was around how long it would be before Twitter went down and how we would all use morse code to effectively communicate.

While the WiFi in the hotels, bars and in the convention center itself was barely working for the majority of the event (though better than last year), Twitter was up the entire time. Not one blip.

This is a virtual high-5 to the entire Twitter team for a job well done!

Over the past couple of days, there have been some people hating on SXSW from far off lands. I'd like to share why I have enjoyed SXSW both last year and this year. It's important to remember that this is a general interactive conference, not a developer-focused conference. Designers, developers, marketers, PR, anyone involved in the interactive space are welcome to attend and participate.

Environment

By environment I mean Austin. I find Austin to be completely relaxing - the pace is a bit slower, the air is freaking clean, and there is a welcoming nature for the locals. I've lived in cities before where x event takes over the city and normally the town fights it, but here they seem to welcome us with open arms. And then there's the birds.

Price

Many conferences today run $2,000 and higher for 2-3 days, here you can attend for $325-400 for what's nearly a week of sessions, keynotes, an expo and networking. I've always judged conferences based on price/results and this one is the best hands down. Almost anyone can afford this event allowing for a greater diversification of full-time to indies.

Approachability

This is the game changer for SXSW. Walking around the 10 football fields from one room to another, every person is approachable. No matter how big the name or what they've done in the past, everyone is willing to chat openly and honestly. I had a chance to chat with so many great people including: Kevin Rose, iJustine, Gary Vaynerchuk, Hugh MacLeod, Tris Hussey, Stowe Boyd, Chris Saad, Jeremiah Owyang, the whole Rocketboom gang, and hundreds more great people. I even saw Larissa Meek today but didn't get a chance to chat with her.

This is not to mention the networking that goes on during the event. I have a good number of new contacts and Scoble keeps saying that the best conversations are those going around in the hallways.

Atmosphere

The atmosphere at SXSW is also like no other. People come as they are, no suits, no dress slacks, no wing tips. Lots of tshirts (this year with phrases on them no brands except Digg), shorts, jeans, sneakers and even one guy in a kilt. Some tell me that there's a family dynamic at SXSW. I think it's more of a, "hey, we've chatted online for a year, it's great to meet face-to-face!" dynamic. It's almost like I know everyone at the conference just because we've connected in one way or another over the past year.

Session Quality

The sessions at SXSW are decided on by the audience and that helps to bring the best ones to Austin. Are they all great? Of course not, but compared to most other conferences, they are on-par or above average.

Keynote Variety

The conference organizers do a good job of bringing in a variety of thought for the keynotes. What shocked me is just how many flashbulbs went off during the Mark Zuckerberg keynote. I was in the third row and there were at least thirty photographers down on the floor during the entire event, not including the hundreds of cameras in the audience popping pictures throughout. You'd think he was a huge rockstar or Britney!

So far I've heard the best reaction to the first keynote with Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson. Three people said that the discussion was very inspirational.

Those are my reasons why I enjoy SXSW, why do you enjoy (or not) SXSW? (leave a comment or send me a link from your blog)

After my post about Kyte yesterday, the team asked me to swing by their booth. Let me just say that what they showed me was impressive. They showed me their 2-minute full Facebook application along with the one-minute embed option. The system works with mobile phones, webcams, and saved videos. We were able to take my mobile phone, create a video, email it to Kyte and it was online immediately in my channel. The live features work mainly with the Nokia N95 (Nokia is an investor in Kyte).

With all of the new live video services hitting the airwaves recently, I asked co-founder Daniel Graf about the differences between Kyte and Seesmic, Qik and Flixwagon. Come inside for his video response.

To-date, I've watched Facebook CEO live four times: Michael Arrington's interview at TC40 (which was half-interview, half-infomercial for fbFund), 60 Minutes, this week with Sarah Lacy at SXSW and yesterday at the Facebook developer garage.

Everyone has called him awkward, reserved, difficult to interview, etc. What I can assure you is that in a 24-hour period I witnessed two different sides of Mark Zuckerberg. We all know how the interview with Lacy went, so I won't rehash it as most of us have moved on.

At the Facebook developer garage yesterday, it was like night-and-day. Mark was open, conversational, and even a bit funny (ok, just a bit). He did the professional thing by not mentioning the interview the day prior except to say that many people asked for more time for q&a and he wanted to offer more time.

There was a warmth in the room that wasn't there the day before. Mark answered every question that was asked of him without stock answers as he did the day before. The "we are focused on communication between people" didn't come out of his mouth once and when one person asked him about his personal life, he answered.

I now get why so many app developers are building on the Facebook platform. It's not only about the Facebook name or Zuckerberg, it's not just about the potential money (if there is any), it's about the tight developer community that's been created, a community that MySpace doesn't have.

Yesterday, Dave McClure, Ted Rheingold, Hiten Shah, Jia Shen and Todd Vernon took to the stage for a panel about startup analytics. The room was packed and the discussion was great. The guys dressed up like pirates and said "AARRR" 24,217 times. Here are some of the net takeaways.

If you do good analytics you can make booty (booty is the pirate term for money). You must test, test and then re-test all of your marketing ideas. Just because one is doing well, that doesn't mean there isn't a better one still.

There are five parts to the customer lifecycle:

• Acquisition
• Activation
• Retention
• Referral
• Revenue
• in other words... AARRR

3 business models

• get users
• drive usage
• make money = and hopefully its profitable money
• you must turn the users and the usage into money or get bought

Pretty graphs mean nothing if you don't do something with it - and perhaps give one metric to each team member to manage

If using landing pages, do lots of tests - the panel said that mentioning the referrer was beneficial "Welcome from Forbes"

Below $20/month is a good number to hit, people seem to stay with this and won't go through the hassle of cancelling

Hiring a blogger part-time could be a good way to build seo for the company terms

Ted from Dogster explains that by making dynamic landing pages increased registrations

• They got 2,000 registrations but lower numbers of activations - 60%
• Not all activations become active members
• Realized that the terms that they want to rank for don't appear on the home page
• Got more traffic via organic changes than in a month they spent $90k in online ads

Lijit realized that by testing different entry pages, they were able to increase signups and activations by a large percentage.

At the South by Southwest Conference, I spoke with an entrepreneur who suggested that the best thing you could do to find new clientele is to lessen the pricing options and increase the price. Sounds counter-intuitive, but it works. I find it entertaining how new entrepreneurs are attracted to the idea of price cuts. It's bad for the entrepreneur, it's bad for service quality, and in the end, it's bad for the customer. Instead, concentrate on attracting clients who are willing to pay top dollar for premium service. This works for companies that sell products, services, or both. My favorite examples are web hosting provider Rackspace.com and the Mercedes car company. Here are some reasons why:

1) While people claim to enjoy having options, it actually complicates their decision making process. In The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, the author suggests that offering fewer options gives them less to be unhappy about. For example, an ice cream shop with two flavors will make more money than if it had fifty flavors because consumers have less to deliberate about. Less is more.

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Today at SXSW, Facebook is holding a Developer Garage. I am doing live blogging and so keep refreshing this page to get the latest and I will note once the event has concluded. The newest is at the bottom.

come inside for the notes