WINNING

So far at SXSW, I've won:

Angry Birds T-Shirt

Two tickets to Jay Z in concert

By the way, guess which of us 3 did not go to Jay Z tonight?  That's right... it was me.

A Robot!!!!

Sphero is an iOS controlled robotic ball.

I haven't won it yet, but I really am hoping I will.  You can help by scanning the QR Code below as many times as possible!

Living life with less

I have had some amazing experiences so far at SXSW. It hasn't really been what I anticipated but that's ok. What it has ended up teaching me about is being happy with what you're doing with life. I heard about two zen digital nomads yesterday Erica O'Grady and Julia Allison who have no permanent address to call home. What courage they had to give away nearly all of their possessions and rely on friends, friends of friends and even strangers sometimes to provide shelter. As it relates to work, they found that they worked longer and harder because they were happier with doing away with trivial distractions. Their stories were both inspiring and interesting. A statement that really hit home with me was, 'you don't choose a life, you live one.'

Three authors I heard today, Eve Blossom - Material Change, Erika Napoletano - The Power of Unpopular and Dinah Sanders - More Life, Less Stuff all had some similar themes. For business, they recommend branding with less, proven products and services and stepping outside the box.

Eve spoke about helping startup textile companies with women in Asia and India. Her primary goal is to keep them from being forced into sex trafficking. Dinah said 'innovation is seeing problems in a new way and finding new ways to solve them.'

Erika talked about her book The Power of Unpopular. She said 'the popular kids are followers, unpopular kids start up something new. It's time to challenge what you think unpopular
means.'. She says the keys to success for a company are Personality, Approachability, Sharability, Scalability and Profitability.

Dinah suggests we let go of everything that doesn't make your life awesome. Her principles include: 1. Decide and do - acknowledge and act. 2. Quality over quantity - buy less and buy better, including time. 3. Perpetual upgrade - frequent action in a direction. Her 80/20 rule was described as '...it's easy to keep true to your important things by spending more time at the bottom of your to-do list. My favorite quote came from her in regard to sharing in social media. She said: 'just because you're friends doesn't mean you have to read every electronic output.'

Perhaps my favorite session was 'The Making of the Modern Office' this morning. The panel consisted of a moderator and three female panelists from smaller startup companies. They had great stories of interesting incentives and fun ideas for the workplace. This was everything from telecommuting, flex time, bringing dogs to work, wii gaming, massages and Friday lunches among other things. They all said when selecting employees they made sure the potentials had a strong work ethic and that they would be a good fit with the culture of their company. Since the employees are working long hours they need time to recharge. They said a new way for executives to lead is to 'be out in front of people any time, any day not just at an all-hands meeting. A profound thought shared was 'you shouldn't have to motivate people, you should create a motivating environment.'

Well, I'm off for one last session for the day. Signing off from a now beautiful and sunny Austin! Have a great day!

Crepes for breakfast

After a late night at the opening party, we're opening the day with crepes before starting the again.

Liz's story - Day 2

Forecast today? Rainy, with a 100% chance of more rain!

Oh well, it's always a possibility when traveling. It makes waiting for all the buses a little bit more of an adventure.

Today, I started off by tracking down some Jamba juice. (I was missing my normal daily juicing). We prevailed! I so wish we had a Jamba Juice in KC! Someone get on that quick!

Then, back to the Austin Convention Center to make the Brands as Patterns session where I listened to a panel of experts weigh in on trends in brands and where they are going. One of the more interesting concepts was that in the past branding has been based on building consistency through repetition. The brand would be outlined by rigid rules set at one point and time. However, setting rules like that makes you inflexible. But in order to be relevant, and in today's world, iterative, brands need to allow space for change and variety. Our experiences are liquid. Our brands must follow. Yet, at the same time, consistency is still needed. So what's the solution? Knowing your brand's story and ingraining it into the pattern. Patterns create consistency around difference and variance. Take Beethoven's 5th symphony and play the first four notes. (Can't remember it? Click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4IRMYuE1hI). Now, if you repeat that exact sequence over and over again, it gets REALLY boring. However, if you play the whole song as composed by the musical genuis, this pattern is threaded throughout the composition and it NEVER gets boring. It evokes emotion and keeps us excited. We don't have to be inflexible to establish consistency with our brands.

Beethoven's 5th - Patterns

Next, I attended a quick session called Radio-Free Yoga - Self-realize x Social Enterprise. Yoga is about connection. So is the internet. It's only logical that there would be a natural marriage between these two things. The social media tools at our disposal can help us connect in ways that were impossible before. Virtual connections bringing about real (Jane McGonagal from yesterday would say "realized") benefits in the physical world.


Emotional Equations to Connect with Your Customers presented by Chip Conley was very interesting. I liked him as a CEO. Maybe because at the end of his presentation he stated that we are all CEOs but more than that, we are all Chief Emotion Officers. We all have emotions. If we can't connect to our own emotions, how can we connect to those of our clients' in order to anticipate their needs? The king of Bhutan once stated that he didn't care about the GDP of his country, but rather the happiness. We need to tap into our emotions, the emotions of our employees and ultimately the emotions of our clients. Chip's main ending points were to pay attention to emotional intelligence or EQ, to realize that emotions are as contagious as the flu, and that we need to be cultural anthropologists in our businesses.

Chip

From there, I ran to Data Visualization & the Future of Research. There was a lot of data presented from the panel of 5 experts but the main key to understanding data now is to realize that there is more data generated today that can possibly be consumed. In past eras, you could look up and literally read through all the literature of a given time. However, in our current time, this is impossible. So, when we approach researching and accessing data, we need a way to see more than our ability. Take the telescope. It provides us a way to see things much further than the human eye can see. Take the microscope. It enables us to see things much smaller than our eyes can detect. Today we need tools as macroscopes. Tools that can take "big data" and combine it with computation in order to enhance our epistemology (or ways of knowing).  Microsoft is experimenting and providing free tools for us to do just that. Check out research.microsoft.com/collaboration, or worldwidetelescope.org, or layerscape.org, or chronozoomproject.org.

Big data

Jason and I ended the sessions with a Carlin  Home Companion, the story of George Carlin's life and humor as told by his daughter. George started life out with a set formula that he saw work for another dj turned comedian turned movie actor. But in the end, even though it took him 60+ years for him to feel he finally found his truest artistic self, following his dreams and not others' expectations was the true key to happiness.

But the day could not be concluded before Jason participated in a little robot boxing wars! Check it out here: http://youtu.be/BMou-Kg1wwM

Did you know...

Netflix Now The Largest Single Source of Internet Traffic In North America

Read the full article here.

Zya

At the "Clouds here..." session, they just announced the new release of Zya.

It's pretty cool.

Check it out here: Zya Music

BUT

Keep checking back for the latest news, or enter your email in the field below for updates. We're very committed to Mac as a platform, and we should have some exciting news to share with you in the coming months!

SXSW gets off to high profile but soggy start

SXSW gets off to a high profile but soggy start

SXSW Goers Honor Formal Fridays

Liz's Story - Day 1

Today was a lot of wading through the masses and learning to understand the crazy complicated system of the SXSW campus. There are so many people! I could have never imagined! Catching a bus is a cold, tricky thing to do.

Just the tiniest portion of the crowd.

After a lot of the orientation and red tape, I kicked off the conference with a speech called Change Happens: Improve for an Unpredictable World presented by the married team Jordan and Amanda Hirsch. It was a humorous but very useful and enlightening presentation. I learned a few techniques that help you to deal with change in business or in your personal life.

Improv in session

 Next, after a few bumps in the rainy cold path to my next location, I heard a panel of four professionals engaging in a discussion on Visual Storytelling. The last seminar of the day for me was A Crash Course in Becoming SuperBetter by Jane McGonagal. McGonagal is a revolutionary game designer who believes that we could apply what we achieve in video games in "real life" by taking gaming to a whole new level by applying its principles in ways that benefit and enrich our lives.

Jane spits game

The 1st day was exciting, exhausting, exhilarating (as I am a HUGE nerd for inspiration and learning). Hopefully, tomorrow will be even better.

Now, if we could JUST get rid of the rain!

rain rain go away

The Future of Work - Session by Dan Finnigan

The job market has changed in the last couple of generations.  Think of the TV Show Mad Men.  In those days, when you were employed, it was much more like a marriage between you and your employer.  In times of recession, cost cutting was done through non-labor budget cuts (i.e., rationing staples or paper clips).  Now, the worker is disposable.

We've seen the rise of the "disposable worker".    The contract between employees and employers has changed.  Now companies faced with a budget crisis almost always responds with cutting jobs rather than by cutting budgets.  Employees have responded in kind.  Right now, roughly 61% of your employees are shopping for a new job.

Education is pivotal to our collective success in recruiting talent.  Growth in jobs requiring a master's degree is up 22% and jobs requiring a doctorate are up 20%.   Very soon, there will be a shortage of prospective employees to fill jobs requiring a Master's degree because the U.S. no longer leads the world in education.   If we increased the HS GRAD rate by 23%, would add 10 trillion to our economy.  U.S. education institutions are falling behind foreign institutions of higher learning.

China is out-producing the U.S. in science & engineering... AND not because they're cheaper ... It's because of the scale of the employee market.  

When I graduated college, they told me to expect to have 7 different jobs.  Today, the average worker can expect to have 10 jobs in his lifetime (14 if you're in a high tech industry).  

How people work and what is considered working has changed. 50% of work is done by contingent workers.  82% of independent contractors prefer it to a permanent job

The nature of work has also changed as evidenced by:

• Gigwalk: use your iPhone to take pics of things. 
• Mechanical Turk

Recruiters are pulling from YouTube, Facebook, Google Searches, Linked-In and building little black books of potential candidates.   However, employees of your company may be your best recruiters as 25% of all new hires come from employee referrals.

New data suggests that the Super Socials (those that use social sites regularly/obsessively) are more likely to get job referrals and will make more money.  Companies should be better partners with their existing employees (should stop being abusive to their employees) if they want to be able to recruit in the future.

A great example of how to accomplish this is Zappos who want employees to work for them for reasons other than money.   In fact, Zappos offers new hires a cash bonus if they decide in the first couple of months of employment that they don't want to work for Zappos.

Did you remember formal fridays?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_DSjWoTRMg&sns=em

Registration time!

We are wading through the masses of people to get registered. Its exciting, the convergence of minds at this one location. I am ready to listen and learn!

Here we come Austin

We're sitting AT THE Kansas City airport - haven't even left town and have already met some fellow SXSW attendees. 

And we're off!

Flying out to Austin!

Will Meeteor Help You Network Better at SXSW?

Check out this article in Mashable about a company that wants to make it easier to find and talk to the other 32,000 people who attend the film/interactive portion of SXSW this year.

http://mashable.com/2012/03/02/meeteor/

Leaving for SXSW in just a few days

SXSW - Chevy

Update on SXSW