Lessons Learned at SxSWi: Day 2

Before I get into what I learned, here is what I did today. After breakfast with my Aunt and Uncle I went to:

1. Civic Technologies and the Future of the Internet with Jonathan Zittrain - Berkman Center for Internet and Society
2. Emerging Trends of Mobile Technology with Rob Gonda - Sapient, Juan-Carlos Morales - Sapient Interactive and Ryan Stewart - Adobe
3. Trade Show (W00T!)
4. Opening Remarks/Keynote with Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com
5. The Future of Social Networks with Charlene Li of Altimeter Group
6. Suxorz '09: The Ten Worst Social Media Campaigns

Then dinner at Manuel's (Mole enchiladas and dinner with @jackiekazil and @jenleereeves), then over to the Mexican American Cultural Center for a crazy wild party of amazing bike insects, chinese dragons and lot's o' technology.

Whew.

So what have I learned today that I would like to pass on?

1. From @Zittrain: We have created an online culture of becoming dependent on sites where we post our personal data on systems that are controlled by a few (think FB and Apple) and while we think we have some control, we really don't (sites change their interfaces without asking our permission, gov't blocks access and sites use our data for many different things). So much is happening that we, as consumers, are unaware of, that we often can't even vote with our feet. It's only when someone tells us what is happening (for example, the FB terms of service challenge) that we can take some type of control. But at the moment if we want to use the services we have to give up control of our information. The solution? A site (in alpha) called http://www.herdict.org where you harness the power of civic decision-making where the community provides information about what sites are accessible to all, and what's being blocked.
   
   My commentary on this one was it was much more of a history lesson about technology/computers and the web with too little on the future (as the title implies). However the points about how little control we really have over the sites we are relying on for so much information sharing was very important. He provided an example of having a two slice toaster and one morning you come down and suddenly there's a third slot for toast with a note that says, we've made an upgrade. Then a few days later you come home and that third slot is gone with a note that said there was a problem with the third slice, sorry if you lost any toast. And then you come down the next morning and your toaster is now a juicer. That is what is happening to us every day on the sites we use -- like FB (where it is quite obvious), or any blogging software. Amazing what we will put up, eh?
   
   
2. Mobile Trends. I learned a GREAT DEAL in this one. WOW. Since I don't spend a lot of time in the mobile arena, except for some articles here and there, I was blown away. The concept of Augmented Reality was new for me. In essence you take your iPhone and take a picture of a product or building and suddenly you get data that tells you about that item, by pulling in info from the web. OR, you might get a 3d model that you can manipulate. OR, you might play a game of ping pong with your phone and a friend with a phone in the middle of the park with no actual table (very Wii-like). All on your phone. Embedded audio and QRCodes allow you to utlize information in a bar code or in a film that then transmits information to a phone that will display URLs or directions or...whatever. Yeah, I know, Japan has a lot of this already and many around the world are more aggressive in their use of mobile phone technologies. Regardless this was cool. Very cool. Yo marketers -- what will you do with this trend?
   
   
3. From @zappos I learned how important customer service is in Marketing. Ok. I knew that already (grin) but it was great to hear from Tony Hsieh just how important customer service is to the company culture of Zappos. As a matter of fact, it was down right refreshing to hear how important the company culture and core values are to the success of this company. Hmmm...I know a Biz school that should be paying attention to this one. Now, what school could that be?
   
4. From @charleneli I learned about the future of social networks. Great contrast to the @zittrain presentation. The future of social networks is that they will be like "air". In other words they will be all around us and we will be connected easily -- we will manage our identies and decide what information we will share with our "trusted" partners (in Charlene's case that's Google) and then there will be single sign on (similar to OpenID or Facebook Connect) which will allow personalized recommendations at shoppings sites that come from our own circle of friends. Her examples was that a person could go to amazon and buy a pare of NineWest shoes. That information would be ported to all of her friends (like the FB wall) so they would know what she bought...and then her friends would also begin to see NineWest ads that are served up to them because of their relationship with her. Much more tightly integrated. This would result in a "personal cpm". Essentially if I have high social capital and am seen as an influencer, then when advertisers serve up ads to me, they would pay more per click or impression because of my influence and my circle of friends. In order to leverage something like this, and organization cannot be "top down". It must be focused on the customer. She showed an org chart with the customer at the top and the CEO at the bottom -- now that's interesting.
   
   My general thoughts on this. Yep. This is where we are heading for sure. We aren't there yet, but it will come and I think within a few years I'll be teaching this stuff in my classroom the same way I'm teaching about best practices with Twitter and FB.
   
   
5. As to Suxorz. Suffice to say I learned about some very interesting FAILs. Some I don't agree with -- the panel thinks Skittles is a Fail because they didn't get anyone to really engage and they compromised their brand by pulling in the Twitter stream, and others I do agree with -- like Belkin Marketing person who went to Amazon Turk and published an offer to pay people for writing positive reviews and to dis any other reviews that were negative. That one won by the way. Amazing what can go wrong when you don't think things through!

A busy day here at SxSWi. My brain is mushy with the possibilities.

More tomorrow.