I can’t find “Austin hangover” on Urban Dictionary, so I’ll define the term myself: the mental exhaustion that follows four days of pouring new ideas into your head at South by Southwest Interactive. (It can be accompanied by a traditional hangover, though it’s not required.)
Every time slot at South by Southwest is filled with several intriguing panels and presentations, so I missed more than I saw. But I can rely on the many journalists there among the game designers, developers, entrepreneurs, filmmakers and Web hipsters.
I asked these reporters, journalism educators, social media managers, developers and designers to share what sparked their imagination and what they’re thinking about.
Laura Hertzfeld, managing editor, EconomyStory.org
I was struck by what French director Michel Gondry said about the essence of creativity. He said that artists are inspired by the people around them, and that he sees creativity in people who don’t always see it in themselves.
The art that goes into what journalists do often is overlooked. I think there is a lot of creativity that goes into our work — not in the reporting sense, but in thinking about how to present information, find sources for stories, and analyze content.
Betsy Hubbard, associate director, Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism at The Ohio State University
I was inspired by Dan Roam‘s session on the importance of visual thinking and problem-solving. He pointed out that vision is our strongest sense, and humans are wired to process images quickly. Yet many of us rely almost exclusively on text when sharing information.
We shouldn’t confuse “best available” with “best.” Now that we have new tools that make presenting visual images and graphics much easier, we must be willing to move beyond text.
Cindy Royal, assistant professor, Texas State University
Both Danah Boyd’s keynote and Douglas Rushkoff’s presentation “Program or Be Programmed” dealt with understanding the biases and limitations of social media and online platforms. As Rushkoff said, “You are either a programmer or you’re being programmed.”
Sites like Facebook give us a limited set of choices for our participation, and we shouldn’t be lulled into a false sense of control. But I am inspired by the increased level of participation and creativity that social media spaces continue to offer.
Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at Poynter
Geeks care about journalism. There were dozens of sessions related to journalism: Web design, typography, the future of context, the principles of crowdsourcing, citizen journalism and so much more.
It was reassuring to see that so many smart, passionate people care about the role of the traditional Fourth Estate (professional newsrooms) and the rising Fifth Estate (everyone else doing some form of journalism). It’s clear that the crowd at SXSW embraces journalism, values its role in a democracy and wants to help the profession transform.
Jodi Gersh, content manager/social media, Gannett Co. Inc.
I really enjoyed the “Future of Context” session and the idea of changing the way news sites report stories. Rather than focusing on episodic news, “what would a news site look like if it were structured around context?” Matt Thompson asked.
“The City Is a Platform” relates to some things we’ve been thinking a lot about at Gannett. The panelists explained how the city is full of all of this unstructured data, and that the city itself is also the platform on which we will synthesize this data and tell the city’s stories. Local news organizations already do a terrific job analyzing this data, but the panel opened my eyes to how much more is out there and how the city and its citizens can dig deeper into the data that is all around us.
Tyson Evans, interface engineer for The New York Times
I was intrigued by Manor Labs, the research and development division of the city of Manor, Texas, which was demonstrated in “The City Is a Platform” panel. The city has turned the town of 6,500 people into a virtual R&D lab to tackle major civic innovations via crowdsourcing and game-driven mechanics. (For example, people can win virtual currency, which can be traded in to be “mayor” for a day — it’s like Foursquare meets city hall). It’s a fascinating petri dish of ideas.
Al Shaw, developer/designer for Talking Points Memo
Many of the panels this year were about enriching the online experience amid the increasingly fragmented environment on the Web. For example, how to support Web fonts when every browser has a different implementation, how to create rich graphics on the iPhone without Flash, how to monetize Web journalism when the advertising market is hostile. It’s exciting to hear from people who have thought deeply on these issues and are hacking around the status quo.
Matt Waite, senior news technologist, St. Petersburg Times
Maybe what our online business model needs isn’t more whiz-bang, but some simplicity.
Jim Coudal founded The Deck, an all-sponsorship, no cost-per-thousand ad network that is completely sold out. He was merciless in describing how newspapers sell online ads. That model, selling eyeballs a thousand at a time, only causes publishers to create more page views, creating more supply and driving down the price. It’s economics 101, and it’s a race for the bottom.
The solution? Stop selling CPMs. Only use sponsorships, which pay for time in front of your audience rather than impressions. Never sell an ad that cheapens your site (berry cures and fat pills and shady mortgage refinance offers). Ideally, only sell ads for products you use and think your audience would use. By doing this, publishers can create scarcity and break out of the race for the bottom.
Mark Briggs, author and entrepreneur, Serra Media and Journalism 2.0
Do you still run into people who tell you they like reading a newspaper, magazine or book in print rather than digitally? The iPad is about to change that.
Scott Dadich, creative director at Wired magazine, said at one panel that Wired measures reader engagement in hours, not minutes like online. That allows for higher ad rates; it’s another reason publishers should move faster in developing for tablet devices.
The Wired/Adobe demo was pretty impressive. The navigation goes both left-to-right and up-and-down, with lots of zooming and interactivity. It makes a Kindle look like black-and-white TV in the age of HD (with 3D on the way).
Dave Stanton, technology fellow at Poynter
I was underwhelmed with the Wired vision of the tablet experience, which reminds me of newspapers’ first efforts on the Web.
During the presentation, the design philosophy was referred to as “print plus,” which is an old moniker for what we now know as “shovelware.” Magazine publishers shouldn’t tweak the print design, move it to digital and add galleries and videos. I’m also concerned by the lack of social features, which the panelists said would be added in a future version.
If users are supposed to touch these devices any place except the bottom of the screen, their hands will obscure some of the content. When designing for any device, particularly for touch devices, we have to consider hardware and software constraints.
Will Sullivan, interactive director at the St. Louis Post Dispatch
Seeing how impressive HTML5 and CSS3 are, it really looks like Web applications will probably win out over installed apps. That may be unpopular to the folks who think iPhone/iPad apps will save journalism or make them rich, but developers are growing weary of developing for three to seven different platforms. It slows innovation and evolution.
It was fascinating to hear about the internal work flow of tech organizations like Google and 37signals. Google has this secret app: It’s called hard work. They sleep at the office to get products out the door.
Jon Zmikly, adjunct lecturer, Texas State University
My biggest takeaway: the absolute and utter ubiquity of the Web across all platforms, namely mobile devices. Pretty much every panel I attended either addressed mobile apps, asked the audience about their mobile usage or discussed issues surrounding anywhere, anytime access.
The focus on location-based mobile apps showed me that location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla can garner communities that may never have existed and increase user participation. Having access to not only what people are saying, but where they are when they say it, is going to be such a powerful tool for discovering the needs of specific communities, providing current, honest information about customers and users, and bringing people together like never before.
Mathilde Piard, social media manager at Cox Media Group
With all the talk about location-based services, I think people are missing another aspect of Foursquare, Gowalla and similar apps: social gaming. I found the sessions that focused on gaming interesting not because I want to create news-themed games, but because I can see how news sites can implement game mechanics to create better participation by readers.
Imagine if readers could rate each other’s comments or give each other karma points, and people with the highest ratings would get some kind of badge. The best discussion creators and leaders would float to the top and foster better discussions on stories.
Michael Donohoe, developer, The New York Times
Many talks and speakers picked up on the everything-as-a-game theme that has emerged in the last month or so. The idea is to use competitive and gamelike scenarios to keep users/readers/people engaged and coming back to your Web site and services, whether your goal is to promote civic responsibility or sell something.
I’m not entirely certain of the extent to which I can apply it at the Times, but I’m exploring it and it will probably influence some projects.
And a final reality check from me
Technology can be a great unequalizer. In a session called “How the Other Half Lives: Touring the Digital Divide,” two librarians (one from New York City and the other from Vermont) told stories of people who aren’t online, have — gasp! — dialup, or are totally mystified by computers. As everyone else moves to the mobile Web and location-based services, these people are left further behind. Not surprisingly, the poor and the elderly are usually in that group.
Likewise, in a talk called “Is Innovation Fair,” Andrew Keen noted the irony of questioning whether innovation is just “at an event that has fetishized the idea of innovation as justice.” He noted that those who can’t or won’t reinvent themselves don’t really have a place in a culture that places such a high value on innovation.
“My fear,” Keen said, “is not that authority will go away, but that it will become more unequally distributed.”
