Connecting the Dots / An Agency Blog

Austin sure is a neat little town. Considering what comes to mind when one says ‘Texas’, it’s hard to believe this little oasis exists in the heart of sprawling old country America. With a never-ending selection of bars to pick from, it seems to be beer and music that keep this town a buzz from early afternoon late into the night. Perhaps it’s the enormous selection of watering holes that make this a particularly great location for a conference like SXSW.

This wasn’t my first trip to Austin, but it was my introduction to SXSW. My first experience of this town was in the hottest part of summer – August – when the sun beats down on vacant city streets, residents knowing better to venture into 40 degree Fahrenheit weather – but not me. I found myself exploring the streets of Austin alone, on the hottest day of my life, with sweat literally pouring from my forehead. I know the heat, and I know the debauchery that is 6th street, so I returned to Austin with some preconceived notion of what SXSW was really all about, but this time, with overcast weather comparable to my own hometown, Vancouver.

So rather than provide yet another ‘guide to SXSW’ I thought I’d recap my experience including a few key moments – both brain and beer related – that I was able to partake in during our 4 days in Austin.

HEY, WHY ARENT WE GOING TO SXSW?
YVR > PHX > AUS > Check-in > Registration > and finally Drinks!

Having booked our trip way too late – literally 3 days before the conference – our only option for lodging was 15 minutes outside of the city center, in a faux-fancy circa 1985 hotel called the Omni. This regal paradise provides all the necessities of business travel, plus an epic view of Overpass, USA, only a hop skip and a jump to downtown Austin. The Omni was certainly sufficient, but I’d suggest the Hilton or at least the downtown Omni for those that know to plan ahead and book early. Along with remote lodging options, we unfortunately also arrived late Friday afternoon and missed all of the sessions scheduled on that day. Nevertheless, we headed into the labyrinth that is the Austin Convention Center – where an army of SXSW volunteers provided a quick and efficient registration process.

Now the funniest part of travelling outside of Canada is that no matter where I end up going, I always meet Canadians, and often times I randomly run into people I know. I suppose given the context of this conference, it’s not completely surprising to run into business contacts from across Canada. This time being no different, we spent some time with our friend Steve Mykolyn of TAXI, Ryan Holmes of Invoke (and Hootsuite fame), and Amielle Lake of Tagga from right here in Vancouver. Also ran into some other notable Vancouver folks too and got a chance to finally meet some familiar faces.

Registration led us to a walk down 6th street, in search of a decent place to eat. There’s plenty to choose from but its two extremes. Heavy Metal Pizza certainly works following a night of binge drinking, and we did make a stop in there at least once. For our first foray into Austin cuisine, we ended up at the Parkside. While the décor is definitely a step up for 6th, the menu was nice and simple and there’s plenty to look at in this place. It also seemed to be the place to be, as the room quickly filled up with Internet and advertising celebs, including Kevin Rose of Digg and Alex Bogusky of CP+B. Names most of us see on a daily basis in the ad trade pubs.

Unfortunately this would be our first and last highbrow culinary experience while in town – from here it would be down hill, and by downhill I mean Tex-Mex. Big plates, and a huge menu of items all containing roughly the same 5 ingredients. In any case, the servings are big, and the chips and salsa are refilled at an alarming pace.

The venue of choice for nightlife this evening would turn out to be the Maverick, playing host to a live digital music showcase presented by AMODA. The Maverick is quite a unique venue, with a ridiculous number of spaces to explore; it begins to almost complicate the experience with each passing beer and ensuing ‘where are we’ rhetorical question.

SATURDAY
On to talks, keynotes, panels, and networking.

We kicked things off with a quick review of the schedule, and an impromptu plan of what to skip and what to sit in on. There’s a huge selection, and you need to read between the lines to get a sense of what each event will cover, if you’ll take anything away from it, or if its just a primer. In some cases its tough to evaluate based on a short description and a speaker profile.

After ducking out of a social media seminar (covering mostly the basics), we headed over to check out Brendan Dawes, Gary Hustwit and Jim Coudal speak about “creating more involving, entertaining, successful projects by structuring them in a way that encourages the audience to be a key part of the process of discovery”. Having known of Dawes for many years, it was interesting to hear his approach to various projects he has developed. I must have overlooked Hustwit on the seminar write-up, as I had not realized he was speaking. The creator of two great documentaries, Helvetica and I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (the film that follows alt-country band Wilco through the loopholes and bureaucracy of the recording industry), Hustwit was also in town to premier his new film Objectified – which I imagine will be as interesting and engaging as his previous efforts. (Note Objectified is premiering in Vancouver on Tuesday May 5th 2009)

Who doesn’t know the mantra of Zappos? Tony Hsieh spoke to a packed conference room and two simulcast rooms about the bizarre yet innovative corporate culture and customer service that forms the core of Zappos’ business. I’ve seen Hsieh speak to this topic in the past, and while he delivers in an awkward and unpolished tone, his ideas are unique and inspiring. While I cant say I’m a fan of the Zappos website and online experience (or the new site Zappos is launching soon), I do think that Hsieh and his team have created a solid foundation by blending ecommerce with the key differentiators of a great bricks and mortar retail experience. Especially interesting are the key values of the company, specifically its people and the accessibility it provides to its customer base: variables commonly missing altogether in most ecommerce operations. In fact, I suspect many large-scale retailers bought into ecommerce under the assumption that they could avoid the whole mess of staff and customer service and merely push products online with large margins – and based on the number of online stores closing down, this clearly isn’t a winning strategy. Take note, Zappos may be onto something here.

One of the more compelling reasons for attending SXSW is the opportunity to meet and learn from people and organizations you’ve known for years. Hyper Island’s presentation falls into this category. As a source of immense talent in the digital space, and an overall inspirational institution, Hyper Island has remained on the radar of Engine Digital since opening our agency. To date we have taken in one intern and hope to see more head our way. Given that Sweden is half a world away, internships from HI are likely to remain few and far between. (Though half our hockey team is Swedish, so we’re hoping this might sway some grads over to Vancouver!) We took in some interesting discussion on creative group dynamics, and an incredible experiment in team dynamics, leadership, and working with rope. Needless to say, as a bystander it was completely entertaining.

Hyper Island shows how rope will not help you in a sand storm.

We capped the evening off first with a visit to the Razorfish party, which turned out to be so overcrowded that the idea of networking was physically impossible. After a drink we moved onto a great little pub called the Gingerman for a long evening of beer drinking. With an incredible number of taps, this is a watering hole worth visiting again.

The great thing about SXSW is that no matter where you go, there are events taking place within the SXSW banner. This evening was no different. This particular soiree, hosted by SoDA, a relatively new organization formed to create policy and advocacy within the digital industry, was a great opportunity to meet with SXSW attendees from the exact space we are in – interaction marketing.

This, and the SoDA event the following day were key reasons Richard and myself decided to head down to SXSW, with the intention to meet some of the smart people in the same space as us, share some thoughts and ideas, and confirm that we aren’t crazy for doing what we do – taking huge risks with relatively small margins by inventing unique marketing initiatives for our clients. The good news: we’re not alone. Ironically, Gingerman also attracted a number of Vancouver folks that night, some of which I have never met. After many pints, and some great discussions, we called it a night and cabbed it back to the Omni, putting an end to day 1.

SUNDAY
The problem with conferences: too many drinks, and an early start to the day.

While making it to the early events is always the goal, in reality this just wasn’t the case at SXSW – we blame on our suburban accommodations.

The schedule for the day was pretty simple – two events: Design for the Wisdom of Crowds with Derek Powazek of Blogger, Technorati, and Fray followed by the half day SoDA unConference panel discussion. While Powazek’s talk covered some interesting and applicable areas of interaction design, particularly how to present collective wisdom online in a snapshot, it was by far the SoDA panel that was the most valuable event of the trip.

Given the new ground we cover with many of our client projects (implementing or inventing new technologies for example), the value of meeting like-minded agency people, immersed in the same kind of work is not only reassuring, but rewarding as well. In the room were representatives from studios including Struck, Odopod, AgencyNet, and ex-Juxt. As these agencies are all similar to Engine Digital in all areas but scale, it was great to hear stories similar to our own from those who have advanced to a slightly larger team size, working with global brands on large scale projects. And while we have certainly done our share of national campaign work for large corporate entities here in Canada, this panel provided some fantastic insight into approaching growth with caution (contractually) and an appreciation for the relationship aspect of the agency role. Ah, growing pains.

The SoDA event was certainly motivating and we look forward to future events and getting involved in the organization as it expands.

Sunday was an interesting evening, and the nightlife was literally a web 2.0 circuit. Without a plan, we headed out to 6th in search of a good spot for a beer and ended up crashing a Twitter party. We met a few people, had a few drinks, and headed out for the next event – the Facebook party. This unfortunately was a no go – and even though Facebook accepts anyone – this party was certainly set for limited capacity. The lineup was enormous and didn’t seem to budge, and so we were on to the next. A few blocks away we reached what would be our final destination for the night’s entertainment, the Tumblr party. It seems the social networks were dominating the night’s social scene, and Tumblr was throwing one massive bash (see here). The space was interesting, with a central open air area, surrounded by a stage at back and two indoor bar areas on each side.

Many familiar faces from Vancouver and from some of the events we had attended earlier, so this appeared to be the right party to be at. Other Internet celebs included Sarah Austin of Pop17.com and Gary Vaynerchuk of winelibrarytv.com.

MONDAY
Home stretch, liver recovery, and some last final conference talks to take in

Monday was our final day in Austin, and with a long flight ahead of us, we decided to take the day slow. A few uneventful panels in the morning led to the day’s keynote, a talk with open source art evangelist and political activist James Powderly, co-founder of the Graffiti Research Lab. While I found the focus of James’ work pretty interesting, I had to take a look around the packed conference room to get a sense of the overall interest level. The bulk of the discussion was around some of Mr. Powderly’s covert urban communication operations by way of technologies such as lasers and other electronic devises. The connection with SXSW was through the open source nature of much of James’ work.

We ended the day, and our time at SXSW with a short panel discussion on the topic of Curiosity Marketing: Using Secrets to Create Engagement. Sounds interesting, but the discussion itself lacked any real insight from the speakers. It felt like the conversation was leaning towards the topic of viral marketing, but never quite made the leap. In any case, we left the talk with a few new ideas and 1 hour closer to our flight home.

SO, WHAT DID WE LEARN?
Now that my inbox is overflowing, I hope this was all worth it!

Overall SXSW has a huge amount to offer anyone working in the digital space – which is a fairly vague label spanning a huge amount of areas. It also has a lot to offer anyone interested in technology, communication, or the Internet in general. The talks cover an enormous number of topics and the insight gained from such a broad group of people is enormous. Overall takeaways would be that there are definitely opportunities in digital to innovate, there are new technologies to discover, and more creative ways to look at the challenges of our studio, and those of our clients.

As a whole, the trip provided an incredible amount of information to digest, and I hope to stay in touch with the people we met and connected with.

Parting thoughts: I sure hope someone at AT&T marked their calendar for next year to find a way to improve the wireless network in the Austin area. Given the volume of tech heads that congregate in the area for these 4-5 days, you would hope AT&T would have this covered. There is nothing quite as painful as an iPhone that just won’t connect.

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