In yellow and black plaid pants and a bright orange shirt, sporting an Utterz wristband and toting a bag filed with conference goodies, I roamed the convention center at SXSW. The conference is a bit like geek summer camp.  People recognize each other from past years and share in private jokes. Facial hair and fedoras abound. Women wear clogs or stilettos. People seem lost. And for a social media conference, people aren’t that social.

Here are a few highlights from my day:

•    In the Media Rules Conference, Brian Reich compared Hillary Clinton’s social media monologue to Congressman George Miller social media dialogue. It’s hard to criticize a mainstream politician for not fully entering into a social media conversation. How can Clinton enter a conversation if she fears ever word she utters will be lifted out of context?

•    In the Top Ten Lessons Learned in E-Commerce, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com said, “Your brand and your culture are the same thing.” I disagree. While culture and brand can be synonymous, customers and employees do not always have the same brand experience.

•    The Art of Speed: Conversations with Monster Makers raised several interesting points:
o    Cali Lewis of GeekBrief TV advised podcasters not to promote their shows too early.
o    Mike Cassidy, entrepreneur hotshot, recommended “The Six Day War,” as the best business book he has read. I like his business philosophy. If he is speaking with someone whose words have offended him, he always asks that person to clarify their message.
•    Tim Ferriss, the moderator, shared a few good points:
o    “Move quickly but don’t hurry,” John Wooden
o    “Measure what’s meaningful,” – Warren Buffett
o    “Creating a not do to list.”
o    “We are afraid to be bored.”
o     I have been thinking about this idea for a while. It’s a defining characteristic of our culture. We can’t sit still. We replace tranquility with motion. We can’t be in silence. We fill it chitchat. I think this ties into a cultural fear of death.

•    In Social Marketing Strategy Metrics, Rohit Bhargava rocked the session.
o    He shared three parts to a social media strategy: 1. listen 2. participate 3. lead. In my experience, there is no budget for #1 and clients want to move from 1-3 in about a day.
o    Rohit made a great point about why impressions are an inadequate metric. “If it’s about impressions, create a bad Google Adwords campaign. It will produce lots of impressions and have little value.”
o    I would have liked the panelists to address how they determine the influence of various conversations online and what tools and metrics they use.

Signing off from Austin, -Z

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