Author Archives: Beth Kelley
1. Get on the plane to Austin with no expectations. Since SXSW was a last-minute surprise for me, I didn’t have much choice on this one, but I don’t think you can really grasp the chaos that is SXSW. I’ll take a lesson I learned in the session “Better Crowdsourcing: Lessons Learned From the3six5 Project”
2. Let loose and be in the moment.
3. If you have to “post content for the folks back home”, pick one thing you’re passionate about and follow through with it all week. Had I really thought about how I could contribute to the SXSW blogging, posting, etc. I would have made it my mission to find the best breakfast, lunch and dinner restaurants in Austin and taken everyone on a food journey through Austin.
4. Free beer and swag is everywhere. You do not need to take advantage of it all at once.
5. Some of the sessions you look forward to the most will be sales pitches. Don’t be afraid to walk out and move onto something more inspiring.
Somewhat accidentally, I ended up in a forum about how social media fueled the political unrest in the Mideast and Africa. It was a room packed with bloggers, journalists and followers from media outlets including the New York Times, NPR and Al Jazaar. The question was not “how” social media fueled the unrest – we know it did. The question instead was what was the impact.
One of the best examples of the session was the story that people in Libya used Twitter to share locations of government snipers. And the impact? Entire protest routes were changed on the spot to avoid the snipers – saving who knows how many lives. In a day that was mostly filled with bad sales pitches from agencies of all types, this session gave me hope. Hope that all of the Tweeting, Facebooking, Foursquaring, etc. that has taken over our world isn’t just an obsession, but a true movement. One that has potential to do more than some twenty-somethings in their ivy league dorm room could have ever dreamed.
Beth Kelley is an Account Manager in our Calgary office.
