Author Archives: Chris Gokiert
15 of us CMers were heading down to SXSW. We all kinda new each other and we had met on the phone but we were more “part of the CM family” than “brothers and sisters in arms”. As we had learned from past SXSW years, it’s pretty chaotic and tough to keep everybody up to speed. Teams past have tried to use FourSquare, Twitter, Text messaging, and email…all of which kind of work but each has their drawbacks. We looked at a couple of group messaging apps and decided to go with Beluga (GroupMe was the first choice but it wasn’t available in Canada yet).
Group messaging is nothing new but the Beluga app (and web interface) makes it easy. There were a few immediate cultural impacts that we saw:
Constant communication breeds friendship in a hurry. Although the circumstances of the trip built an immediate connection between us all, the camaraderie was accelerated due to this fine little app. The culture of the group really took hold quickly and facilitated the face to face connections that really amplified the team spirit. Meet-ups, jokes, photos, observations, general news all flew around the group.
Sub-pods of the greater pods will emerge. Two sub groups appeared and they carried out their own messaging that was more appropriate for the smaller audience. Note: it can be really easy to message to the wrong pod (as somebody in our group quickly found out), so make sure you are going to the right pod!!!
Photo credit: Richard Tseng
I was able to see 2 completely different speakers on Sunday, Guy Kawasaki and Chris Poole. Guy was up giving his latest talk on “Enchantment”, which I won’t repeat too much as you can read more eloquent synopsis anywhere on the web (Jonathan Littman loves the book). I’ve always found Guy to be a great speaker and this was no different. Guy’s premise of Enchanting Up and Enchanting Down in an organization was pretty interesting. The principles for Enchanting Up are pretty appealing to any sort of “boss” in an organization (Drop Everything for your Boss’ requests, Always be prototyping to show your Boss continual progress, and Always deliver bad news early). My question was “Do a group of twenty-somethings really think this is a good way to manage up?” Since I’m at SXSW with a group of them, I thought that I’d ask them.
Next onto the stage was Christopher Poole of 4Chan and Canvas fame. He’s at the other end of the spectrum from Guy: 23 years old, quirky and he doesn’t really know how to own a stage…yet. To be fair, he’s not about selling ideas or books. He’s a developer. He talked a lot about 4Chan and the different type of creative class that frequents his site, and soon on canv.as. One point that got twitterland all a flutter was when he politely disagreed with Mark Zuckerberg on the idea of authenticity, stating instead that “anonymity IS authenticity”. Not rocket science but definitely something that most of us would agree with. We’ve even seen it with our internal Talk Shop community, where our anonymous panel gives great feedback that we would never get from our staff.
A lot of wind is blowing in Austin these days, both literal and figurative. The SXSWi event is chock-full of ideas, opinions, and characters of all different origins and trajectories. The diversity of seminars is awesome. It provides all of the attendees with fertilizer (the nature, non toxic kind, of course) for all of the ideas kicking around in our heads. The beauty of this event is the sharing of ideas…as cliche as it sounds. Conversations abound in the halls, tweets flood, and iPhones are documenting everything.
Sitting with the team after a day of seminars, it’s great to see the excitement brewing. Over the next few days you will see different opinions and observations from the 15+ CMers that we’ve brought down to Austin. Of course, everybody has their own take so stay tuned to see what’s rumbling in our brains.
*At left: Inspired by… CM’s home base in Austin, TX
