SXSW Interactive

Last week, I attended my first-ever SXSW Interactive. Blyth and Ryn went a couple years ago and had a great time, so I knew I wanted to go, too. The conference spans five days. During that time, I attended 20+ panel presentations, enjoyed dinners and meetups with higher education colleagues, and met some wonderful people from industry, education and other non-profit organizations.

SXSW Interactive is an IT conference, but most of the presentations themselves are not especially technical. And this I found refreshing; I attended talks on everything from “Can You Run a ‘Serverless’ Business?” to “Sarah Palin Is Your Media Role Model” to “Eight Ways to Deal with Bastards.” It was great to get a taste of the non-technical aspects of web development.

Some presentations in particular stood out, and I’d like to discuss them here.

Content Strategy: What’s in it for You?

Margot Bloomstein, Appropriate Inc

This presentation piqued my interest because content strategy is one area I definitely need to learn more about. Content is an integral part of the site development process, and not simply copy that is shoveled into the design at the end. Content should match the look and feel of the design and be appropriate, current, and relevant. But content strategy extends beyond the website — many users first “see” our site in Google search results listings, so tone and brand extends to meta content, too. Multi-channel social media is a large part of content strategy. However, we shouldn’t put the same message on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Rather, we should have one key theme, but highlight different aspects of that theme on different sites. A dedicated content strategist ensures a cohesive user experience from the start. Including a strategist in the development process saves time, money, and effort by resulting in fewer project iterations. Presentation slides are available here.

Jacks of All Trades or Masters of One?

Brian Talbot, M. Jackson Wilkinson, Viget Labs

This presentation encouraged attendees to examine their personality and work environment and determine the camp in which they fit best. We went beyond the usual, “Do you like focusing on one area, or dabble in lots of different projects?” and discussed how specialists can take advantage of specific market opportunities, but generalists can adapt more easily and have better job security. Small companies most likely require generalists who can shift roles easily, while larger companies whose process is already in place probably seek specialists who are very skilled in a particular area. This presentation really resonated with me (a proud generalist), because I feel like most web developers in higher education (and I’d venture to guess in other nonprofits as well) are asked to wear many hats. However, sometimes I get the impression that specialists often look down on us generalists with the belief that being “pretty good” in many different areas just means that we are mediocre developers overall. But this presentation reaffirms that both generalists and specialists have their place, and versatility is a skill in and of itself.

How The Other Half Lives – Touring The Digital Divide

Jessamyn West, MetaFilter and Jenny Engstrom, New York Public Library

Jessamyn and Jenny discuss the challenges facing librarians who interact with library patrons unfamiliar with computers. Rural Vermont and inner New York City both contain large populations whose only exposure to computers and the internet is their local public library. Adults who are new to computers are unnerved by ads on web pages and find it challenging to distinguish between ads and actual content. To help with this, librarians often turn off ads in the browser settings. Adult computer learners also tend to read all the text on a page rather than scanning it, and they prefer pages that don’t require much interaction such as Ajax features. Adult learners also are unfamiliar with the vocabulary many of us take for granted; for example: “operating system,” “cookie” and “refresh/reload.” For these users, it’s best to explain things in terms they understand, even if it’s not technically correct. This presentation and additional materials are available here.

Hold the Cocoa: Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Jonathan Stark

This was one of the few technical presentations I attended. I’ve built applications for mobile devices, but they have all been browser-based, so I was excited at the opportunity to learn how to build native mobile applications. iPhone developers usually create apps in Objective-C; however, Jonathan showed us a way to create native iPhone, Android and Blackberry apps using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. jQTouch is a jQuery plugin that gives a native look and feel to a mobile web application. However, its functionality is limited because web applications do not have access to phone features such as the camera or geolocation. However, PhoneGap is a device-agnostic mobile framework that compiles applications built in HTML, CSS and JavaScript and installed as native mobile applications. I’m definitely looking forward to trying out these tools.

Monkeys with Internet Access: Sharing, Human Nature, and Digital Data

Clay Shirky, ITP/NYU

This presentation discussed people’s natural predilection to sharing and how this can turn into “jackhammer sharing,” a disruptive innovation that changes how things function on a large scale. Digital media sharing is an example of this. Clay gave three scenarios: Someone asks you for money. Chances are, you are reluctant to give it to them. But what if they ask you to help them cross the street instead? Most people would be more likely to help out. What if the person asks for directions? Even more likely you’d be happy to help. The same is true for digital data. Behavior is motivation filtered through opportunity, says Clay. When music and movies were only available as physical media, sharing them for free is a transferral of goods, something we humans are not likely to do. However, now that music and movies are digital media, sharing them feels more like a transferal of information, which we naturally feel is the friendly thing to do. To combat this, the music industry wants to reintroduce spiteful behavior in the form of laws to end this natural sharing behavior. I appreciated that this presentation gave a logical explanation for the growing popularity of file sharing beyond the simplistic “People are growing more immoral!” or “Kids today are all criminals!” that we hear so often.