In short - a bunch of Birmingham digital media types are going to SXSW Interactive in Texas next week, and we are doing a ‘remote control blogging’ thing where you get to ask us to attend stuff and report back for you.
Last year I went to the SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, Texas - the State’s second city who’s tag-line is “Keep Austin Weird”.
It was a mind-blowing experience and it had a huge impact on me and the kind of work that I was doing and my personal direction for the last year.
Digital Central
So, since then I’ve been pushing for a project to happen that could take some people from Birmingham, West Midlands, UK - the area where I’m based, over to SXSW and see if it can inject some of the thinking into the region.
And that project is happening. I pitched the idea to Dave Harte at Digital Central, who gave it the thumbs-up a couple of weeks ago.
So six of us are flying out to Texas in a week’s time for a blast of cutting edge web-tech, social media and digital futurology.
SXSW (M)
I’ve set up a site: sxswm.com which is going to be a central place where you can find out about what each of us is doing, in real-time.
The idea is that each of us has a Life Stream, provided by Profilactic, that feeds into the site, so that if we post a photo, a video, some audio, or put a post on our own blogs, then they will all be pulled through into one big ’splurge’ of info with individual RSS feeds for each author.
“Remote control conference delegates”
On the flip-side, we also want to hear from you on things you’d like us to go to and report back on.
For instance, Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook is doing the keynote on Sunday, but there’s a bunch of fringe stuff going on too, or maybe you’ve got an interest in a particular site or technology and you want us to hook up with someone and find out about it.
We’ll be doing the occasional podcast, bits of video, we’re going to be published on the Birmingham Post site, and we’ll all be blogging and doing our own thing too.
It’s an experiment
I’m not aware of something similar happening in the past, so we’re just trying this thing out, and we’d like you to come along for the ride.
To start things off we all met up last night and did a quick video just to say a preemptive ‘hello’ to SXSW:
Which through the magic of tagging should now be on SXSWVideos.com too.
Got a suggestion? Let us know.
6 Comments
Stef and the rest of the team, have a great trip to Austin! It’s one of my favorite cities too, but as an ‘onory Texan having lived there for 23 years, I must point out that Austin is the fourth (largest) city in the state after Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. But it is the state capital and center of Willie Nelson’s universe!
If you’re looking for other West Midlands folk heading over there, I believe http://www.lloydyweb.com/ will be there.
Thanks Matt!
Stef! I had such a great time hanging out with you at SXSW last year, I can’t wait to see you again.
We’re also bringing a large group from Philadelphia, there’s over a dozen from my coworking community alone!
Looking forward to meeting your crew, and catching up about the last year. I’ve seen bits and pieces on your blog, and your local initiatives sound a lot like what I’ve been doing here, too.
Cheers man, see you in a week!
-Alex
Hi Alex, Great to hear from you again. It was a blast last year, so I’m really looking forward to doing all again!
Yeah - looking back it’s been a crazy year… great to see your co-working thing is taking off.
We’re getting there on the Friday afternoon - I’m already following you on Twitter so see you there!
Stef
I’m looking forward to seeing you in Austin!
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[...] going courtesy of Digital Central. The thinking behind the project is explained more in depth by Stef Lewandowski, who also went it SXSWi last [...]
[...] blogs and social media accounts. The interesting part is that the group’s data is going to be aggregated and shared in one central location by Profilactic each of us has a Life Stream, provided by Profilactic, that feeds into the site, so that if we post [...]