Matter/Anti-Matter

By Robert Fabricant

New inspiration always floods in after a speaking appearance is over. Kicking myself for not highlighting a couple of things that were right in front of me @ my SXSW panel. Perfectly timed gifts  as usual, in this case foursquare and tweetluck. Let me explain: in the world of social cohesion messaging rules. So, any conversation around behavior change needs to respect that role. Successful behavior change requires immediate feedback, and social relationships offer the best form of encouragement. But messaging platforms are direct, not directED. We spend a lot of time in them because they are open (attendees at SXSW spend much more time twittering than talking). We can do what we want. We insert goals at times, like getting together for dinner, so coordinated behavior emerges all the time. But these goals are ephemeral and not baked into the system.

Which brings me to foursquare. As usual Dennis Crowley (a frog intern back in 2003 BTW) is way ahead of the curve. In this case he is exploring the fuzzy boundary between emergent social behavior and directed play. Can you successfully insert a system of goals and rewards on a messaging platform while maintaining its social relevance? This is a hugely important experiment, and a very challenging one. Will people accept the game model while still using foursquare to meet up and hang out? You need the latter to become an ingrained part of people's behavior and to ensure that enough of your friends will join. But the former can create a lot of additional value - if people are willing to play along.

I am hoping he succeeds, and the leader board is a very nice start (though frustrating slow on my iPhone). I spent some time on my panel discussing reward systems with a real-time experiment playing out in my pocket. Arghh!!! Social competition provides a powerful reward system - but it can really backfire (see 'Harnessing Social Pressure' in HBR's list of breakthrough ideas for 2009). Key is WHO you are competing with. One of the great things about technology is that the playing field no longer needs to be on your block or in your school. We can offer up endless 'fields' of competition. Where is the 'leaderboard' that shows me competing against my friends? Probably on the foursquare website somewhere but I need it on my phone to motivate me. Clive Thompson may be tickled that he is #59 on the leaderboard. But I look at the thousands of points people have racked up in the three days since the service launched in Austin and I give up. I am sure that Dennis is on it and new features will be coming fast and furious that introduce different forms of motivation (I think they are officially called 'nudges' at this point) to get me back in the game. 

It is pretty easy to see how this platform could be applied to more meaningful activities around health, nutrition or energy consumption. One of my panelists discussed a competition that took place at Indiana State University between different dorms to reduce their energy competition for example. That is why I hope foursquare reaches critical mass.

There are other encouraging signs in the the tweetscape. Tim Leberecht was kind enough to forward tweetluck to me right before my panel. A number of micro campaigns have swept through the twitter community with great results. There is a very nice synergy between micro-blogging and micro-giving. We are starting to see more casual donation mechanisms appear in services like Paypal for instance. Pretty easy to check a box and spend an additional $1 when you are completing a purchase. In fact it relieves the guilt a bit - nice nudge. But you would be awfully embarassed to pledge such a meager amount over the phone if solicited directly by Habitat for Humanity. So you might end up saying 'no' instead.

The beauty of tweetluck and related initiatives is not just the kairos factor. twitter taps into additional social incentives and rewards. You can see your friends dig into their pockets and support the cause in real time. And your support, however small, is broadcast without you having to brag about it. Nice! Things spread quickly: tweetsgiving raised $12K in 24 hours. Now we don't want to see our beloved messaging platforms get overloaded with offers and other junk. That is the delicate balance that foursquare is testing. Too many goals and the platform won't appeal to anyone who is not committed to the game. The social relevance will dissipate.  On the other hand, this wouldn't be the first time that a game platform evolved into something quite different. Ever heard of flickr?

I will be looking closely to see if foursquare becomes just another cute gaming platform or something much, much more important.

Designer Mike Rohde attended several panels at SXSW Interactive last week and created 34 pages of sketchnotes for them in real-time, captured in a Moleskine sketchbook:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rohdesign/sets/72157604109069527/

And here's his post about them with a little more detail:

http://www.rohdesign.com/weblog/archives/002768.html

What I like about this unique format of panel transcripts is that it shows how rich those on-stage conversations actually were. Sometimes you find yourself in the audience, passive and wondering if the discussion on-stage is really all that meaningful to you. Well, it is -- as long as you engage and translate what's being said into another creative act.

Or as someone pointed out on one of last year's SXSW panels: "I write it down not to remember it later. I write it down to remember it now."

Since the SXSW conference buzzword was convergence, Chelsea Holden Baker of Frog Design looks back at convergent themes of three panels in three synthesizing steps, and a little bonus at the end:

Blood Sweat and Tears: Great Design Hurts

John Gruber (Daring Fireball) and Michael Lopp (Apple), made the case for cultivating discomfort as a designer: "Are you willing to be an asshole?" We took a trip back through the iconic designs (like IBM) of Paul Rand and examined the allure of the Apple logo (whether rainbow-striped or white, what makes it sexy is the bite. It's original sin.). What stood out to me here, however, was discussion of emotion as a physical thing; just a limbic response, a bunch of bouncing chemicals. Because that leads to...

From Frustration to Elation: Getting Emotional by Design

Dan Rubin (Black Seagull/Sidebar Creative), Eris Stassi (Interaction Designer, Apple) and Didier Hilhorst (Interaction Designer, Ideo) shared a saccharine PowerPoint full of hearts and talk about how good design should elicit a response like good sex. Bad design (like ATM machines) can be like a bad, abusive relationship. Essentially: Emotion is essential to good design. (Just keep the limbic system from above in mind).

Does Tomorrow's World Need Designers?

Frog Creative Director David Merkoski took the stage with Alonzo Canada (Jump Associates), and Helen Walters (Editor of Innovation & Design, BusinessWeek.com) for a panel moderated by Johanna Blakley (Deputy Director, The Norman Lear Center). Here we fast-forwarded to a debatably near future--into the realm of the new singularity--because it's not a matter of when it will happen, it's a matter of thinking about it now; and that doesn't just mean watching The Matrix again.

The panel posited that all the caring and emotion we put into design could lead to the negation of emotion when we create machines that are smart enough to design themselves. But will machines be good designers (and who decides what good means)? Is emotion smart? And then there's the nurture or nourishment question: Will our relationship to the machines/systems be that of pets or food? While this might all be uncomfortable to think about, humor was still alive and well. As Merkoski put it, "There had to be a beeper before there was a cell phone. . . We might just be the beeper." So since we're getting sci-fi, here's to the pseudo-scientific:

A General Theory of Creative Relativity

The captivating Jim Coudal ("Big Cheese", Coudal Partners), launched into his theory (which essentially serves as a window into the Coudal Partners process), whereby e=mc2 means e (your energy/effort) is equivalent to m (the mass of information available to you) times c (the flash of inspiration), squared (the power of enthusiasm/belief). Or something approximate to that. Coudal showed this video from Steve Delahoyde's (Coudal) series called "Regrets." Essentially, it's a highly creative video about the ability to balance e, m and c, and a desire to hold on to the power of enthusiasm.

Enjoy.

Chelsea Holden Baker, of frog design, says better planning and a different design choice could have changed the outcome during the now-infamous 2008 SXSW keynote discussion between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and reporter Sarah Lacy.

Here is Chelsea's blog on the matter from Tuesday:

If you have any interest in South by Southwest and/or the blogosphere, then you've probably seen something on the infamous train-wreck-of-an-interview, aka the SXSW keynote discussion with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and journalist Sarah Lacy. (In this metaphor Zuckerberg is the Little Engine That Could and Lacy is the conductor that derailed the train). Forty-five minutes into it, the crowd wrestled control of the mikes, cutting short Lacy's interview to ask their own questions.

Recaps can be found elsewhere, but there are two interesting things to think about in the aftermath of this mob-jacking. One is how Twittering can amplify a crowd's reaction, and how it could make future keynotes better. The other is how bad design can change the outcome on a stage.

What was amazing, from the point of view of someone in the room, and someone who was following the live chat on Meebo, was that if Lacy had had a laptop she could have seen the crowd revolt coming. Or rather, she could have changed her questions, style, even body language (so many comments about hair twirling!) so that it wouldn't have happened.

Yes, there is much speculation about Facebook's PR interest in an event like this, and yes, Zuckerman has a reputation for tight lips and short answers. But this is a scenario where an old-school back-and-forth is a dated approach. In the end it didn't serve anyone--Zuckerberg (he came off "nice," but not exciting), Lacy, or the audience. The audience had a parallel conversation online, which at least with the Meebo strain, is archived in perpetuity. A lot of it was snarky, but the sentiments, and some of the questions raised there, were important.

Twittering (on Twitter and elsewhere) pushed people to act out; it accelerated interruption. People who did not like the way the interview was going had assurance that the crowd was with them; and it intensified those feelings. In traditional passive audience situations, for every person who acts out, the ratio of those who wanted to but didn't, is probably much higher. Instead, because people knew that not only the people sitting next to them, but also those in all four corners of the room had the same gripes--or pointed out new ones--many people acted out. As Lacy said, what we got was "Digg-style mob-rule." Essentially: Twittering lowers the threshold for lash-out. Of course, the positive spin on this is that at next year's SXSW, people on panels could (should) get to see feedback and respond accordingly.

Secondly, early on in the Meebo chat, there were comments about Lacy's posture and body language. To this I say: Don't blame Lacy, blame bad design. Zuckerberg and Lacy both had club chairs. You have two options with that kind of seat: Zuckerberg chose to perch on the edge, sitting very upright, looking a bit eager and uptight. Lacy chose the traditional club chair posture: Lean back, cross your legs, and keep one arm up as if you're smoking a cigarette in the wood-paneled library at the Fair Oaks Golf Course.

One user in the Meebo chat, dango3kyoudai, said: "Watching her sit sprawled back in her chair just turns me off in some way; a metaphor for journalistic sloth." While I'm not sure what the best interview chair is, this certainly isn't it. Lacy's posture was the first turn-off. Unfortunately, much of what came from her mouth amplified an initial bad reaction to what was perceived as flirtatious (however unfair that is), overly-casual/intimate nonverbal signals.

A nice Bertoia-style stool would be great: There's only one way to sit in them. And yes, it may be uncomfortable for an hour, but so was what we witnessed. There's no reason why Lacy shouldn't have had a clue the audience wasn't with her until 40 minutes into the discussion.

Lessons for next year's keynotes: Provide a peek at what's happening on Meebo/Twitter (edited by a third party, and read on handheld device), and high chairs for the pair of presenters.

Clips of audience responding to the stage:

It's freezing in Austin (39 degrees last night....) but nonetheless SXSW Interactive is about to kick off today. There is no doubt that the conference is hitting the mainstream this year (with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg as keynote speaker and most of the big high-tech players participating). The program, which is notoriously hard to navigate, has grown even more in terms of depth and breadth.

SXSW has therefore teamed up with Microsoft and frog design to create a rich, interactive online community hub that facilitates real-time conversations around conference events while also providing an easy-to-us panel calendar. The Silverlight-based application features premium content from SXSW Interactive, including video clips from keynotes and panels, as well as user-generated videos, Flickr images, and social networking content. At the same time, aggregators from Technorati and del.icio.us comb the Internet for relevant information, keeping the site dynamic.

Check it out: http://pulse.sxsw.com

Next weekend, just a couple of days after the dust of the primary campaigns will have settled, national media attention will return to Texas as Austin is turning into party central for the annual South by Southwest Festival (SXSW, March 7-16). SXSW Interactive, added in 1994 to the music festival, has evolved into one of the most influential tech conferences in the country and beyond. While somewhat geeky in its first years, SXSW Interactive is now considered a must-attend venue for big tech players (Google, Microsoft, Seagate, etc. all have a strong presence at the show), start-ups, creative agencies, software developers, futurists, designers, artists, media, and bloggers alike, all of whom are chasing the next big digital thing. A key contributing factor for SXSW's success may have been that the initially narrow meaning of "interactive" has expanded its relevance to more industries, media, and platforms over the past few years and now serves as the modus operandi of all business, no matter how creative or digital it is. With its more solid business underpinning, SXSW Interactive has overtaken both the Push conference in Minneapolis and Wired's Nextfest in terms of relevance and commercial success.

The Soul of the Machine

Yet despite its explosive growth (16,000 overall attendees are expected in Austin this year), "South By," as conference goers dub it, has done a good job evading all attempts to be easily categorized. The interactive part, in particular, has somehow managed to remain its cutting edge. It still offers a wildly eclectic bazaar of topics, trends, opinions, and applications, and one can truly say that all of the tech conferences out there it is the one best positioned to explore "the soul of the machine."

The organization is professional but there is still a lot of room for the unexpected, below-the-line, grassroots eccentricity that gives the conference its special flavor. A big part of this can be attributed to Austin, which has emerged as a thriving hub for creative people and embeds SXSW in the kind of community fabric that doesn't tolerate any over-spin or sell-out. The organizers have also made a point to add many community elements to the event: web 2.0 for web 2.0sters, if you will. For example, this year, they pioneered a "panel picker" that allowed users to vote on submitted panel proposals and essentially democratized the entire programming. I'm not entirely sure if this is the best application for the "wisdom of crowds" since there is a real danger that the panel selection turns into a popularity contest or an easy target for PR professionals and speaker bureaus. I, for my part, am old-fashioned and prefer conference programs to be curated by a curator, simply because it is otherwise daunting to ensure the right balance between diversity and cohesion. Anyway, it's too early to tell -- we'll see how it turns out.

In addition to the panel picker, SXSW has teamed up with Microsoft and frog design to create a rich, interactive online community hub for the conference. The application features premium content from SXSW Interactive, including video clips from keynotes and panels, as well as user-generated videos, Flickr images, and social networking content. At the same time, aggregators from Technorati and del.icio.us comb the Internet for relevant information, keeping the site dynamic.

But not everything at SXSW will be user-driven. In fact, some of the program highlights were carefully chosen: Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, will give the keynote on March 9. Other keynotes include Frank Warren (March 10) and Jane McGonigal (March 11). Opening Remarks (March 8) will be delivered by Henry Jenkins and Steven Johnson, and Michael Eisner, former head of Disney, will be interviewed in a special session on March 11.

Searching for the Killer App

As eyeballs wander towards Austin, it will be interesting to see which digital innovations this year's conference will bring. Google's Dodgeball blew up at SXSW Interactive in 2006, and last year, a hitherto unknown service called Twitter enabled attendees to chat about panels in real-time and in public, and as instant as the format was its proliferation in the blogosphere: Twitter became the app de jour at SXSW and then, quickly, the rage of all digerati.

So who will be this year's Twitter? Practically speaking: Meebo. The instant messaging service is the official sponsor for live chat at SXSW 2008 and has stepped into Twitter's footsteps, which is kind of ironic. Meebo as Me-too. And philosophically speaking? Who knows. It seems safe to place a few bets on models around the new "Digital Green." The conference will be hosting five panels devoted exclusively to sustainability issues (five more than in previous years, if you're counting), among them "10 Ways to Green-ify Your Digital Life" and "Green Software -- Really?" Another big topic will be how gaming, virtual worlds, mobile and contextual web will converge (yes, convergence is resilient!) in the "Age of Engage," including discussions on OpenID and hardware mash-ups ("the long tail of gadgets"). And then there are interesting sociological tangents such as "Sexual Privacy Online," "Self-Branding," or the existential question for the attention junkie: "Do You Have to Disappear Completely to Get Things Done?" The most exciting domain for disruptive innovation right now is probably news (which, as we know, is broken), and several panels will discuss the future of Internet radio, Internet TV, as well as crowdsourced, hyper-localized models of news production and aggregation.

Or maybe, after five days of "geekspasm" and partying, ReadWriteWeb's prediction may come to pass: "The killer app in Austin might just be beer."

Links

We will report from SXSW Interactive on this blog, but in the meantime here are a few helpful links to get you in the mood:

Official SXSW Festival Site: http://www.sxsw.com

Interactive SXSW Schedule/Calendar: http://sched.org/

Official SXSW Live Chat: http://www.meebo.com/sxsw

SXSW Insider Guide: http://sxsw.ning.com/

SXSW Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/SXSW-Festival/7826953993?ref=s

Unofficial Weblog: http://sxswbaby.com