ReinventingErica.com » chris brogan

The SXSWi 2009 Wrap-Up Post Part I

Erica — Sat, 09 May 2009 02:06:33 +0000

Wowsers. This is a long time coming, and I’m sure I’m going to miss stuff…but here’s my best shot at Part I of a SXSWi Wrap-up Post. We’ll start with Pre-SXSWi, Thursday & Friday.

For me, like most years, SXSWi started long before March. I had the awesome opportunity to serve on the SXSW Advisory Board for a brand new program called the SXSW Accelerator. This is Southby’s version of Demo or TechCrunch50 (40, etc). In fact, one of my client companies ended up as a runner-up in the program. Congrats to Blellow, and thanks to Chris Valentine & Hugh Forrest for asking me to be on the board.

I also had a Pre-SXSW/Some Other Pre-Conference dinner with Mandi Leman, Veronica Jordan, Chris Brogan & Jay Berkowitz

I got to Austin on Thursday night, and was rooming with Tara Hunt & Jen Myronuk across from The Austin Convention Center. As expected, I couldn’t go 2 feet without running into someone I knew. But that’s the power of SXSW It’s like one huge High School Reunion – only you actually like all the people in attendance.

Friday was my Un-Birthday Party. What’s an Un-Birthday Party…well it’s when you turn 30 in January but decide not to have your party until March so all your friends from all over the world can come! I hired a company called The Go Game to host an adventure with me and my friends. Think part Scavenger Hunt, part Mission Impossible, and part Comedy Improv – The Go Game Has it All! MORE PHOTOS HERE

Thanks to everyone for coming out and celebrating my birthday with me. I love you all! Especially those of you who flew in early just to come and then slept in and missed it (I’m looking at you Pete & Michelle…hehe).

After my Big 3-0 Birthday Bash, I had lunch with some dear friends including Paige Craig, Joanna Lord, Pete Cashmore, Michelle DeForest, and I met Sarah Townsend. Definitely a great pre-start to SXSWi.

Friday night I decided to stay in and conserve my energy for the next day. Oh and I almost forgot – I also caught Chris Heuer in a Skirt!

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OMG – Twitter is DOWN!!!

Erica — Fri, 08 May 2009 21:47:14 +0000

So a couple of minutes ago I was trying to send a direct message to Kelsey Ruger using Tweetie, but I kept getting an error message. I went to Twitter and I saw this message (of course I’ve seen this message lots of times over the last 3 years):

So I decided to login to Facebook to see if maybe the conversations had moved over there. I also logged into Plurk. And sure enough both sites were lively with discussions about how Twitter was down. Below are a few screenshots I took in the last few minutes.

The funniest part was that suddenly my Facebook comments went through the roof – here’s a small snapshot of my current inbox:

Houston – We Might Have A Problem?

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Putting the Personal Back In My Relationships

Erica — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:53:28 +0000

Photo by clickykbd

I’m the On The Road Correspondent for a local radio show called The Business Makers (Talk Radio 950, KPRC – a Clear Channel Station), and the last question I always ask my guests is, “What Do You Want Your Legacy To Be?”. I’ve noticed that there is a similar theme among most of the answers. People want to make a difference in the world. If nothing else they want to change the life of at least one person for the better. This is especially true of Entrepreneurs.

Over the years I’ve had the honor and privilege to interview some pretty amazing people. I love to give interviews because I love people. I love learning about them, I love sharing ideas, and most of all I love building friendships. Chris Brogan once told me that our interview was the best he’d ever had the privilege of participating in (Awesome praise from one of the superheroes of my life).

The Problem With Social Media & Personal Legacy

When I first got started in Social Media (circa 1998), the online world was a very different place. It was much easier to connect with people on an intimate level. Why? Because there was simply less online activity. There were hundreds of blogs instead of hundreds of thousands. There were only a few online forums dedicated to a particular topic instead of dozens. When you started participating in a community you could quickly and easily get to know all of the key players and form 3-dimensional relationships with them. You knew about their families, their day jobs, their hopes, their dreams, and their fears.

Today this is much harder. There are just too many of us. As Bruce Sterling said at his State of the World Address in 2006,

“You are too big, this year. You are too professional, this year. Even the tech panels are no longer intimate and personal, this year. I have been to standing room only Web 2.0 tech panels at this gig; this is a huge gig.”

I couldn’t agree more. Social Media, Technology, The Glitterati, Twitterati, Technorati, there are just too many of us. Social Media, like BarCamp, does not scale well on an intimate & personal level.

Whether your goal is to Change the World, or Change the Life of One Person, an intimate & personal connection with as many people as possible is crucial.

An Experiment

So I’ve decided to conduct a personal experiment to try and figure out if personal and intimate connections are possible on a massive scale? And if so, what does that look like? Each week I’ll be direct messaging 10 people on Twitter asking you for some information. If you’d like to participate in this experiment just send your reply. If not, feel free to ignore my message. No hard feelings, promise.

This experiment will take exactly 60 weeks to complete, and once the experiment is underway, I’ll be reporting back here each week on what I’ve learned.