Our Logbook » Venn SXSW Archive

You can see the interview with Scott Heiferman below. We liked him, and his big idea, very much. Below is what was on his t-shirt.

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Adam Lavelle, Chief Strategy Officer for i-crossing, on his talk “Screw Brand Equity: Why Connected Brands Rule”

Nicholas Carr, Author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?: What the Internet is doing to our brains,” talking about his new book, “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”.

The brilliantly enthusiastic Rolf Skyberg, Senior Search Product Manager for Ebay, talking about why an upwards curve isn’t always a positive sign.

Isreal Mirsky, Executive VP of Porter Novelli, talking about the semanic web and how computers could understand context.

Talking through a mural made in real time during the Valerie Casey Keynote

Talking through a mural made in realtime during the Danah Boyd Keynote.

Practising as it preaches, SXSWi has a system of real-time, location-based feedback loops.

It is a two-part system.

The first part of the system takes place “IRL” – or “in real life”. It is voting with your feet – if you don’t like a talk, you just get up and leave, even if you are sitting right at the front, and even if part of you thinks you might hurt the speaker’s feelings a little bit.

The second part of the system takes place on Twitter, and has a specific name, – “Backstream” – but outside of the Twitter / SXSWi  context backstream goes by equally-slash-more evocative names like “the word on the street” and “the grapevine”.

The two components of the feedback system interact: backtream powers voting with your feet – if you are not digging the talk you’re at and @somebody_or_ other is #awesome-ing some other talk, the temptation to vote with your feet can become overwhelming.

Equally, if enough people are voting with their feet, then there is a negative effect on the tone of feedback into backstream.

There was a good example of SXSWi’s feedback system around Evan William (of Twitter)’s keynote address yesterday afternoon. Feedback IRL and backstream were largely negative. @ev boldly piped up soon after saying that he would take more probing questions (accusation had been he got an easy ride from the interviewer) via backstream. On Twitter of course.

The rocket fuel which powers the feedback system is panel envy. See graph below.

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Another shared quality: Jaren Lanier & Evan Williams

Maybe we flatter ourselves, but listening to Evan Williams Keynote, it occurred to us that we have shared goals