EMDC

One of the features of the South by Southwest Interactive festival is that they allow the attendees and interested parties to help determine the programming. SXSW took panel submissions earlier this summer and has now put them out for audience review. Panelpicker voting has been open for a couple of weeks and closes Friday, September 4.

I’ve rated about half of the 2200-ish submissions. I’ll describe my process and my general impressions of this year’s Panelpicker.

I love that they simplified the voting from the 5 star scheme to a simple up or down. It’s less thinking and it’s faster to vote. It may only take two less seconds to decide up/down vs 1-5, but multiply that times 2200! That’s over an hour of your life.

In evaluating the panel ideas, I consider the description first and foremost. I’m often finding that the “10 questions to be answered by the panel” give me much more info about the panel than the summary paragraph. That’s a lot of pages to click through since the 10 questions are only listed on the individual panel pages and not viewable from the list, but it’s worth it if you’re not entirely clear on the subject matter, or if you’re trying to distinguish the 20 panels on startups or telecommuting or social media strategies from each other.

I also consider the presenter. For example, if your panel is about universities/government/libraries and their use of social media, are from a university/government agency/library (yay)? Or are you a consultant (boo)? Are you from the same companies that present all the time? Are you one of those people that gets to present on what the hell ever because you have been presenting forever?

For someone who doesn’t do this professionally and doesn’t really want to, there’s a lot of this stuff I’ve seen before. If I’m completely uninterested in your topic, you get a thumbs down. This is probably PR/marketing stuff (no offense to my interactive PR/marketing friends, who are all really good at their jobs). I’m wondering if this is a reflection a larger percentage of conference newbies and/or crossover between technology and business as the concept of “interactive” broadens.

I’m generally avoiding any showdowns, smackdowns, or battles royale.

No solo presentations by people shilling their company’s products.

To be completely frank, if you’re someone other than a white guy, that’ll help you in my book. Because we need more of those.

The longer the Panelpicker is open, the more likely it is that comments have been left on panel pages. If you have 10 comments saying “great idea, so-and-so is a genius!” all that tells me is that you asked your friends to leave a comment. If you have two comments that include, say, further info from you about the topic or panelists or actual substantive comments on the topic (even criticism, suggested merges with other submitted panels, or questions (and answers!) about how a panel compares to other similar panels), that makes a difference.

What’s catching my eye this year, in general, are topics addressing the integration of technology into our every day lives (healthcare, government,
education, the environment, some but not all journalism topics, etc.) and topics addressing the intersection of techie-specific and general society cultural phenomena (digital divide, representation of the general population in technology development, technology/developer needs in libraries and newsrooms, etc.)

I love that this guy directly tackled a big complaint about SXSW programming: panels are submitted 8 months in advance and many aspects of technology move faster than that.

Overall, there is a lot of great stuff in here. It’s kind of a shame that only a small percentage of it will make it into the conference. At the same time, there’s some redundancy. I’m very pleased to see a lot more intermediate and advanced topics, both technical and social.

I’m probably not going to get to rating every single panel, but I’m heartened by what I see here. The following is a list of panels that made me say “Wow, cool!” or “Now that’s different.”

• Someone from Progressive Insurance presenting Ten Mistakes to Avoid When Designing an ePayment System.
• Someone from the Department of Health & Human Services talking about swine flu communications.
• The concept of Citizen Science.
• Blogging in the Pharmaceutical Industry although I had beef with the description because I wish they’d have said “pharma” in the header and summary instead of “healthcare. I never would have realized that’s what it was about and that’s a different conversation, I think, than technology in the healthcare industry.
• Another one on social media and the pharmaceutical industry, with the same beef as the previous one.
• One on teaching software development to prison inmates.
• How Geeks are Changing Finance. Because somebody needs to.
• Cultivating the Web: Netroots Action for Grassroots Food
• Tips from Urban Planning for Better .edu Design
• Using These Things Called Computers to Overhaul Universities
• Someone from the Houston Public Library presenting on how to “use social media for crisis communications and influence civic decision making.”
• What Guys are Doing to Get More Girls in Tech! Doing something good with that privilege.
• Generating B2B Leads Through Social Media: What’s Next? Discussion of B2B seems really underdeveloped.
• Map Your Bands: Map App Itinerizes SXSW Watch this presentation, learn about the app, and then use it when you stay for SXSW Music. Meta!
• Balancing the Only Virtual Economy Backed by $USD
• When the Cloud #FAILs: Is Your Data Safe? The question we’re all asking as cloud computing is the way of the future.
• Banking 2.0: Financial Services Driven by People & Emerging Technologies P2P lending is getting huge.
• Slashing Through Red-Tape to Revolutionize Corporate Communication Presented by Southwest Airlines, a more “traditional” company.
• One on technology and diplomacy, answer the question “How are governmental agencies such as DoS and DoD using new and social media to advance their diplomatic agendas?” amongst others.
• Internet Toaster 2.0: The Smart Grid Experience Smart Grids are also the way of the future, if we could just figure out how to implement them without spending redonkulous dollars that we don’t have.
• One on the growing “music for media” market. I hadn’t heard the term before but it makes perfect sense.
• Selling Subculture Without Selling Out Tricky!
• Becoming An Inspiration – One Pixel At A Time “Reggie Bibbs has been a one man crusade to raise awareness for neurofibromatosis (NF) come listen to him tell his story and help you and your organization turn your clients and friends into raving fans for your company or group.” WOW.
• Beyond Tokenism: How Social Media Can Fix S*** OMG, yes. It’s labeled as a beginner level topic, but I think the premise itself is intermediate at least.
• How Technology Is Altering Our Brain as presented by someone from Scientific American.
• The Politics and Economics of Digital Identities There are so many good things in here I don’t even know where to start. Identity, reputation, privacy, surveillance, profit.
• Bumpin’ Up: Has The Glass Ceiling Ever Smacked You In The Butt? as presented by Women Who Tech with a bunch of powerful, internet famous women on the panel.
• RT: I’m Going to Kill Myself. Preventing Suicide Online
• Is The Brain The Ultimate Computer Interface?
• Engaging The Queer Community This topic is so not as straightforward as you’d like to think.
• Lost In Translation: The Nuances Of European Social Media Because we like to think they’re enough like us.
• Nerds on the Run: Tech and Casual Fitness from the creator of the C25K running program of which I am a graduate! I know I’ve tried multiple fitness-related iPhone apps.
• The Secret Lives of Online Quizzes They’re harvesting data about you! Interestingly, presented by the ACLU.

In the mean time, I’m-a need the good folks at SXSW to get cracking on the session podcasts from this year’s festival.

UPDATED: Chris Penn proposes removing all identifying information about the presenters as a solution to the perceived “popularity contest” issue inherent to the Panelpicker, under the theory that the content should stand alone. He makes a great point, but as I mentioned above, the identity of the presenter does have an impact. (And I do have friends who submitted panels that I voted for.) I’m sure the fine folks at SXSW are well aware of this and this is part of the reason why Panelpicker results are only 30% of total panel picking formula.