Category Archives: events

The difference between loving the design and loving the service

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
2

On my last day in Austin, TX I was wearing a Gowalla shirt. I walked into the Aol Studio and someone asked me how I got the shirt. Gowalla was doing a special SXSW promotion, you could get your Gowalla passport, fill it up with stickers and get Gowalla swag.

So when the guy asked me how I got the Gowalla shirt, I was honest with him. I said “I paid for this shirt”. He looked really confused, he said “wait, you paid money for that shirt?”. My response: “Yes, I paid cash money for this shirt”.

I love the design of Gowalla, so I am willing to pay to wear their brand. However, I was not really using Gowalla at SXSW. I was not willing to check in everywhere just to get a shirt, but I was willing to pay for one. That’s the difference between loving the design and loving the service!

I love Foursquare, and the new update makes me love it even more! Foursquare bringing back the leaderboard was smart! It feels like a game again. Every check-in counts and I’m loving it.

Foursquare is also showing me more about my check-in history. Gives me extra points for hanging out with the same people, and really is helping me to explore my city.

This is going to make foursquare tips more useful. Just the other day I got a thank you on twitter for a foursquare tip I left over a year ago.

My Gowalla shirt from SXSW 2010

It’s things like this that will make me add more tips because I know they are really useful to my friends. I also think this will turn into certain friends becoming experts in the categories of places that they check-in most. Of course my friends are going to look for my tips when they are looking for a good vegetarian place to eat. Hopefully foursquare will start to reflect the expertise that your friends have. They had the data, why not use it!

Gowalla hasn’t lost me as a user yet, I just use foursquare more at this point. That is why you will see me wearing a Gowalla shirt, while checking in on Foursquare.

5 Apps to help you survive SXSW

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
1

Every year people contemplate what will be the “killer app” at SXSW. While I’m not really concerned about which app will end up on top, I thought it would be nice to share with you all some of the apps I’ll be using at SXSW this year. (note: these are all iPhone apps, some of these apps have android versions, but I am not sure)

#1: GroupMe: I don’t normally use group texting in my everyday life, and the reason I know I’ll end up using GroupMe at SXSW is because I’ve already been added to 4 different SXSW related groups. One of the reasons I like GroupMe is because it’s more than just group text messaging. You can also share your location with your group (which is nice if you want to tell your friends where you are but don’t want everyone you know at SXSW showing up). GroupMe also allows you to share photos. Another app to note is Beluga (which was just acquired by facebook). Beluga has very similar features to GroupMe, but GroupMe seems to be more popular with my group of friends so it’s what I will be using at SXSW. Since GroupMe is a NYC based startup, I foresee a little east coast/west coast group messaging battle playing out at SXSW. Very similar to the Foursquare/Gowalla preferences last year.

#2 Plancast: While it is impossible to keep any kind of a schedule at SXSW, using Plancast helps me to at least know what I wanted to attend that day. The only way to plan anything for SXSW is to make “plans” is to make them before you go down to Austin. Plancast makes it easy for me to get a preliminary list of things I’d like to attend. I am using Plancast over the official SXSW schedule, or sched.org because I like the design better and I find it easier to use.

#3 Hashable: I have a love hate relationship with Hashable, but I will be using it at SXSW to keep track of people that I meet.

What made me decide to start using it again was the realization that I can keep all of my Hashable connections private if I want to.

#4 Foursquare/Gowalla: In my personal life I use Foursquare but I will be using both at this year’s SXSW for two reasons. Reason #1: I have friends on both platforms. If I really want to get a good idea of where everyone is, I need to look in both apps. Reason #2: There are more companies that have partnered with Gowalla this year, so I suspect you will need to check in on Gowalla to get access to different official events.

In general it’s just a great way to see where everyone is when you are in Austin. Things change pretty fast down there.

#5 picplz: Officially my photo sharing app of choice for SXSW. I like it because it doesn’t force me to make all my photos square, it will upload to facebook, twitter, tumblr, foursquare, posterous and even Dropbox! I want to make an effort to take more photos this year at SXSW, but I don’t want to be carrying around my DSLR. So my iPhone will have to do.

With SXSW quickly approaching I have more an more things on my to-do list. Hopefully these apps will help me keep it all together in Austin. And if you are going to SXSW, please say hi!

SXSWi – What you probably already know

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
1

Every year around this time, approximately  14,000 geeks venture down to Austin, TX for South by Southwest Interactive. And every year, a good handful of those people write snarky blog posts about ‘what you need to know before you get to SXSW’. In fact, I myself wrote one just last year.

So at the risk of being redundant, here are some tips that you may or may not have heard already.

  1. I usually to say forget about the schedule. What I mean by that is don’t worry about making it to all the panels or all the parties. Just go with the flow, you’ll have more fun that way.
  2. But a certain amount of scheduling can be good. For example: If you really want to spend some quality time with people, put a meal on the books. Schedule time to meet up, sit down, and eat something.  This way you will actually get to spend time with the people you want to see. I will be holding Ohours at SXSW for this very reason!
  3. If this is your first time going to SXSW If you are going to SXSW, you should fully expect to be worn out when it’s over. Make sure to drink lots of water and take extra vitamin C, to prevent getting really sick when you return home.
  4. You will walk….a lot! Everything is usually close to the convention center, but that’s going to mean a lot of walking for you. Be sure you are comfortable with what you are wearing.
  5. Enjoy the serendipity. South by can be a very serendipitous place. Crazy things happen, you end up in awesome conversations with amazing people, and when this happens just enjoy it and stay in the moment. You don’t need to take pictures and tweet while this is happening (let’s be serious, you can tweet about it later)
  6. Don’t forget to eat! It sounds silly, but with everything going on it can be very easy to forget to eat. My advice, schedule meetings around meals. This insures that you give yourself a brake, and get a chance to eat.

A little tip on what to eat at SXSW from your friendly vegan friend, Sarah Cooley (hey, that’s me!).

Remember to eat your veggies! At SXSW, there will be tons of free BBQ to partake of (in fact MapQuest will have a bus trip to Salt Lick BBQ) So I understand that it might be more difficult to fit veggies into your meals. But do your best to try and eat some greens at least once during the day. Trust me, you will feel better because of it!

I’m thinking of putting together a small casual vegan meetup at SXSW (vegans and non vegans welcome). If you would be interested, leave me a comment below. If there is enough interest we can figure out a time and day in Austin that works for everyone.

If you want to meet up in Austin, feel free to sign up for one of my Ohours slots. Or you can try more traditional methods of tracking people down at SXSW, but that usually doesn’t work.

Growing up with the Real Time Internet

Posted on by Sarah Cooley
7

Yesterday I had the honor of putting together a panel of my peers to talk about how we use the web! Our panel was titled “Growing up with the Real-time Internet” and it consisted of myself, Corvida Raven, Kelly Sutton, and Lauren Litwinka.

The video is embedded below. Please watch it and comment. I would love to continue the conversation that was started at #140conf.

For a good part of the beginning of the video, the camera guy didn’t realize I was on the panel, and I guess thought I was just the moderator. So he cut me out of the shot. But he figures it out half way through.