By Hannah Johnson
I love to recount the story of how Penguin tried to host a panel at the 2009 South by Southwest Interactive conference (SXSW) and how the audience ate the panelists alive with snark via Twitter and accusations about unfair gatekeeping practices (read about it here, here and here). Afterwards, one of the panelists explained the audience-speaker clash by saying: that was unfair! We couldn’t defend ourselves against the Twitter onslaught because we didn’t even know what Twitter was!
My fellow book people, I think we can represent a little better this year, don’t you? Download a Twitter app to your phone, put on your coolest t-shirt, and brush up on some social media vocab.
SXSW might be another annoying future-of-the-world conference with high-schoolish cliques of ueber-cool digerati trying to impress each other with their Ray Bans and their MacBooks, or it might be a place where people get together and create something that will change your life and business very soon. Mostly likely, SXSW is a little of both.
Here are a few must-see panels in 2010 (if you aren’t attending, videos will be made available online):
- Touch + The Holy Grail of Delight
Find out how to optimize the customer experience in apps and stores on multi-touch devices. - What Are Analytics? A Guide To Practical Data
Hear from the geeks how to really analyze analytics data - The Power Shift: Who Stands Between Creator and Audience
Discuss whether to cut out the middle man in film distribution (and consequently, book distribution) - Why Keep Blogging? Real Answers for Smart Tweeple
You might recognize some of these bookish panelists! -
How to Create a Viral Video
Find out how to get your book trailer in front of millions of people -
iPad: New Opportunities for Content Creators
Learn how to create e-books that will save the publishing industry! -
Transmedia 2010: Are We There Yet?
Stories don’t just come in books anymore! -
New Publishing and Web Content
Book publishing is now called “content strategy” - A Brave New Future for Book Publishing
Penguin panel repeat? - Why Gen Y Wants to Work ‘With’ You, Not ‘For’ You
Figure out what makes your new hires tick -
Music Licensing for Emerging Media: Apps, Widgets, Viral Videos
Need some music for your enhanced e-book? - Cracking the Books’ User-Generated Content in Education
Is it a good idea to crowdsource educational material?
More tips for SXSW attendees:
- The Twitter hashtag for each panel and session can be found at the bottom of the panel description online. Add your snark to the stream!
- It might not be as warm as you want it to be in Austin.
- Visit the South By Bookstore hosted by Barnes & Noble to find out just how many of these speakers and panelists still make their money from traditional publishing (despite what they may be saying about us!)
- Absolutely do not leave Austin without eating at the Salt Lick. Prepare yourself for a BBQ overload at this sprawling restaurant just outside of town.
9 Comments
Oooh, the Salt Lick. Good recommendation. Also, if anyone can track me down at SXSW, I’ll let them in on where to find the best, hard-to-find and certain to be empty burger joint/bar in a parking garage in Austin. See you there.
great article. i tweeted and shared it and will eblast it to my clients and pub industry friends. i wish i could come this year, but it’s my daughter’s 10th birthday that weekend.
pub industry should be there in droves. digital publishing has created a paradigm shift and social media forces authors to take ownership of their brand or die. kudos to you.
@deegospel on Twitter
As one of those in attendance (and one linked above), I feel like I’m constantly defending or correcting the record
. It was a very poor showing by the publishing people on the panel, which was a shame because the room was packed (standing room only) with people who wanted to hear from book publishers about their business and ideas. After a short round of job descriptions, the panel then opened up for questions. The discontent was not sown by Twitter; it happened in the room, and you could hear the frustration of the audience long before the first tweet appeared.
I thought then, and I still believe, the major problem was that the panel asked for questions, but did not provide answers or even a mechanism for getting back to people. They brought nothing to the table (and I note, without irony, that later the same evening, Penguin UK won a major award for innovation at the Interactive awards ceremony…which was going on during the Penguin party).
However, the ideat that the panelists didn’t know what Twitter was is a bit of a stretch. The moderator was/is a social media expert, and, frankly, the backchannel (either through chat or Twitter) has been commonplace at SXSWi since before 2004 (see: Mark Zucker interview from the year before). I spoke with the moderator afterward and she acknowledged she hadn’t considered it. If you looked at the first tweets related to #sxswbp*, you will get a real sense of excitement from the crowd (and the crowd at home). We truly thought this panel was going to bring it. I honestly don’t know if there wasn’t a plan or if the panel completely misjudged the audience/conference. I suspect a mix of both, especially given the fact they explained publishing to a room full of (different) publishers.
* Often overlooked in the post-panel discussion is the fact that the person who asked about the hashtag was a book publisher from a fairly large trade press.
@Kassia: I was there, too, and it’s too bad that the related tweets are no longer available on Twitter because they shed a lot of light on what happened.
I was, of course, stretching the truth when I said that the panelists didn’t know what Twitter was, but not by much. They didn’t do enough research on the SXSW audience or culture.
But the problem was not really that the panel didn’t know about the audience’s nasty tweets about them, but rather, as Kassia said, that they didn’t add anything new to the conversation. By saying to the audience “we want to learn from you”, the panel opened the floodgates for all the authors in the audience (there are always lots of authors at SXSW) to voice their frustrations with publishers and the publishing process. It was an opportunity for Penguin to present all of its innovative initiatives, but that didn’t happen.
It was a tough way for us publishing folk to learn about SXSW and that group’s perceptions of publishers, but the industry has become much more connected in the last year. Let’s show off in 2010, not defer to the digerati for answers.
Also, if I may do a wee bit ‘o pimpin’—me and Molly Crabapple (Dr. Sketchy’s; the header of booksquare.com and other fine stuff) and Jeff Newelt (Smith Mag; Heeb; Act-i-vate and other fine stuff) have a panel called Selling Subculture Without Selling Out: DEETS: http://my.sxsw.com/e/653
I didn’t mean to leave you out, Richard! Scrolling through hundreds of panels online must have blurred my vision.
Incidentally, Barnes and Noble banned my book from the SXSWi bookstore. I’m still signing it, but bringing it down myself. They wouldn’t sully their credit card machine with Scarlett’s sordid money
Here’s a rejected panel which was originally proposed by Richard Nash which I am resurrecting called the Novel in 2050 at Sunday 2:00 during the keynote. Location TBA.
Robert, you should let us know who will be on the panel when you have a moment. If you need an impromptu moderator, I’d be happy to pitch in…