The WG Goes to SXSW – Interactive Nerdiness

Today I thought I’d start by presenting some absolutely scientific, totally mathematically sound South By Southwest statistics. First, the ratio of electronic and mobile devices to people in the Austin Convention Center at any given moment? 4 to 1. The number of designer taco trucks within walking distance of the convention center, compared to number of hungry bellies, starved from intense days of interactive lecturing and learning? 2 to 1. And the number of WG News + Arts bloggers wondering how to eat two people’s worth of tacos while simultaneously tweeting from her android, taking notes on her laptop, and lusting over the iPad during panels on how to maximize productivity? Just one — that’s me!

Yesterday was an absolute whirlwind, as expected. You can take two approaches to tackling this behemoth of a festival – you can plan obsessively and literally sprint from venue to venue trying to catch a taste of it all; or you can catch a breeze and follow an agenda based on someone else’s hard-earned research and planning. After an early morning flight and the first flood of convention culture shock, I decided to go with Plan B, riding the organizational coattails of a few friends.

My first stop was a Comedic Communication panel, featuring co-founder of Witstream, Lisa Cohen, SplitSider founder Adam Frucci, and The Onion’s Director of Digital, Baratunde Thurston. The panel focused on humor in digital design, and how the dynamics of funny differ in our newest forms of electronic communication. Thurston pointed out that The Onion is funny because it maintains the appearance of a reputable news source; format and design are important. And Cohen talked about her new 24-hour comedy ticker (co-founded with Michael Ian Black) that aggregates the tweets of a select group of comedians. “It forces comics to get to the point.” Witstream may have been one of my favorite discoveries of the convention thus far. Forget scrolling through miles of boring tweets – Witstream cuts right to the so-wrong-their-right one-liners.

Next up was a panel on crowdsourcing microgrants, aka making money via a group of people. So many of us are working on creative projects that are difficult to fund, and the panel detailed some of the most appealing online options for crowdsourced fundraising, including Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, and RocketHub.  Angela Tucker, an independent filmmaker, whose directorial debut, “Asexual,” went through a successful round of fundraising on Kickstarter just a few months ago, gave tips on how to succeed in your campaigning. “You can’t just send out one mass email and expect people to give,” she said. “It takes planning.” IndieGoGo founder Danae Ringelmann also noted that people contribute to a campaign for 3 main reasons: For participation, for perks, or because they want to do something good. Helpful things to keep in mind.  Now go make moolah!

After some Interactive paneling and taco standing, I headed over to the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center for the Plutopia 2011: Future of Play exhibition. In addition to an array of awesome light shows and brain-wave experiments, I stumbled upon an opportunity to pay homage to “Dr. Who” in a Build-Your-Own-Tardis competition with my friend and comic writer/artist, Jen Vaughn. Never ones to pass up an opportunity for extreme nerdiness we dug right in, decoupaging a mini cardboard phone booth that allowed passerby to inscribe on the inside where they wanted our time machine  to apparate off to next.

My final stop of the evening was at the GE Carusolar, a carousel from 1926 that was brought to a massive Austin parking lot all the way from Arkansas, and outfitted to run on nothing but solar power. Last night the sun set around 7pm, and though the ghostly white merry-go-round usually stores up enough juice to run until around 1am, the cloudy day resulted in a shortened span of spinning time, and the power was on the verge of running out when I arrived on the scene around 11:45.  Perhaps the horses were simply mimicking the fatigue of the assembled crowd, worn out from a fun-filled day of trotting around town and social-medializing? Whatever the case, I took it as a cosmic sign, and let my light go out soon after.

Until next the next recap…