Topix.net Weblog

March 15, 2007

SXSW Talk: When Communities Attack

by tolles at 12:30 PM

I attended SXSW last year, and really enjoyed both the event, not only for the "official" content, but also for the enthusiasm of the crowd, and the fact that the folks who went seemed to go of their own volition -- attending out of their own pocket, and really having a good time while they were at it.

So, this year, I made sure we had a presence, and decided to be an exhibitor at SXSW XXI, as well as tossing my hat into the ring at a chance to be a speaker.

Well, Hugh Forrest and the SXSW community seemed to like the conversation I wanted to start at SXSW, and so my talk "When Communities Attack" was given the green light, and I had the pleasure of giving a talk this past Monday.

I was pretty amazed at the number of people who were professionally involved in building, running or integrating a community (about 2/3 of the audience according to my casual poll). The crowd was pretty savvy as well, and I recognized some old friends -- Jascha Franklin-Hodge who ran a chunk of development at Spinner/AOL Music when I worked there as well as being one of the co-founders of Blue State Digital, as well as Scott Allen, who's the About.com Innovation editor.

I was also pleasantly surprised at how many folks had questions, and the quality of the discussion with the audience. I got a lot out of it, and really enjoyed participating more fully at SXSW as a result.

Since I received some requests for it, I wanted to put up my slides here -- hopefully my blog post title will make this easy to find. The powerpoint has some animation, so to get the full effect, you'll have to view as a slideshow.

When Communities Attack
(powerpoint presentation)

UPDATE:: I didn't see him, but someone who did a great writeup of mine and other SXSW talks is Ian Kennedy, who I met while he was at Six Apart, and now is at Yahoo. His post here is a good piece on a couple of presentations, as well as being a good place to see what SXSW is like...