click hereDay 3
A sense of compassion, global impact and humanity make up this unique, agile, and responsive community at SXSW. I witnessed this the day after the devastating events in Japan took place. A booth at the conference centre and website were set up quickly to allow the community to make a donation. By the end of the first day, over $5,000 was raised by the community. (It now totals more than $104,000.) The website allowed users to set up a donations page quickly and created easy ways to tweet the message to their networks. (See #sxswcares and #sxsw4japan; the website is SXSW4japan.org.) “We are a passionate agile community who can respond quickly to help Japan,” said Hugh Forrest, SXSW Interactive conference organizer.
You can feel this community eager to help whenever help is needed. I experienced this all over the city and throughout the conference. I shared taxi cabs all the time–several I did not pay for; I was provided food and drink at almost all of the venues, including free spring water that was available throughout the conference centre. It was a nice touch for those SXSW geek spring breakers who needed to rehydrate to tweet coherently.
Day not so sure
Did I say that SXSW Interactive Festival is the spring break for geeks? There is a constant flow of free food, drinks and consumer packaged goods brands there to win over the 20,000+ attendees. There’s so much free stuff that you come to expect something free at all of the surrounding events. Several main streets close during the evenings to allow the conference goers to walk the streets and check out vendors and parties along the way. I stumbled upon the PepsiMax and Foursquare party around the corner of the conference centre. With a flash of my conference badge I am let in. Not only was there loads of PepsiCo fare, there was free beer too. Who would have thought a Pepsi party served beer? I was happy. So too were the hundreds who stopped in for a cola and got a cold beer instead.
The brands marketing themselves here appear to know something many don’t: if you treat the social media community well, they will treat you well. Brand loyalty is a tough sell, but win over one social media geek at a time and you open yourself up to a world of social media viral marketing. Many drinking next to me were tweeting that free beer, snacks and fun were around the corner from the festival. The fact that Pepsi even served beer deserved kudos to their marketing teams. Unorthodox, but at SXSW it seems everyone is in tune with their customer or audience.
So what about Canadian companies at SXSW? I’d say there were more faces I recognized in Austin than at a local Dave Forde Profectio meet up–one of my fav’s. Freshbooks, a successful Toronto-based online invoicing and time tracking software company, offered free shuttle service to and from the airport, which saved SXSW attendees the $25 taxi ride. They also had a beer tent and clowns yelling “free beer and cupcakes,” which was a good draw.
Syncapse, a born-in-Toronto and now global social media measurement services success story, held more sophisticated events at the Four Seasons hotel and a super-fun evening party at a local nightclub. Again, these events were open to the community and were inclusive to those with SXSW badges. You could walk in and meet some new people, including Syncapse founder Michael Scissons and his team.
Near the conference, Jeff Musson (founder, Dynamite Network) had found a way to gather the numerous Canadians who travel to Austin each year. He’d received Canadian government funding from International Trade Canada and brought several sponsors to the table–including PayPal and the C-100–to create Maple Leaf Digital Lounge. The focus of the lounge was a group of Canadian internet startups who participated in a challenge to pitch venture capitalists from the C-100, a group of 100 Canadian-born VCs and internet executives.
Atlee Clark, C-100 program director and a Canadian living in San Francisco, says “Our mission is really simple–we look to help Canadian technology entrepreneurs however we can. Every event, partnership, initiative needs to answer the question ‘Does this help Canadian entrepreneurs?'”
The C-100 is not just about VCs making investments with Canadian startups (although VCs make up one third of the charter membership; in over a year, the C-100 passed along more than $80 million dollars to Canadian startups). Since its launch in 2009, the C-100 has held a number of mentoring events where Canadian startups apply to have the chance to receive everything from free advice to startup capital.
As my SXSW came to a close, I recognized that it’s not like any other event in the world. It represents the fundamental belief that if you serve the community, the community will serve you. SXSW is likely not the answer to all your social media challenges, but it does offer an opportunity to live in this unique and powerful community for a few days to see how a social media community exists online and offline, as well as how successful social media communities are built, thrive and grow.
My “a-ha” moments at SXSW were less about the smart panelists and speakers–although there were many. It was more about the realization that companies who truly experience the SXSW community for a few days walk away from the experience with insight into how to build their brands online and leverage the power of social media.
Ari Aronson is founder and executive recruiter at Ari Agency a boutique recruitment firm specializing in the digital marketing and social technology space in Toronto.
