It’s that time of the year… SXSW Interactive 2011 is almost upon us. I’m amazed every year to see just how much is going on. Before I get into the Dell details, a few things… there are tons of SXSWi tips posts that are probably being written out there this very second. Here are a few worth reading:
- Allen Stern’s post is a compilation of SXSW Interactive posts.
- What’s a Must Do thread on Quora has some interesting tidbits.
- Aaron Strout’s SXSWi Field Guide has quite a bit of useful information.
My advice: Register at http://schedule.sxsw.com, choose the Grid view, filter for SXSW Interactive and then choose a subfilter. Click on the star to add an event to your calendar. That’s been the easiest way I’ve seen to add an event to your calendar. Mapping out your panel attendance schedule will be your bet option to try to apply order to the chaos. That said, it will only help so much. I guarantee you’ll only attend a fraction of the ones you book.
Several folks internally and externally have asked what Dell will be doing there. A couple of events we’ll be part of:
First off, Dell’s pumped to a co-sponsor of Mack Collier’s first live #blogchat session. Several of us (including the social media tour-de-force @RichardatDell, the always plugged-in @SusanBeebe and myself) will be present at the Social Media Clubhouse to be part of a meaty #blogchat topic: What can company blogs learn from personal bloggers? See Mack’s post for more details.
Another thing that’s happening on Monday evening is the #DellSocial event. This is a laid back social event put on by my colleagues from the Large Enterprise side of the business. See Peter Tsai’s TechCenter post or the Dell Social Eventbrite entry for all the details.
Though it’s not a Dell event, I have to mention AllHat 3. Thanks to the great team at Chevy, @RichardatDell, @Armano and others who made #allhat3 a great success. And kudos to Radian6's David Alston for taking another stellar set of pictures you can see on the Radian6 Flickr page here.
And you can’t really talk about SXSWi without talking about panels, so let me lead with those details:
- Wednesday, March 9—Virtuous Circle: Connecting Classroom Practicioners & Content Providers via Social Media: Bri Brewer (@DellEdu) has led Dell’s education social media efforts will join a panel being led by WeAreTeachers’ Sandy Fivecoat ( @sandy5coat) that also includes Chris Fancher @cfanch) and a team member from learning.com (@learningdotcom) to discuss how social media is impacting publishers and teachers alike. Since can’t link directly to the panel itself, here’s a screen grab:
- Monday March 14 : Online Reputation in (and across) Context(s): Bill Johnston, Dell’s director of global community will be part of a co-presentation with pobox.com’s F. Randall Farmer to discuss the topic of online reputation and the possibilities and challenges that creating a framework poses to companies.
- Monday, March 14: Social Capital: The Billion Dollar Future: Dell’s own Richard Margetic joins nFusion’s Bill Parkes, Visible Technology’s Michael Spataro and Forrester Research’s Zach Hofer-Shall to discuss how social capital is impacting how customers receive and process information about a company’s products and services and how those changes are impacting companies.
- Tuesday, March 15: How Brands Respond to Facebook Attacks: Laura Thomas, who manages Dell's Facebook page for Business joins a solid group of folks, including LiveWorld's Bryan Person, Ekaterina Walter from Intel and Buddy Media's Michael Lazerow to discuss how brands can respond to customer criticism productively on the world's largest social network.
Schedules:
- Lionel’s schedule (it’s still a work in progress at this point)
- Susan Beebe’s schedule
If you want to catch up with me I’ll be out and about for most of SXSWi, the best option is to ping me on Twitter (@LionelatDell). If you are travelling over the next day or two to get here, I wish you a safe trip.
Hope your SXSW Interactive experience is a good one!