SXSW Interactive Conference

Posted by Brad, Chief Explosion Officer

I recently got back from SXSW Interactive, which was in Austin TX from March 13-17.  More than 10,000 people attended the conference, which was full of great content and networking.  I had the opportunity to present with Dylan Wilbanks from the University of Washington on the topic ‘The Web in Higher Education: What’s Different?’.  We had a packed audience for the panel, which is called a core conversation.  The presenters get no more than 10 minutes to speak, and then the audience takes it from there and the presenters facilitate discussion.  It was a great way to hear many perspectives and issues in higher education web.

My big takeaway from SXSW was the continuing growth of location-based social networks.  For example, I drive by a Starbucks and it tells me that my friend is there.  The latest release in this area is FourSquare (http://playfoursquare.com), which joins other services like Loopt.  FourSquare was actually created by the developers of Dodgeball, a similar service that was acquired by Google and later canned. Not quite sure how this will tie into higher ed down the road, but be aware of the trend!

To see ‘The Web in Higher Education: What’s Different?’, just click play below. [The audio isn't the best because we did not have a mic for the audience.]


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2 Comments

  1. Great video from SXSW, thanks for sharing Brad. I am going to share it at the Tech & International Student Recruiting Meetup in Boston tomorrow night.

  2. You might be interested in the SXSW talk I went to entitled, “Universities in the ‘Free’ Era” with Glenn Platt and Peg Faimon. You can watch the videos on the LifeSize facebook here: http://bit.ly/a2Jm0R Thanks for posting yours!

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