FIELD GUIDE: SXSW Interactive 2010 Panel Picker

Mid-august can be exciting for a few things: summer vacation, hot weather, long days. For the geeks of the digital community, this is always a very exciting time of year. It is this time of year that the panel picker is released for panels submitted to the SXSW festival. This year over 2200 panels have been submitted, all of which 300 are selected for the Interactive portion of the SXSW festival. Of the voting system, 30% of community user votes count towards the final selection. The list is quite impressive but it can be a daunting task to sort through all the awesome submissions. I did a bit of wandering through the list and found a few rad ones.

Pretty Rad Panel Submissions:
Tantek Celik – Open Science on Today’s Web
The open movement is growing in all areas and this panel on open science should be a really interesting introspective into how open science will play out in the internet. The idea of developing science in the open and public eye will revolutionize the way science discoveries are made.

Angela Schroeder – Photoshop and Other Photography Tips for Concert Photography
This panel should provide a interesting overview of the basics for live concert photography. Capturing the energy of a live concert can be pretty confusing while worrying about your gear, the lighting and your camera. This should be a rad discussion with tips that can be applied for the music section of the SXSW festival. 🙂

Hillary Hartley – Building Your Local Open Government Tribe
The idea of an open government is an important issue that is becoming a reality. Having an open government makes information available at a public level which can create better informed decisions and dialogue.

Tassos Stevens – Beyond “Choose Your Own Adventure”: Theatre meets Games
Theatre is often overlooked when commentary is made about the digital evolution of the arts. Is the next step in theatre a radical one that eliminates the actors and dynamically creates the show from the audience? Sounds awesome. 🙂

Roy Elkins – Self-Made: Record Labels Battle Social Media
We are having to rethink how music is distributed. The music industry is quickly evolving and a lot of bands are turning to new media outlets for new ideas of distribution, licensing and representation.

Ian Davis – Set Your Data Free
Data is definitely different than content and this talk should shine some light on data within the context of copyright, creative commons and public domain. Concise talk about data is perhaps one of the few not addressed issues in new media literacy.

Funny Ones (we like clever):
Zain Memon – The Ballmer Peak: How Alcohol Intake Affects Coding
clever insightful discussion about effects of alcohol consumption on coding.

Donnie Davies – God Hates Donnie Davies, But He Loves Viral Marketing
find out how a fake ex-gay christian rock group got picked up by major media outlets and got an opening spot at SXSW.
Andy Gibson – #kebab Presents… Whose Panel Is It Anyway?
creative and disruptive humor about anything and everything, SXSW style.

Vancouver Peeps and their Panels:
James Chutter – Beta Campaigns: Planning for User Driver Advertising and Ubiquitous Participation: Graffiti Streets to Social Networking

Robert Scales – Social Media and the Olympics: A Case Study

Joy Gugeler – Make Friends with Cannibals: Linking Print & Online Publishers

Dave Olson – Hitchhiking to the Boardroom and Rock ‘n Roll Photography

Alexandra Samuel – How to Make Your Users Love You and Are You Smarter Than a Social Media Expert?

John Biehler – Do Cool Kids Leave When the Suits Arrive?

Cecily Walker – Can I Reserve This Book With My iPhone?

Elliott Hurst – Online Community Saved the Radio Star

A few other awesome people who submitted panels: Tara Hunt, Michal Tsur, Pamela Castillo, Sameer Vasta, Tony Walsh, Saul Colt, Christine Lu, Violet Blue, Micki Krimmel and Molly Crabapple.

I also submitted two panels to the Panel Picker.
My first panel is called Listening to the Internet: Online Media Monitering with a full description here. The second one is called Your Content is You, Your Website is Dead with a full description over here. 🙂

Thankfully I am not the only one tackling the 2200 SXSW panel submissions to give a list of suggestions! A few others have done the same with awesome lists of their own. Rebecca Bollwitt and Dave Olson provide great suggestions of panels submitted by Vancouverites. TechZulu provides a great listing of panels submitted by people in the SoCal area. Alexandra Samuel gives some awesome suggestions of panels submitted by women.

Phew. That was alot. Have fun voting! (voting ends September 4th!)