It's really hard to create content while at a conference. Doing it in real time, artistically, is very impressive.

But because of its massive size and scope, keeping up with all the activities and events at SXSW can be somewhat overwhelming, even for seasoned attendees. That's where the Peoplebrowsr application can help. With the special SXSW edition of this online dashboard, you have a customized portal that comes pre-configured with a number of features that attendees will surely love.

Ten Reasons to Check Out SXSW.Peoplebrowsr.com

1. You can view all conversations and content related to #SXSW on Twitter, Facebook, and other popular social networks in one dashboard.

2. You can create Twitter groups (like you can in TweetDeck) to listen to a specific subset of people - like those attending SXSW for example.
3. You can see all the SXSW parties in one master list without leaving your PeopleBrowsr dashboard.
4. You can follow the buzz about the conference and parties - check out who's going where, what's cool, and what shouldn't be missed.
5. You can find and follow new people and trends based on both popular and yet to be discovered hash tags such as #SXSW, #techset, #allhat, #bloglounge. This feature is especially useful for newcomers who may not know which hashtags are related to SXSW events.
6. There's an embedded map for visually tracking where friends are tweeting while in Austin. This can help power the SXSW flash mob mentality made popular by last year's @garyvee (Gary Vaynerchuk) party by visually seeing where people are tweeting from during the conference and parties.
7. You can check out the statistics and word clouds for the most popular tags and words used during the conference.
8. You can learn more about the people attending the conference. For example, when you see an interesting tweet, you can click on that person to see their other IDs and profiles across the social web, including pictures and videos. And to find out if that person will be at a party, you can check the parties stream or perform a Twitter search (e.g. +party +Friday) in that person's stream.
9. You can analyze Twitter activity by reviewing a number of integrated reports. PeopleBrowsr lets you keep track of activity such as who's re-tweeting you, who's re-tweeting your friends, who recently followed you, among many other things.
10. You can share the results of Twitter searches you do in the application with your friends - and in just one click.

Bonus: The SXSW edition of PeopleBrowser also lets you spread something they call "PBLove," which is a feature they implemented for Valentine's Day. With this, you can share public but anonymous tweets of adoration for other festival attendees, secret-admirer style! That certainly allows for a nicer back channel than we've seen in previous years.

For more info on the features of sxsw.peoplebrowsr.com, check out the video below.

If the SXSW edition of Peoplebrowsr proves successful, the company plans to launch other customized editions of the application in the future.

If you do decide to use it to set up your own meetings, you can set them as either "public" or "private" and email invitations to your intended participants. Meeting participants are displayed in Twiddla's sidebar and with just a click, you can start chatting with them using an audio chat feature that utilizes your computer's microphone and speakers to take the brainstorming session from a chat session to a live conference call.

Image from the Twiddla blog

The whiteboard tool in Twiddla lets you draw freehand, insert shapes, insert text, and insert media. You can use Twiddla's built-in shapes or upload files from your own computer. Text can be entered in directly or can be placed in a text bubble or on a post-it note. A box at the top of the screen lets you enter in a URL of your choosing to pull up any web site on the internet. You can then overlay your drawings on top of the web site that is displayed.

But I think the Twiddla team sums it up the best. When I clicked over to their "features" page, only two items were mentioned: "Kicks A**, Doesn't Cost Anything."

I'd like to add to that list: Works.

Twiddla is now in public beta.

Lesson 1: Ignore The Great Unknown

Jason started his presentation talking about "the great unknown," which he defined as the things that hang over every entrepreneur's head when they are starting a company. For example, "what about when we have 1M customers or 100 employees." Jason encouraged people to ignore these concerns and focus on the now. He pointed out that often as entrepreneurs, we worry about the impact of our decisions rather than just making the right decision. He asserted that this is crazy, because decisions made today don't have to last forever - we "must optimize for today."

Lesson 2: Watch Out for Red Flags

The next point was about interpersonal dynamics in the workplace and watching out for what he called 'red flags.' Red flags are basically words or phrases that end up causing problems in communications. For example, at 37 Signals they learned to be careful with the words: need, can't, easy, only, and fast. For example saying, how easy someone else's job is or that they can't ship a product without one feature.

Lesson 3: Be Successful and Make Money by Helping Other People be Successful and Make Money

He talked about the powerful reaction people had to Basecamp when they first released it (Basecamp is a very lightweight project management tool). They realized this was because the tool was helping other people do their job better. This has become part of their philosophy, looking for opportunities in the marketplace to "spot chain reactions and be the catalyst" around helping others.

Lesson 4: Target Nonconsumers and Nonconsumption

This is actually a concept that Jason borrowed from Clayton Christensen (a famous professor at Harvard Business School) in the books Innovators Dilemma and Innovators Solution. The idea is that there exists an entire market of nonconsumers, or people who have a need but existing players aren't targeting these people. The advantage of targeting this segment is that you minimize the chance for competition from entrenched players.

Lesson 5: Question Your Work Regularly

At 37 Signals, Jason reported they are always asking questions to make sure they are doing the right things. Internally, this list of questions includes:

• why are we doing this?
• what problem are we solving?
• is this actually useful?
• are we adding value?
• will this change behavior?
• is there an easier way?
• what's the opportunity cost?
• is it really worth it?

Lesson 6: Read your Product

Given the firm's background, this was a lesson I found particularly interesting. Jason claimed that the "Biggest sin on the internet right now is bad copywriting ... paying too much attention to pixels and not enough attention to words." Beyond this he pointed out that words are actually less expensive to correct and improved copy will make doing the design second result in a stronger design.

Lesson 7: Err on the Side of Simple

As surprising as I found the last lesson, this one was probably the most obvious given 37 Signal's business. Jason pointed out that you should always "start with the easy way." The interesting and non-obvious point was that he extended this beyond product issues. For example, he recommended people start a company by setting up an LLC, until they need a C Corp.

Lesson 8: Invest in What Doesn't Change

Jason said that this is the "best business advice he's gotten in some time." It interesting because this isn't something that is intuitive, when you think about tech companies which tend to be focused on what is new and upcoming. However, Jason pointed out that principals can last. For example at 37 Signals, he said they anticipate in 10 years "simple, affordable software" will still be worth investing in.

Lesson 9: Follow the Chefs

Jason called chefs the smartest business professionals. He explained this is because they are aware that you become famous and successful by giving knowledge away. For example, chefs have cooking shows and write cook books. Yet it doesn't stop their restaurants from being successful. In fact, he claimed they are probably more successful because of their sharing.

Lesson 10: Interruption is the Enemy of Productivity

Originally David Heinemeier Hansson (Jason's partner) and Jason didn't live in the same city. They eagerly awaited David moving to Chicago and being able to get even more done. Interestingly, when David arrived they actually found productivity decreasing. At 37 Signals, they have come to believe that this was due to the increased interruptions; and so they ended up favoring passive communication like email versus things that are more instantaneous but also interrupt your workflow.

Lesson 11: Road Maps Send You in the Wrong Direction

When talking about business plans, financial projections, or features for products 37Signals believes road maps are bad, because "they lock you into the past." The only exception is APIs, because people are counting on it. Instead he said your expectation should be "do the right thing at the right time."

Lesson 12: Be Clear in Crisis

At the beginning of this year, 37 Signals had some infrastructure problems that resulted in a few hours of unscheduled downtime. This was widely discussed on the internet. They quickly posted about what had happened and during the technical problems kept they the homepage updated with status messages. Through this experience, it reinforced their belief that people love you even more if you are open, honest, public and responsive during a crisis.

Lesson 13: Make Tiny Decisions

Rather than trying to make major decisions, when possible, Jason encouraged entrepreneurs to break problems down to the atomic level. In web properties, this is especially powerful because they've been able to break features down to the atomic level and then launch them one at a time. This is good because the team can gain momentum and celebrate little launches. However, it's also good because "when you make tiny decisions, you can't make big mistakes."

Lesson 14: Make it Matter

Jason ended his presentation by encouraging the audience to make sure their work was significant. He talked about how meaningful he felt the products they were creating were for individuals. Before opening it up for questions, he said that "everything you do should matter."

Conclusion

One of the things I love most about SXSW is the transparency with which so many leaders share about their business. At last year's festival, two of my favorite panels were: Web App Autopsy and The Figures Behind the Top Web Apps.

We'd love to hear any good case studies or lessons you've learned running startups or in business. Please share them in the comments below.

Never fear, RSS filtering is here! Below are instructions for some simple ways you can accomplish either of the goals above. See also our post on the apps most likely to break out for the first time at SXSW. Update: Tweetpeek just launched and takes care of much of this functionality.

In talking to people who are going to SXSW for the first time and who haven't used Twitter very much, I realized that it could be helpful to create an easy way for them to follow the messages of the defacto leaders of the Twitter community. Enter the Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_ramp_up_or_filter_out_the_sxsw_twitter_experience.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_ramp_up_or_filter_out_the_sxsw_twitter_experience.php Events Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:39:04 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick Online comics service Bitstrips will be one of the startups hoping to become SXSW Breakout App of 2008. In fact they responded to our Breakout Apps post by creating a special comic strip for ReadWriteWeb (see below). So what is Bitstrips? It's an online comic strip that you can create and run as a series, kind of like a visual blog. I think this has a great chance of gaining traction, because a lot of people think visually and everyone enjoys comics.

Here's the comic the Bitstrip editors did for us:

Bitstrip is rolling out a major upgrade tonight, in preparation for tomorrow's "pre-launch" at SXSW - where they will send beta invites to hundreds of SXSWers. They also plan to "comic blog" the SXSW event.

What do you think? Will Bitstrip be the Breakout App we're all looking for?

Who's it going to be in 2008? We look at five possible contenders below, taking into consideration the special magic that is the SXSW experience. Lots of startups are hoping they'll go big next week in Austin, but in all likelihood only one, maybe two, actually will.

The event is huge, it's filled with creative people, the weather is warm and there's lots of parties. The panels are good enough to comment on but not so good that people aren't also communicating about a bunch of other things.

It's also more likely that someone will blow up at SXSW this year because of Twitter's high-profile success last year.

What does it take be a hit?

A winning app has to be easy for lots of people to use and has to provide clear value to conference and party-goers. It might seem valuable only at SXSW but end up proving itself afterwords due the scale achieved in Austin. That was the case with Twitter, which I and I'm sure others planned to stop using after SXSW. Photo by super-photographer Scott Beale/Laughing Squid

Buzz momentum leading up to the event is also very important. If a good number of savvy web lovers have just become power users of an app before SXSW, it stands a great chance of reaching critical mass there.

Finally, it has to perform reasonably well for a high-traffic week. Other than a underwhelming hallway demonstration, Twitter held up better at SXSW last week than it has at almost any time since.

So here are my favorites for possible breakout apps in Austin. What are yours?

The Contenders

Live streaming video
Qik, Mogulus, Ustream, BlogTV or Yahoo! Live

Live streaming video has built up a lot of interest in recent months, with the entry of big players and the announcement that Live YouTube is coming soon raising that interest to an all time high in recent weeks.

Live video is great for events because it leaves users feeling empowered and provides immediate feedback when you see how many people are watching your live feed.

Why this won't be it.

Live video is not easy for large numbers of people to use. Despite being easy to do, it's hard to do well and frequently. Most people aren't very good at it and anything but the right hardware equals fail in a public event setting.

AIR Twitter
Twhirl, Snitter

Third party Twitter clients built on Adobe's AIR are beautiful and compelling. They aren't believed until their seen. People in Austin will look over each others' shoulders and say "what is that?"

Twitter clients will probably grow in user numbers a lot before and after the conference sessions in Austin. I love Twitter and will be celebrating our first anniversary together in Austin.

Why this won't be it.

Don't count on anything Twitter working. Despite recent hires that were supposed to solve the scaling problems, Twitter will probably suffer extensive downtime during a week-long giant event. It is much, much bigger than it was last year, but you'll probably hear as much complaining about Twitter at SXSW as you will praise.

If Twitter can hold up that would be great, but desktop apps already have one strike against them at an event so dependent on mobile communication.

Alternatives to Twitter
Pownce

A more sophisticated but less used alternative to Twitter, Pownce could come in to fill the gap. It's already got a small but vocal fan club of web elite.

You may hear a lot of people saying in Austin, "that's it, I'm moving to Pownce."

Why this won't be it.

Twitter loyalty runs deep, even during the down times. Many people are unable to break the habit no matter how angry they (we) become. Pownce is a little more complicated and hasn't been experiencing a significant upturn leading up to SXSW.

Better conference resources
Sched.org

Sched is a just-released event schedule interface build by Taylor McKnight. The schedule part of the SXSW website is not good and Sched.org makes it a lot more usable. It's easy to dynamically plan out your day on Sched, selecting both official and unofficial events listed there. Then you can shoot the URL of your personal calendar off to a friend.

Sched creator Taylor McKnight is the man behind the geek-loved PodBop and the designer of version 2.0 of the Hype Machine. He and Sched co-creator Chirag Mehta also built Chime.tv, a feature rich video aggregator worth checking out.

These guys do smart little things, like letting you view group schedules by adding multiple usernames joined by commas in a Sched URL and offering a forehead slapping "why didn't I think of that" account creation and login proccess. A lot of people are already talking about Sched on Twitter and I expect it will get good traction in Austin. Here's my schedule, if you're interested. I haven't filled anything out yet.

Continued below screenshot

Why this won't be it.

Sched.org is more "wow" than it is seriously useful. People come and go from events at SXSW, schedules don't hold steady hour by hour. The site is also pretty slow and doesn't have the same social appeal or feature set as Upcoming does. Finally, nobody cares enough about what you're doing at SXSW to want a full copy of your scheduled panels and parties to attend. There are so many fun people there that it's better to just see who you get to see by chance. Except for you, Taylor McKnight, because you owe me a beer.

Activity feed aggregation/ Lifestreaming
FriendFeed

FriendFeed is a super simple way to view all your friends' activities on Twitter, del.icio.us, Mag.nolia, YouTube, Flickr and lots of other sites - all in one place. It's going to be great for SXSW. Flickr is a big part of tech events but FriendFeed is going to make it even bigger, with all of a photographer's friends seeing their photos - not just those that go to Flickr itself.

Friend discovery gets nailed in FriendFeed - plug in some accounts of yours around the web and it will recommend friends with similar interests all day long. That means rapid scale up in network effect and big ease of use. The "people who find you interesting" feature is really flattering and it's always good to appeal to the ego. Here's my ego on FriendFeed.

I've placed a link to FriendFeed in my browser toolbar and am already clicking on it throughout the day to see what my friends are bookmarking, what photos they're posting and to see a finite number of peoples' tweets. You can leave inline comments on any item's link in Friend feed or say you like a link of someone's with one click. It's already getting a lot of traction and I think it's going to blow up big in Austin.

More likely than Pownce, you're going to hear people saying that Twitter down-time is less of a bummer because the rest of FriendFeed is still available.

The service launched publicly this week, was founded by ex-Googlers and just announced $5 million in VC funding.

Smart, connected attendees of SXSW (and who doesn't want to be one of those?) are probably going to be dropping in at FriendFeed all week while half paying attention to panels. It's like Twitter but better in some ways; it's more expansive, more interactive and so far more stable.

Caveats and Pitfalls

FriendFeed might not scale well. There's not a mobile component. It's not the prettiest thing in the world to look at. There's no API so there's no ecosystem around it to make it more awesome - something that's been very important to Twitter's ongoing success.

Conclusion

The killer app in Austin might just be beer, it's hard to say. The time and conditions are right, though for somebody's service to prove itself on a big, important and informal stage though. Good luck to all the innovators looking for a good time at the conference.