I’m sitting here in a corner of the convention center after having experience my first taste of SXSW.  I have been furiously tweeting ever since i reached the convention center, and it’s abuzz with frenetic, intelligent, geeky energy.

This convention is really a marvel of the business we’re a part of.  All sorts of people are here, representing different businesses, users, startups, and influencers.  They’re all here to share information and learn from each other.  It really is quite a sight to see.

I was able to attend 2 interesting sessions today, each involving colleagues/friends of mine who are each doing big, big things in their digital realms.

Colleen Macklin and #gamegateway

The first session, titled “Child’s Play: Game Design as an Educational Gateway” (hashtagged #gamegateway) featured a panel of 4 game designers/developers/evangelists who had focused work around leveraging the process of game design as an educational tool.  When i first read the description of the session, i incorrectly assumed it would be a panel of people talking about how the dymanics of playing video games actually helps educate people and hone certain integral skills.  This, however, turned out to not be the case.  This panel was on a whole other level.

I’m actually friends with one of them: Colleen Macklin.  As a professor of game design at Parsons (although currently on sabbatical,) she’s a wealth of knowledge when it comes to how people and games interact.  The discussion was extremely illuminating.  Games are at the core of our culture.  Colleen contended that games actually preceded written culture, which would imply that they helped shape our culture as well.

Colleen and the rest of the panelists had each been involved in some capacity with school programs that got kids (of various ages and in various countries) to actually take on the take of ideating, designing, testing, and perfecting their own games.  It was amazing to hear.  I truly believe that people learn at their best when they are engaged with the subject matter.  tying in game design as well as game play allows for just that as well as learning about the iterative process, logic, coding, and working off of the feedback of others.  It was a fantastic session and i was glad to sit in on it.

#NotMyJob: Content Strategy Smackdow with James Mathewson and others

The second session was one I was looking forward to.  Dubbed a “Content Strategy Smackdown,” it sounded as if there was going to be a good old-fashioned Jerry Springer type brawl among content strategists on stage.  While it turned out to be much less violent, it was a great session full of discourse and thoughtful ideas around what content is, who should manage it, how to implement it, and what challenges face today’s content strategists.  A friend of mine also happened to be on this panel: IBM’s ultimate content and search guru, James Mathewson.  If you’re one to read up on either of those concepts, then check out his extremely “relevant” book, “Audience, Relevance, and Search: Targeting Web Audiences with Relevant Content”. I guess you could say he knows a thing or two about the role of content strategies within large organizations.

It’s no secret that big organizations with big websites face big challenges with it comes to properly implementing content strategies properly.  Poor content management and governance leads to a degradation in search performance, site traffic, online lead conversion, and consequently revenues.  While this connection sounds easy when I type it out in a blog, it’s much harder to convince C-level executives to adopt it across an organization effectively.  It’s easy for it to fall on deaf ears since content strategy seems to be viewed as a passive initiative.  Not the case.

If anything, my only complaint would be that the panel was preaching to the choir.  We all ate up their ideas and opinons because they were right.  The people that need to hear, it, however, are CMO’s who don’t understand the importance of managing their content resources effectively.

As the day has come to an end, its time to switch gears and share a few brews with all of these exciting, smart, and dynamic people.  No wonder they call it Nerd spring break- it’s the best of both worlds.

It goes without saying, but it’s our job to stay on top of what’s going on at the forefront of the digital world.  It allows us to keep new developments in mind when creating the best digital strategies for our clients.

That’s why I’ve been sent to fly down to Austin, TX to spend a few days in the thick of the interactive portion of the iconic festival.  SXSW has quickly turned into the main stage for anything that’s at the forefront of the social media and greater digital scene.  Also dubbed “nerd spring break,” the festival, in its 25th year, is actually 3 festivals in one: interactive, film, and music.  The next 4 days are going to be filled with knowledge, interaction, discourse, music, food, and culture.  It’s my first time headed to SXSW, and I’m excited to share my experiences (as they apply to the social media and the digital world,) with the readers of our blog.

Every day will be packed with meetings, presentations, and parties put on by the leaders in social interaction and digital development.  You can follow the action and discourse in a few ways:

1)   Follow the action on twitter: I’ll be tweeting from two accounts: @DDGInc as well as my personal account: @cjammet

2)   If you want to follow more than just my musings, be sure to track the #SMW and #SMW11 hashtags.  To say the tweeting is going to be fast and furious is a gross understatement.

3)   Follow this blog: I’ll distill key take-aways from each day on this blog, so stay tuned .

I’ve just landed in Austin, and the convention is in full swing. Time to get started!