LACED at South by Southwest: Day 1

Hey everyone, its been a crazy day here at SxSW interactive. I am ready and prepared for tomorrow after my first day ever.

The day started the day off my four mile bike ride to the Austin convention center. Phew! Luckily I had a hearty breakfast at Hyde Park to keep me pumping.

After a long registration and a quick coffee, we were herded in to the Austin Convention center in order to hear Craig Watkins, UT Professor and author of “The Young and the Digital,” open up the Interactive portion of SxSW.

The keynote was brief, yet enlightening. 60M social media updates are sent by users under 18, and while the demographics of NEW users in social media are the baby boomers, the young people of the internet are the power users, the creators, and the ones that will determine the dynamics of social media in the future.

I grabbed another coffee and moved out to the “HOW TO RAWK SXSW” panel discussion. Pretty obvious tips and tricks, but helpful for a first timer like me.

Too much coffee in me, I decided to pedal over to Lance Armstrong’s bike shop, Mello Johnnys, to pick up a bike lock for the rest of the week, before heading back to the “Time+Social+Location” panel.

What a great panel. We discussed the trends in geo check-in applications like Foursquare, Gowalla and the like. The panel was led by developers and evangelists from AOL (lifestream developer) Mapquest, and Foursquare.

As users continues to add data through location check in apps, social advertising and evangelizing for small business on a huge scale will explode. Tribal elements of urban living2.0 will become defined, and groups of friends will be able to establish their favorite destinations all over the world, share them with each-other, and engage in gameplay as they continue to add data and share.

Tomorrow I will be uploading videos and photos throughout the day. Follow us @lacedtweet! Thanks for reading, stay tuned!

-Rich @ LACED Interactive Agency

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LACED Interactive is a full service interactive agency, building brands in the digital space. Visit us at http://www.lacedinteractive.com.