We have a metric pantload of new CurrentMarketing rank and file in our shop and it only makes sense to start showing them off to our followers. First up is Lindsay Trombatore, the unflappable bassist in the rock band that is the media department. Yeah, we have groupies. You know you love us, Jimmy D.

CurrentMarketing: What are you doing?
Lindsay: Cracking up in the media office.

CM: What's your favorite website?
LT: Oooh...www.hast.net. Just kidding! I love Facebook, obviously. I'm addicted to it. And someecards.com.

CM: Where is your dock located?
LT: It's on the left, right? Wait, I don't know.

CM: Move your mouse and find where the icons come up.
LT: Oh. Okay. It's on the bottom left.

CM: [Huge laughter as "bottom left" is not a choice for dock location]

CM: What dock icon do you click most?
LT: Toss up between iTunes and Firefox.

CM: What dock icon is the prettiest?
LT: Firefox. I like Firefox.

CM: MySpace? Facebook? Plaxo? LinkedIn?
LT: Facebook, hands down.

CM: What do you like about Facebook?
LT: Oh my god, it connects personal, professional, cultural...it's all forms of social media.

CM: And, finally, what's your problem?
LT: [Laughter] Um, my problem? It is that I am so random. And I can't find a house to live in.

I had a great time at SXSW:Interactive 2009 and I think going back next year is a definite. I'm no party goer like some of my other Louisville comrades, but I did get to meet a lot of people and get a great pulse on where all things interactive and social media-esque are going.

I do have a few notes to share though:

• Holy crap, you have to walk a lot.  Especially if you're on the other side of the bridge from downtown.  On the plus side, I had lunch with a bat in the hotel and got to check out the SoCo (Southern Congress) side of town.  Which means I got to see Leslie Cochran -- the link speaks for itself.
• How to talk to programmers and the developer/designer divide are big topics to be solved.  Katy Miller and I took part in a core conversation that turned into a complaint-fest.  So after saying our peace about how we approach the topic, we ditched out.  However, we impressed several people apparently, because we were sought out for additional comments for the next several days!
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a still a big "huh?" to a lot of people, as well as being a dirty word to others.  I had a great session that went over everything CurrentMarketing already preaches, and learned a bit here and there as well.
• Tony Hsieh is an awesome, humble speaker.  He talks the talk and walks the walk of Zappos culture and his presence on stage isn't dominating, it is subdued and personable.  Gave us plenty to think about concerning our own culture.  Always great to see how the big boys do it.
• A few too many of the panels I attended were more on the salesy side (I'm looking at you Adobe and Hulu). But overall I'd say 75% of the sessions I attended were either reinforcing what I already knew/thought or gave me plenty to think about for days after.
• iPhone development appears as I had surmised from looking at the outside:  painful.  I sat in on a iPhone programming for web developers (like me) session and came away with lots of "We don't know why you have to do X" and "Yeah, it is confusing, but you sometimes have to do Y".  That and Objective-C is ugly.  The Interface Builder is sweet though.
• There is plenty of free beer to be had.  Nothing much more to say about that.  Just lots of free, beautiful beer.
• Giveaways were a big thing.  Both Zappos and Adobe had similar Match 5 Cards type of games.  And in one session, Adobe gave away a Master Collection of their suite of software.  Plus, I came home with about 10 new tshirts, not all of which fit me, but still.
• The Austin Convention Center was designed by a madman.  You can take an escalator from the 1st to the 3rd floor, but if you want to get to the 4th floor you have to go to a completely different escalator on the other side of the building -- and it doesn't connect to the 3rd floor.  One SXSW volunteer tried to convince me that I was already on the 4th floor, not the 3rd, when I went asking for directions.
• And finally:  SXSW Interactive is the place to be to stay on top of the curve and to check signals that you're going in the right direction.  It is also the place to be to see a bunch of social media nerds getting drunk and socializing outside of Twitter and Facebook, their natural habitat.

I started my SXSW Monday with a bang - Presenting Straight to the Brain. An excellent, knowledgeable moderator and three EXCELLENT presenters flooded the audience with solid presentation advice. There are some basic ideas that drive a good presentation:

• Out of a 20-slide presentation, the brain only remembers 3-4 slides.
• Look at a presentation more like a film strip rather than a handout for leaving behind. So, each slide gets one image and one audio track.
• Users remember 65% more if you apply sight and sound. The sum of these two is much greater than the power of each by itself; we have to synchronize the two to get through to the mind. Don't make the viewer choose between sight and sound - one will lose.
• The brain cares about emotion. Using images that evoke an emotional response in an audience is way more effective than text on the screen.
• Bullet and talking points are OUT. Using the screen as a vehicle for presentation notes begs our audience to switch off.
• There was so much more to this presentation that I'll bring back and we can use, but just seeing this list tells you how phenomenal this presentation was.

I perhaps chose poorly for my second session, especially following a show on great presentations. I went into Managing the "Expert" Client. They may as well have called this session Account Management 101. And, the two presenters REALLY should have gone to the early morning session. The Powerpoint was slide after slide of bullet points and the presenters read straight off the screen and from pre-typed notes in front of them. I was able to pull out a few interesting nuggets for gaining client buy-in for interactive ideas and refuting the top 5 objections:

1. "No one uses Flash." (99.1% of web users have at least Flash 7)
2. "No one scrolls." (If this were true, Google's search returns would only result in one screen at a time. Amazon's home page scrolls. So does Fox News)
3. "More than one click is too many." (There is only so much information you can pack into a home page before completely overwhelming a user. Research shows users will tolerate 3-4 clicks before giving up)
4. "Our site has to work in every existing browser." (NO website works perfectly in EVERY browser. We will optimize the site so that it works correctly in the most heavily penetrated versions of every browser)
5. "I don't want people to comment publicly on my blog." (People are going to comment whether you make their comments public or not. You may as well begin with transparency from the start. If things go badly, we can always take that feature down).

After lunch, we hit the keynote with James Powderly, who is the co-founder of Graffiti Research Lab. Other than seeing some pretty cool avant garde laser art projects, I'd say this talk was wholly underwhelming for me. I expected to be much more inspired by him.

The next panel panel for me was Nielsen vs. New Market Research. There was a Nielsen representative on the panel, a new media measurement expert and the former CMO of Ford Worldwide. The latter two wore t-shirts and jeans...the Nielsen guy had on a tie and jacket - very characteristic of their companies. I learned that we are using a lot of great tools already (Google Analytics), but there are many free measurement tools out there we can still employ to help measure online brand awareness. I want to put them to work right away!

We wrapped the evening by listening to Bruce Sterling, sci-fi and Wired writer, discuss the evolution of journalism and ranting about modern society. Engaging, funny, insightful - what a brilliant and refreshing perspective he has.

This was a GREAT day for me at SXSW. We are on the right track at CM and are poised for the next generation of interactive development!

Sunday was a curious SXSW day for me. I got a true sense for the community that is the event. I started the day by leaving my iPhone in a cab. Those of you who own an iPhone probably just a had a slight jump in your tummy thinking about losing your most prized possession. Those of you who funded my iPhone probably just called me an unfortunate name.

Not so fast! This story has a happy ending, thanks to SXSW. I called my phone until a lovely gentleman named Alex picked it up. A fellow iPhone owner, he was highly sympathetic to my plight AND a SXSW registrant! What luck! I met up with him shortly after and retrieved my phone, missed calls and texts intact! YAY! If I had been virtually anywhere else in the world. I probably could have said a hearty sayonara to that little treasure.

I spent lunch with The Bouv and three guys from Louisville - funny how we have to go all the way to Austin to hook up with fellow Louisvillians! It was interesting to hear what our compadres from the River City are doing and how all of our capabilities could compliment one another. Very stimulating conversation took place (better than any of the panels that day) and we ended up with a free meal because it took an hour and a half to get our food! Overall, a successful lunch!

After lunch, we ducked into the SXSW trade show, a series of booths and demonstrations of various interactive products and services. Lots of "alternative inbox" solutions that seem to believe I need something beyond my Google filters, folders and spam mechanism. The coolest thing about the trade show was seeing Guy Kawasaki casually sitting among about 15 people, talking nonchalantly to the group. This is a guy who draws huge crowds and is an inspiration to the online community worldwide and he was lounging in a plaid (I think flannel) shirt and jeans, talking with a group he treated as personal friends. That's really the whole vibe of SXSW in a nutshell. Relaxed information overload (oxymoron?).

I started the first afternoon panel with "Marketing and New Media." The only complaint I have about SXSW so far is that the descriptions of the sessions do not often reflect what is ACTUALLY going to be discussed in the panel. This causes many people to get up and walk out early in the discussions. Saturday, I was afraid to do that because I didn't want to hurt the presenters' feelings. I was not so delicate on Sunday. I left this panel after just 10 minutes - it wasn't that the panelists were bad, just that the content wasn't suitable for our use.

So, I skipped down a floor into the Social Media session. Much better! There were panelists from H&R Block, Carnival Cruise Lines and JCPenney. I very much enjoyed several points made by these panelists. Like all other panels, there is time at the end for audience questions. One question was from a Proctor and Gamble representative, who asked about how these companies measure ROI on social media, a question with which we struggle every day at CurrentMarketing. I loved the H&R Block speaker's response. She said that rather than call it Return on Investment, she calls it Risk of Ignoring. That risk so greatly outweighs the potential downside on Return on Investment that she virtually disregards the return aspect. All three panelists confirm that social media is currently a brand reinforcement mechanism and that soon, the true Return on Investment will be tangible in that consumer will migrate AWAY from brands that don't have an effective social media presence. Lots more great points were made, but I loved this one the most.

We hit ScreenBurn after that, an interactive gaming "trade show," for lack of a better name. I learned something interesting in this room. If I ever put on a trade show like this, I will not place the gigantic booth handing out free samples of Mountain Dew JUST adjacent to the head-to-head gaming consoles. Wow. Those guys were hopped up on the Dew, slaughtering each other in aggressive Call of Duty madness. It was a sight to be seen, but not for long. It did make me wonder about the effectiveness of product placement in video games, though. If the kids are so juiced up, can they really focus long enough to notice the products? Probably not.

The Bouv and I hit the Social Media Club's Pool 2.0 event after hours and ended up talking at length with two guys from Zappos, one of which has followed Tony Hseih through three companies. They confirmed a lot of what we heard in Saturday's keynote. It's good to hear that he wasn't just full of it! We played short game of Mortal Kombat (I beat The Bouv!) and headed back to the hotel after the long day of the SXSW experience.

Quick recap: iPhone lost/returned, lunch with great company, ROI defined (finally!), caffeine-fueled gaming madness and catching up with the Zappos folks. All-in-all, not a bad day, even though I missed the Selection Show! ;(

Now, on to Monday - I want to see three panels in each session, so I'm not sure how I'm going to be in three places at once! Maybe some of that Mountain Dew Code Red will help...

We just wrapped up our first day at South by Southwest interactive - what a whirlwind! Only 24 hours into it, I can only imagine what the next three days will have to offer. The panels were intriguing and the people I met were just about as interesting as the panels. Quick recap on my Saturday content:

First session - "Interactive behind the screen"

The description touted this session as one that would teach how to marry analog and digital marketing successfully. The presenter started slowly. So slowly, in fact, that much of the room exited before he made his point, which was worth the wait. He basically said that the analog experience of your brand's consumer is more important than the digital experience. When a person goes through the drive thru at McDonald's, it's much more important that he/she has a great experience at the drive thru window than whether or not they are friends with McD's on Facebook. He posits that many brands have tried to shove social media down their own throats and think they must adopt a social media presence to remain pertinent. They end up failing. Good session to start the day for me.

Second session - "How to talk to programmers"

I had such high hopes for this session. As I mentioned, both The Bouv and I attended this because we thought it would help us with some tips to work together better. It did not. It only reinforced that we work in a great environment at CM and we don't need to fix much in terms of communication/egos inside our shop. The discussion in the room of approximately 150 quickly devolved into programmers/designers griping about project managers and vice versa. The Bouv and I spoke up in favor of our process of involving all stakeholders from the start of the process (the group determines the goal, the scope of the project, the budget, etc) and for including a "translator," of sorts - someone who understands the geek side of the project, but who also understands the project manager's position with the client.

Third session - keynote with Zappos.com's Tony Hseih

Wow. Loved this address. Despite appearing extremely nervous (the crowd was probably 7500, so I can understand why), this guy is compelling, humble, funny, self-depricating, intelligent and precocious. His talk focused on happiness. Sounds like a hippy, right? Not really - he basically says that if you can replicate happiness in your culture through your employees and customer service, your customers will be happy and spend more money. Zappos.com has had to make several difficult decisions, including one that cut 25% of their profit line but favored customer service more heavily. I learned a lot about business in general from him.

Fourth session - "The Future of Social Networks"

Open ID. Sharing information across multiple platforms. Amazon's recommendations will start coming from only people Amazon sees are my friends on Facebook. people I follow on Twitter or people in my address book. Rather than seeing opinions from a bunch of people I don't know and whose authority is suspect to me, I get recs from people whose taste I trust.

"In 5 years, social networks will be like air." The speaker, Charlene Li, is a genius.

Last session - "Comedy on TV and the Web"

I thought this one was my guilty pleasure of the day since I was really only going to see BJ Novak (The Office). But, it turned out to be one of the most insightful panels I had seen all day. The talent on the panel was immense - moderator Ricky Van Veen (collegehumor.com), writer Meredith Scardino (The Colbert Report), Novak, NEED NAME (Boxee) and NAME (Break Media). This was run in a Q&A style, but the crux of most of their points was that content is still king, regardless of where that content comes from. As the next few years progress, we will get content less and less from TV, more and more from our personal communication devices (computer, PDA, etc.). That means that content actually has to get better. Right now, many of us leave the TV droning in the background on shows we don't much care about, or we let the TV play through a show that follows a show we actually wanted to watch. Not with user-solicited or time shifted programming. It didn't hurt that this panel was hysterical - especially Meredith Scardino. What a card.

Sunday, here I come!

It's been a while since we updated our blog and that's because we are absolutely screaming busy!

One of the projects we are launching today is a very cool interactive campaign for our largest client. We've called this "Margarita Madness" and it takes the form of an NCAA-style Sweet 16 bracket, pitting 16 of Tumbleweed's tastiest margaritas against each other in a head-to-head competition throughout the month of March.

This promotion has allowed us to marry traditional communication forms (in-store point-of-sale elements) with new media elements (web presence, texting). Not only will this give us a playful way to interact with our guests in the restaurant, but more importantly, we will continue to build our database of consumers who are loyal to the Tumbleweed brand and be able to speak with them directly when we have something important to say to them. And, you can't beat the margarita angle!

Check it out: www.tumbleweedrestaurants.com