Fresh

After an inspiring trip to Austin for SXSW, I’m finally getting a chance to look back at all of the notes and ideas from throughout the week. One of the standout panels for me, was the talk entitled “Design for the Wisdom of Crowds”. The speaker, Derek Powazek began his talk by referencing several social experiments such as the one conducted by Francis Galton, in which a crowd was asked to guess the weight of the cow. Everyone guessed wrong, but the average of the guesses was very close. Similar results were found when applying this to a change jar. So the question he poses is: How can we, as the creators of the web, allow for this wisdom to take place in our communities online? In his panel he discussed some simple ways to think about tweaking interfaces to facilitate better user experiences online.

Some basic rules for making this happen.

1. Diversity - Organize a group of diverse individuals with a wide range of opinions

2. Independence – Encourage the group to contribute for their own selfish reasons

3. Decentralization - There’s nobody in charge

4. Aggregation - Tallying the results and doing something with it

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I attended an awful lot of panels at SXSW, but one that really stuck with me was called “Are Women Taken More Seriously on the Web?” The premise the panel operated under was that women are not generally taken very seriously, and they touched on a lot of interesting points.

The panelists were FASCINATING. I loved hearing their experiences being a woman in tech and how they have dealt with being taken seriously in a dude-centric environment. I didn’t really come away with a lot of concrete notes from that session, but here are some points I wanted to highlight:

Do you come off as a woman online?

One panelist talked about how her mother frequented a college football forum and noticed that the women’s opinions on that forum were never taken that seriously or were mocked. Her mother created a profile on the forum that was deliberately androgynous. She did not state her name; her picture was of something innocuous like a football; her username wasn’t indicative of her gender; and when asked about herself, all she would say was that she had “a son who plays college football.”

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What a blast. Friday night a bunch of us went to the “Pasties and Pastries, A Burlesque Cupcake Cookoff!” party at Emos. There were cupcakes. There was burlesque. There was Lone Star Beer. Good times!

There was a french horn player in the opening band!

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SXSW is not complete without swag. At eROI, we decided to go the sticker route this year. Big kudos to Stephen who designed this set. The stickers are designed so that they form a seamless tile when put together. More pictures to come. Great work everyone!

The NYC sticker is still missing from Ryan’s computer in this shot

Pardon the glare from the flash on this one.
This is the eROI Wars stickers used as a patch on Noel’s sleeve. People are sporting this look all over.

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Checking in last night (Friday) we went to pick up our badges. It was pretty seamless, except that the photos we had uploaded online were lost. So they had to take new ones on the spot. Except… Meggan’s badge had her name and Mai’s picture!! The situation was quickly resolved, but funny none-the-less. Check it out:

Hey Y’all. We’re in Austin! The much anticipated SXSW interactive festival is here. Wish us good weather and stay tuned as we share the knowledge we glean!

Yee haw!