On Monday Morning, first session of the day at South by Southwest Interactive, March 12 9:30am for all those who couldn’t attend the festival, an awe inspiring discussion occurred between four professionals battle tested in the ever evolving digital market. The panel’s experience ranged from one of the nation’s first interactive agencies back in the 1980′s to Digital publishers with titles representing MTV Network, NPR, and producing e-book dynamite like “War of the Worlds”.
The talented line up includes:
Steve Glauberman, founder of Enlighten Inc. back in 1983. Enlighten is considered one of the nation’s first interactive agencies that preached the idea of coupling technology with imaginative content and cutting-edge marketing to improve ways businesses connect with their customers and clients
Brian Burke-President of Smashing Ideas Inc, one of the top digital media agencies rocking the digital market in games, applications, web development, and ePublishing
Calvin Carter,founder of Bottle Rocket Apps. Calvin and BRA have produced a compendium of diverse apps but are also known for their award winning work with companies like NPR, Disney, and The Seattle Times.
Randi Rosenkranz, VP of Digital Development for Random House Digital, wise and knowledgeable voice on the ever expansive eBook environment
With the emergence of social media as a standard for conversation, having an online presence is a must. An important part of that online presence is to have your own website. Having your own website is like a virtual portfolio, where one can showcase all of their achievements. Being able to actually create and build that website to what you envision is a critical skill to have. Not only can you build your own site, but you’ve shown that you can do that for potential employers, as well.
The way we build websites is constantly changing. HTML5 is becoming standard, even though it is still under development. Web content management systems like WordPress and Drupal can make building websites easier, while still giving creative control to the developer so they can tweak and mold it to their own vision.
A conference like South By Southwest gives companies, developers, and users, alike, a platform to showcase and discuss all of the possibilities with the constantly-evolving language of the Internet.
Here are my Top-5 “Must-See” Web Design showcases at this year’s South By Southwest.
If you have been poring over the SXSW Interactive schedule for the tech-related panels that interest you the most, you may have overlooked some of the opportunities to be found at some of the lounges or other social events and parties that are around to be sampled.
Can you sense the buzz of anticipation and excitement rising as SXSWi is finally just a week away? You can bet that many of the presenters and those with new or updated tech releases being readied for the big day are going on adrenaline and are running a little short on sleep.
Who are you eagerly anticipating getting to see? What hidden gems will you discover? And where are all the hot social events?
This year with so many panels and events going on simultaneously, it is easy to overlook or miss a panel of great value/importance. On Monday March 12th, “The iPad: The Second Coming of the CD-ROM” is a SXSWi panel any digital user or producer should not miss.
When the CD-ROM became mainstreamed in 1985, the computing community was overjoyed and infatuated with all the possibilities this new technology had to offer. Companies were able to create products packaged with large amounts of information distributable to anyone with a readable CD-ROM drive. This technology provided us, the users, with relatively intricate games, multimedia programs and other software packages previously not so plentiful or easy to install.
Code for America Labs (CFA), Inc., is a non-partisan, non-political 501(c)(3) organization, engaged in “helping American cities use web technology to do a better job of providing services to citizens” (CFA web site). It does this by working with city officials to develop web-based applications that will better connect citizens with their local governments – reducing administrative costs and improving service delivery to the public. Best of all, the resulting applications are shareable, that is: what has been developed for use by one city can be used by any other city.
It is this innovative approach of enabling city governments to better serve their citizens through the development of web applications that drives CFA. Local government: More open, more efficient, more responsive.
Jennifer Pahlka
Jennifer Pahlka (CFA’s founder and this year’s presenter at SXSWi), has spent the past 15 years in the company of the technology elite, and has worked in the non-profit sector, in the world of business-to-business technology media, and in game development. Her vita includes running the Game Developers Conference and the Independent Games Festival, serving as Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association, running the Web 2.0 and Gov 2.0 events for TechWeb, and co-chairing the successful Web 2.0 Expo.
This year’s CFA SXSWi panel will provide an overview of who is working on the problems of government openness, efficiency, and responsiveness, how these problems are being addressed, and how the SXSWi tech community can help. Jennifer explains, “The reason why we’re presenting at SXSW is because we think that audience needs to sign up to get involved in this movement to make government more efficient and open. We’re trying to bring the talent of the tech industry into public service and build an army of geeks ready to work to make government look more like the internet — responsive, agile, and collaborative.”
In addition to CFA’s recognized successes in Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., Jennifer says CFA’s ”work has been inspired and shaped by others working on the open government movement in places like Manor, TX, San Francisco, New York City, and Portland. The successes in those places, as well as at different levels of government, are what encourage our belief that Internet Citizens can fix government.”
CFA actively recruits tech talent to participate in a specific-term 11-month fellowship building internet applications that will make local governments more open, more efficient, and more responsive to citizen needs, and will mentor, train (in San Fransisco!), and match development teams to their cities/projects for the best results. The list of 2011 Code for America fellows is impressive. Volunteer corps positions are also available.
If you are interested in application design/coding and want to make your government better, the contacts at (and through) CFA will be of utmost importance to you. Or you might even be interested in one of their 2012 fellowships. For details on how to become a CFA fellow, check out their web site at: http://codeforamerica.org/fellows/
Join us as we cover SXSWi 2012. Use this site to follow all the action. We've been posting panel previews, and we'll be updating the site during the event. Your comments and participation are appreciated! Thanks for checking in.
