Last year around this time, I was luckily enough to be asked by “Alex Lemanski”:http://www.bitfyre.net/, of bitfyre fame, to partake in a panel proposal for SXSW 2010 on the meat and bones of freelancing called “Leave Your Job, Start An Agency”:http://blog.armadillostudios.ca/article/leave-your-job-start-an-agency. A year later and after a very well received SXSW panel, I am fortunate enough once again to be asked to partake in another panel proposal for SXSW 2010 called “Are You There Social Media? It’s Me Conflict!”:http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/7784

*Are You There Social Media? It’s Me Conflict* is going to be a no holds barred discussion on Social Media and it’s current role in Global Conflict. Everyone knows that social media is the _golden child_ of marketing and it’s impact on local and international business have been beaten to death, but what, if anything, is Social Media doing in the realm of International Conflict? What are the positive changes that have been implemented? Or are we looking at it’s role with rose-coloured industry glasses and maybe everything isn’t turning up as _sunshine and lollipops_ as it seems.

It’s going to be an incredibly interesting panel conversation and it’ll bring together a pretty interesting team. Including, (obviously myself):

* “Caitlin Currie”:http://www.nonresidentalien.ca – A rogue academic, a Masters Candidate at the Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR), George Mason University and a contributing member of Techchange.org.
* “Lyndsie Bourgon”:http://www.lyndsiebourgon.com/tagged/portfolio – A freelance journalist who has been published in King’s Journalism Review, The Globe & Mail, The Toronto Star and Canadian Business.
* “Nick Martin”:http://www.techchange.org/index.php?/About-Us/meet-the-team.html – Who is the co-founder and president of TechChange and is a visiting professor at the United Nations University for Peace (UPEACE).

It’s going to be quite the heated and diverse conversation, *but this is where we need your help!* if you’ve got a second and do plan on attending “SXSW’11 in Austin, please log on to the panel picker”:http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/7784 and give our panel a big thumbs-up. *Voting closes on August 27th*, so be quick.

For the past two days, Team Armadillo has venture into the heart of D.C. for two separate “Digital Capital Week Events”:http://www.digitalcapitalweek.org.

Media 2.0

On Tuesday, Armadillo descended on to the headquarters of National Geographic for a full day discussion on “Media and it’s role in the Web 2.0 World”:http://www.bivingsreport.com/2010/dcweek-media-2-0-day/. With a heavy hitting list of speakers from NPR, USAToday, National Geographic and the Pew Institute it was a wonderful day chalk-full of information.

Some of the most interesting tid-bits of information from the day came from the round table discussion in the morning on Social and Traditional Media.

Yes, this topic has been dissected ad nauseam at many other conferences and events, but this panel provided some interesting insight into the evolution of Social Media by some of the giants of Traditional Media. From the NPR’s usage of crowd-sourcing to provide geo-locational information in advance of Hurricane Gustov to The National Geographic’s implementation of a powerful members site to allow a more immersible social experience with their product, it was a refreshing site to hear the supposed _dinosaurs of traditional media_ embracing and championing Social Media.

But one of the most interesting concepts came from USAToday’s Brian Dresher who revealed a new spin on a frequently discussed topic – *ROIII – Return on Interaction, Influence and Investment*.

This concept is one of the key factors that USAToday leverages to analyze and evaluate their implementation of Social Media. It essentially expands upon the typical monetary value placed on Social Media and instead looks at how much interaction and influence USAToday is able to grow with the latest upcoming technology.

Probono Consulting Lounger

On Wednesday, Armadillo Studios had the pleasure of partaking in a special DCweek event called – “The Probono Lounge”:http://digitalcapitalweek.org/2010/06/dcweek-goes-probono/.

Essentially, this 4 hour brainstorming/work session was designed to pair Designers, Strategists and Developers with local D.C. area non-profits and help them tweak their online presence.

Armadillo Studios was lucky to team up with an excellent group of WordPress specialists and developers to help two local organizations – “DC Food For All”:http://dcfoodforall.com/ and “Bread For The City”:http://www.breadforthecity.org/. And while some technical difficulties limited everyone’s ability to really pour into the code, the event was a great success with the seeds of future collaboration planted.

Up Next…

Thursday is another big day at DCWeek with the ever popular “140 Conference”:http://dc.140conf.com/ set to take place.

From June 11th until the early morning of June 20th entrepreneurs, designers, social media enthusiasts and techies from all over the D.C. region are descending on the American Capital for “Digital Capital Week”:http://digitalcapitalweek.org/.

And Armadillo Studios will be there.

*DC’s Digital Capital Week* is ten-days of New Media goodness. The event is attracting attention from developers, designers, media thinkers, and NGO’s alike. There are a variety of events planned for the week and Armadillo Studios will be in there full force. If you happen to be attending “Media 2.0 day”:http://schedule.digitalcapitalweek.org/event/ef6bb6b44f017240139de1066e59e0f0, ”
Social Media & Gov Day”:http://schedule.digitalcapitalweek.org/event/e2359bbe698d239fb753231256db2ed6, the “140confrence”:http://schedule.digitalcapitalweek.org/event/88c284b1f3ef3f8a5fccc0e0493a5e33 or even the closing party, keep and eye out for us.

But more importantly, Armadillo Studios will be partaking in the always popular “ProBono Lounge”:http://schedule.digitalcapitalweek.org/event/46e2ea163618042294c7c6dd65c56cad on Wednesday June 16th. The ProBono lounge teams designers, developers and strategists with local nonprofits and government organizations for an afternoon of collaboration. Because of which we will be providing our expertise and advice for a couple of local non-profits to help fine-tune their online strategies.

So if you are in the D.C. area for Digital Capital week and happen to see Team Armadillo at one of these events, don’t be afraid. Drop by and say hello. We’d love to meet you.

As previously mentioned SXSW is long over and the overviews are starting to roll in. As usual, I’m a little late with my final blog posts. So instead of waxing poetically about the conference, here is a run down of some of the links that you should have a gander at. They cover the entire spectrum of the conference, from influential thinkers to upcoming design techniques to new tools for business:

Social Media Thinkers & Shakers

* “Chris Brogan”:http://www.chrisbrogan.com/my-plans-for-sxsw/ and “Julien Smith”:http://inoveryourhead.net/, the two brains behind the exceptional book Trust Agents. If you are involved with building an online brand or personal brand, invest in this book.
* Washington DC Visual Information collective “JESS3”:http://www.jess3.com.
* Uber-entrepreneur “Gary Vanyerchuk”:http://garyvaynerchuk.com/, who is an amazing inspiration for people looking to build a Company brand.

Web Typography

* “Samantha Warren”:http://www.slideshare.net/SamanthaWarren/sxsw-2010 a fantastic designer who is pushing the World of Web Typography, with some great poster based design.
* “Jason Cranford Teague”:http://www.jasonspeaking.com/index.php/about/ wrote a book called “Fluid Web Typography”:http://www.peachpit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321679989, which is a fantastic and straight forward break down of the up coming shift towards Web Typography.

Interesting Takes On SXSW and Design Culture

* A Graphical representation of the SXSW Conference thorough a series of “Moleskin notebook sketches (via. Roh Design)”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/rohdesign/sets/72157623522676011/
* Unhappy Hipsters, a collection of “Wallpaper magazine photos with unhappy hipster commentary”:http://unhappyhipsters.com/

New Tools For Everyone:

* “Wufoo.com”:http://wufoo.com/signup/ a simple web site that allows anyone to develop simple and stylish web forms.
* “Mapscripting.com”:http://mapscripting.com/way-cool, which is a pushing the boundaries of what Google Maps and Yahoo Maps can do for small businesses.
* “Grasshopper.com”:http://grasshopper.com/how-it-works/ is an inexpensive Toll Free phone office service for small businesses. (There is also a Canadian Equivalent called “RingCentral”:http://www.ringcentral.ca/ which Canadian businesses should check-out)
* “Launch’s take on Leave Your Job Start An Agency”:http://www.lunch.com/reviews/Leave_Your_Job_Start_An_Agency-1439609.html, the feedback to our talk from SXSW
* From our good friend Andy at “NonImage”:http://www.nonimage.com, is the amazing Invoicing app called “FreeAgent”:http://www.freeagentcentral.com/?referrer=31l1ldro, which will revolutionalize how freelancers control their own books.
* “OneForty.com”:http://oneforty.com/ the ultimate resource for Twitter apps to leverage for your business.
* A great presentation on the power and beauty of “Co-Working and how it will change our own way of working”:http://spinuzzi.blogspot.com/2010/03/sxswi-what-coworking-tells-us-about.html. If you are interested in coworking in Calgary check out “Coworkyyc.com”:http://www.coworkyyc.com.

Well, now that SXSW 2010 is over and everyone has begun shoring up “their own conference overviews”:http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/09/location-is-the-new-just-kill-yourself/, It’s about time I finish off the last two posts on the conference.

So with out further adieu, here’s my take on the “other big topic at this year’s festival”:http://blog.armadillostudios.ca/article/sxsw10-the-big-trend-is-web-typography. Yes, friends without question the big showdown of *SXSW 2010* was between geo-locational social network superpowers “GoWalla & Foursquare”:http://twitpic.com/18fgd6.

The big guns were definitely brought out to play, as each of the two superpowers fought for the affection of the influential _first adopter_ crowd. In laymen terms, *they were coveting the nerds*.

The idea being that, if you win the Nerds (First Adopters), they’ll return to their home town and influence others to join the network. Now to preface it, both foursquare and gowalla were predominant at the ’09 version of the festival, but this was the big year. iPhones and Smartphones were are as common as underwear at SXSW and pretty much everyone at the conference was already using one of two power house apps. But the key for these two start-ups was to convert the nerds to their own service. To come out one top and _create the next Twitter Effect_.

So after all the final software updates, redesigns, secret badges and super, super duper checks-in were completed, who won?

The Big Winner Is…

Well, this may come as a shock, but I would have to venture that Austin based “GoWalla”:http://gowalla.com/blog/2010/03/sxsw-2010-redux/ was the slight winner. Which for those following the Geo-Locational Network apps battle (or “even this web site”:http://blog.armadillostudios.ca/article/foursquare-starts-to-make-waves-in-calgary) will see as a bit of shock.

“Foursquare”:http://www.foursquare.com has been the _it company_ for this new section of the Social Media spectrum for over a year, with “predominant deals with national and local media outlets”:http://foursquare.com/metronews and a buzz that’s rivaled Twitter. But, with an ill-timed redesign roll-out and some glaring downtime issues, Foursquare seemed to miss a golden opportunity to squash the competition. Rather than blowing the socks off of the crowd, it left with a small whimper of excitement. Instead, smaller “GoWalla”:http://www.gowalla.com was able to keep rolling with a crisper interface design (“just look at those gorgeous icons”:http://gowalla.com/spots) and leverage the _cool small guy_ vibe to win over a majority of the _nerds_. By the end of the five days, most dedicated Social Media Enthusiasts and Insiders were gravitating towards GoWalla and away from Foursquare.

What this means for the future of Geo-Locational Networks is something that will play out shortly, but for the future if you are looking to expand your business into the Foursquare network, it would be best to keep one eye on GoWalla as you start to build your strategy. (Don’t worry, they are both fairly interchangeable) Foursquare will still maintain it’s buzz and significant edge on users, but GoWalla made a solid impression.

The question for the future will be, was it enough to sway a majority of the _First Adopters_ and their friends to make the switch.