Highlighting a couple SXSW panel suggestions I found interesting.

First off, I’ll admit I didn’t go to many panels or core conversations at SXSW 2009 (although I did go to mine, obviously). Second off, I tend to choose panels where I knew little about the subject, taking advantage of the diverse set of subject matter leaders that SXSW brings to Austin every year. *

But I’m still interested in the panels for SXSW 2010 because it helps set the discussion for the event. Therefore, I’ve picked out a couple panels I think would be interesting; click through the links to vote for them if you’re interested. And I’d love to hear about which panel suggestions you find interesting…

• Gaming the Crowd: Turning Work Into Play, led by Andy Baio, Kickstarter

  What do Amazon Mechanical Turk, the Obama campaign, the 2010 Honda Insight, and the Nike+ all have in common? They all use gameplay mechanics to turn difficult real-world problems into play. I’ll discuss practical ways to turn any website into a game, and the serious risks of doing it wrong.

• Uprising Tide – Inciting Online Communities into Offline Movements, led by Chris Schultz, LaunchPad, New Orleans
  

  Ready to put your tech community on the map? Some unlikely instigators from New Orleans did just that with little more than passion, a bus, T-shirts, and some duct tape. Let them show you how to create an organic net-roots movement that upends traditional power structures and galvanizes your community.

• Community Building: Organization Without Organization, led by Lloyd Davis, The Tuttle Club (also: more details)
  

  The Tuttle Club began in London as a social media cafe for anyone interested in the social web. It has become the main hub for social media in the UK and is now engaged in consulting work and collaborative writing projects. Lloyd Davis talks about building this ‘organisation without organisation’.

• Social Search: A Little Help from my Friends, led by Brynn Evans, UC San Diego
  

  We’ve got social networks and we’ve got search engines, but is social search merely the combination of the two? Learn what social search is and what it isn’t, who’s working on it and getting it right, and hear expert perspectives on making search and discovery more relevant to users.

• Practical Digital Anthropology: Getting to Know Your Users, led by Marc Vermut, Fine Point Solutions, Inc.
  

  Most modern analytics attempt to boil complex behaviors down to statistics; but is that the whole story? Are your design decisions informed by actual behaviors, instead of near approximations? We present digital anthropology: practical, high-touch techniques that will give you an edge in understanding what really makes your users tick.

• Working Nowhere and Everywhere: Running a Virtual Business , led by Christopher Natsuume, Boomzap Entertainmant
  

  Running a location independent business with a virtual, distributed workforce allows you to define your schedule, concentrate on your core business and free you from the constraints and costs of a traditional business. Following best practices can make it not only a great lifestyle choice but a critical competitive advantage.

  (yes, I’m biased, but it’s still interesting)

• Can Universities Teach Social Media & Online Communities? , led by Clint Schaff, University of Southern California, Annenberg Program on Online Communities
  

  Can you teach someone how to use social media? Or perhaps the best way to learn is by doing? Learn how universities cover technologies, approaches, tools, lessons, implications, risks… Debate “right” and “wrong” ways to teach and learn social media. Decide for yourself just how “social” current approaches really are.

• Too Much Text IV: Google Wave vs. Email, led by Jay Cuthrell, fudge.org (also: more details and conversation)
  

  It is a period of email war. Rebel services, striking from hidden bases, have won their first victory against the evil Inbox Empire. The Empire may strike back but not before nimble waves of XMPP (RFC3920) extended wing fighters fire back with wavelet torpedoes. May the IETF be with you.

• The Cultural Significance of Direct-to-Fan Marketing, led by Ian Rogers, Topspin
  

  For years, artists under contract with major labels have been pressured into creating and delivering “hits” to satisfy unit sales and revenue objectives. With the emergence of direct-to-fan marketing and more artists going it alone, the door has opened wider for artists to create music that will resonate far more with their fans vs. adhering to the cookie-cutter hit-driven model. The cultural significance of such a change in output quality will be incredible.

• Building a Rockstar API Community, led by Andrew Parker, Union Square Ventures
  

  This session will teach you how to foster an awesome community of developers on top of your API. The panelists will share best practices in cultivating the communities around their own APIs.

And of course, I submitted two panel suggestions myself, Everyone Can be a *Professional* Photographer and Personal APIs: Better Living Through Collaboration , two very different topics that I’m thinking will be much more fun to do than to simply talk about.

* Skip to 5:20 in this video where I discuss my strategy for picking panels.