I’m a big fan of visualizations. For this year’s SXSW, Pepsi came back with an updated version of their “Zeitgeist,” created by Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs of Slash7. I liked this year’s version much better because it included Foursquare check-ins (which everyone was doing) and it seemed to be more relevant for people that were actually there.

I wish there was a Zeitgeist for every event that ever was so hopefully there is a trend toward more visualizations. Regarless of how you feel about the Zeitgeist’s actual value, it looks cool and it makes a non-tech company look very high-tech. Well done Pepsi. Well done.

Below are a couple of videos of the displays they had at the Austin Convention Center. Note the Samsung HDTVs :)

You read that right. I’m not talking about crowdsourcing, but crowdsurfing.

At SXSW Interactive 2010, I attended fantastic panels and solo presentations by people behind the brands, behind the books, and behind some of the most innovative tech. I met many very interesting people with whom I had very interesting conversations. I learned, I explored, I experienced, and I saw the potential of what this community could do in the next few years. To say the least, SXSW was unforgettable and I think anyone who is in marketing, advertising, PR, web development, design, user experience, customer service, etc., should head to Austin next year.

So when I heard about the usual post-event complainers talking about SXSW 2010 sucking.. I remembered being at Stubb’s with friends, watching a live Diggnation. Dice flying everywhere. A weird sense of FourSquare community. Fun. Excitement. Hope for a better world. Hope for a world where technology can make us all better people. And live streaming crowdsurfing…

Leo Laporte Crowdsurfing while Livestreaming TWiT:

Kevin Rose Crowdsurfing: (more…)

SXSW Interactive is full of startups and entrepreneurs. Some of them attend to listen to the panels. Others are there to speak, to party, to showcase their products/services, or simply to be part of SXSW history. Perhaps they are there because they want to be around people like them or maybe they are there because they truly believe their work could change the way we live, work, and play. While I met many entrepreneurs from all over the US and all over the world, here are a three memorable conversations partly captured on film. Regardless of the products they make, these are guys that I enjoyed talking to and briefly getting to know. Enjoy.

Touchscreens have been around for a while now. We’ve become used to them thanks to the wide array of small and personal mobile devices we carry on our pockets, manipulating them to open and close windows, zoom in and out on maps, and bring data to life as we move, swipe, hold, and press pixels. No longer do we have to think about interacting with computing devices with one single point of interaction. And no longer are we limited by a stylus, a mouse, or even a keyboard. Today, our fingers give us access to a wealth of digital information that we could only imagine decades ago.

While the mouse is still the main way in which we talk to the desktop, but that is certainly starting to change. I’m not saying the mouse is going away, but it’s starting to feel old, tired, and full of limitations. Its only a matter of time before all screens are controlled by our touch, and new and exciting applications that are manipulated by two, three, four or more points of interaction become the norm, not the exception.

Watch the various videos in this post to see the Microsoft Surface and Windows Phone 7 Series in action, as well as parts of the SXSW Interactive 2010 presentation “That Game Feels Nice: Tomorrow’s Touch Interaces” about Win7 touch games by Microsoft’s Amish Patel and Fuel Industries’ Philip Glofcheskie.

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Charlene Li has the gift of understanding social technologies and developing insights about how people interact online. For SXSW Interactive 2010, she talked about “Open Leadership.” Her presentation started on how people have embraced a new culture of sharing and how the web has made this frictionless. While the new culture has changed our relationships, organizations continue to work in the same way that they have in the past. Charlene thinks that social is “hard” for companies because they are unwilling to give up control. Their inability or desire to have conversations is but one example of this. Still, “real relationships require you to give up control.”

Charline defined “Open Leaderhip” as “having confidence and humility to give up the need to be in control.” If companies are not really in control, then Charlene’s concept of “open leadership” makes sense. She continues by adding that while companies need to give up control, they need to “be in command.” Watch the series of videos below (I apologize that there are so many!) to learn more about the elements of openness, the engagement pyramid, a new customer lifetime value calculation, failure, and the competitive advantage that comes from being social plus open.

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In case you don’t have a computer, you’re older than 83, or you have been sleeping non-stop… here’s a video of Twitter’s CEO Evan Williams announcing “At anywhere” or @anywhere as part of his keynote at this year’s SXSW Interactive.

Cathy Brooks is a journalist, creative media strategist, and host of the Social Media Hour live podcast. She blogs at Other Than That, which is also the name of her consulting firm, and she has worked for companies like Tech TV (now G4) and Seesmic. In last night’s The Social Nerdia Show! I spoke with her about media, journalism, newspapers, technology, business, and much more. Cathy is not only highly entertaining, she is also incredibly insightful and thought-provoking.

Listen to the entire conversation with Cathy on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe to us on iTunes, stream from mobiles on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio.

Cathy’s tagline for her podcast is ‘it’s not about the tools, it’s about what you do with them,’ and it very well reflects her views on technology. She has much appreciation and enthusiasm for “the way that technology is used or not, successfully or not, and the impact that has on the way we buy things, share information, communicate with each other, and just evolve as carbon based life forms.”

The Two Medias

The fact that Cathy has much experience in traditional media led me to ask her about the now very widely use ‘social media’ term. She responded that there are two kinds of media, “media with a capital M and media with a lower case m.” The first one is ‘the media,’ and it includes outlets from large organizations like News Corporation and The New York Times Company, as well as blogs like The Huffington Post and Tech Crunch. “Lower case m (media) are the platforms, the technology, the things we use, the social networks, the real-time stream things like Twitter, Blogtalkradio, Facebook, YouTube, and the list goes on and on,” she explained.

While some would argue that the concept of media is not much more than a channel or a means to deliver some form of content, Cathy think that media has always been social. “Social media to me is a rather redundant term as opposed to an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp. Media is by its nature a social thing and it has become more so in its interactivity, crowdsourced nature, and user generated contributions,” she told me.

The Case for Journalism

There has been much talk about the death of the newspaper and the traditional media organization in the last few years, but Cathy thinks this has been “greatly exaggerated.” She continued to say that while “some of these types of media outlets, some of the mediums, may either die or change greatly, the need for journalism has never been more important.” (more…)