SXSW 2009 | Take-away’s from this year

Ah, another SXSW Interactive. It was larger than ever this year, with an estimated 10,000 attendees, but it was still the SXSWi that I know and love. There’s a real community at the conference, once that is stronger than ever, even as the audience diversifies. I highly recommend it for anyone in the technology field, or thinking about getting into technology, because it truly represents the feel of the industry: ultra geeky, super smart and collaborative to the core.

Here are my take-away’s from this year’s conference:

1. Get ready for voice
Between the voice-focused start-ups and panels at SXSW as well as recent voice-related announcements from both Apple and Google, voice integration seems to finally be making headway. For years we have been struggling to figure out voice recognition but the software has just not been up to par. This year though, the year after the iPhone went mainstream, voice is on everyone’s mind. It’s a further merging of the computer and the phone as well as technology and biology.

2. Tackle crowd think
Now that we are all up to speed on social media (that felt like it took forever), we can finally tackle some of the bigger issues of the social web. I heard quite a bit about “crowd think” this year—the concept that when people get into large groups, they start thinking in the same ways, and it can be difficult for alternate voices to be heard. It could be that the size of communities have grown in the past few years, or it could be that the types of folks in communities are more average folks (read: not your average opinionated technorati types who formerly made up the majority of online communities). In any case. It’s something to think about as we develop communities. Derek Powacek talked about how to design around crowd think, and the folks at flickr, CurrentTV, Etsy, Metafilter and YouTube talked about how to moderate as your community grows larger and changes.

3. Welcome Best Buy’s new open API
One of the more exciting announcements at SXSW this year was the open API from Best Buy called Remix. Finally, someone in the “traditional” business world was brave enough to make the first Web 3.0 move. Best Buy’s open API enables developers to take product information from their catalog, and well, do what they will with it. I can’t wait to see what happens.

For all of those geeks out there who I met this year, I hope you stay in touch and let me know what you’re up to. Maybe we’ll run into each other in 2010. Until, then, I’ll catch you on twitter.