Walter Elly's blog and website

I just got back from SXSW Interactive 2011. What an amazing experience. I learned so many new things, met tons of awesome people and had a great time. Here’s my experience there, as told through my iPhone camera and iPhone screenshots, enjoy!

foursquare American Express SXSW Deal
News broke of this deal with American Express as I was on the way to the airport in the C&J bus. Pretty cool!

Even the rental cars are bigger in Texas
This is the rental they handed me on the ground in San Antonio (had to book a last minute earlier flight due to scheduling of my Foursquare Day kickoff event on Friday). It wasn’t bad to have this to cruise around Austin with for a night.

foursquare court on the Pepsi MAX lot
Here you could play foursquare with foursquare (and win a tshirt) – a huge leap up from what they had last year and by far my favorite place to go and relax in between sessions. Free Pepsi MAX and hanging out with the foursquare team? YES PLEASE!

Celebrate Foursquare Day Cards
These are the cards that Infinite Imaging donated to Foursquare Day – we put them out on the foursquare swag table next to the foursquare court and I stopped by every day to make sure there was always plenty on hand.

Foursquare Day Kickoff Swag
This was the swag table at the Foursquare Day kickoff event I organized – we also gave out foursquare tshirts for playing foursquare just like foursquare did at their foursquare court (phew, that’s alot of foursquares!).

Playing Foursquare at the Foursquare Day Kickoff
If you made it up to the fourth square (the mayor square) you got a foursquare tshirt. Included in this picture: Antony Francis and Alan Danzis (I think) playing foursquare while Miss Destructo looks on.

Helping foursquare
I got to meet almost the entire foursquare team in Austin (and they rock!). Here foursquare’s Nina Yiamsamatha and I bust out our laptops and do some superuser editing to fix some urgent issues with SXSW panel venues.

SXSW Austin Convention Center
Here is the epicenter of SXSW, the Austin Convention Center or ACC for short

Seth Priebatsch Keynote Ticket
This year the keynotes were on the 4th floor, and to help keep the lines organized they gave out cards to ensure people who stood in line got in.

Seth Priebatsch Keynote
Had great seats for the Seth Priebatsch keynote, here he talked about the game layer. Read more about his keynote here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2011/mar/14/sxsw-2011-scvngr-seth-priebatsch

Tiger Blood / StartupBus
Sitting next to me at the keynote was John Bejarano from the StartupBus and his Isitgood4.me startup. He showed off his secret to surviving SXSW: Tiger Blood.

Inside the ACC
People, moving, constantly.

foursquare Baby Stroller
Spotted a mom and her little girl putting foursquare stickers on their stroller at the foursquare court at SXSW. So cool!

Sharing a Charge At SXSW
Enjoying some BBQ at Iron Works (THE BEST!) and letting my table-mates charge their iPhones on my Splash Intense battery pack. It’s got more than enough juice to go around!

American Express foursquare Reward Push Notification
Because I checked in on foursquare and used my American Express I got a $5 rebate on my Iron Works purchase. Yeah, I can’t think of anything cooler either! In background: SXSW veteran Ramon Vawda’s twitter profile, whom I randomly met in line at Iron Works and got to have BBQ with.

foursquare’s Austin Unlocked Party
This was the scene at the foursquare party at the Cedar Street Courtyard. It had lines going around the block *on both sides of the building*.

Pee-wee Checks In At The foursquare Party
Wasn’t surprised to see this pop-up on my phone. I didn’t see him though.

foursquare’s Groupon Style Discount
They had a special at the foursquare party that unlocked if 500 or more people checked in. That wasn’t a problem!

Is it live or is it Android?
Sometime’s its hard to tell- oh wai (was on a tshirt I spotted)

Legos at SXSW
Legos, everywhere. Not sure what’s going on here, but they were thinking hard about what they were doing.

Geo-Fencing Panel at SXSW
The CEO of Placecast gave us a download on the latest location-based tools for mobile marketing.

Bacon Cone SXSW11
One of my favorite parts of SXSW is the bacon cones. Yes, you read that right- cones made out of bacon. This one has chicken cooked in bacon, breaded with captain crunch with some strips of bacon thrown in for good measure. Here’s a picture of how Bacon Cone at SXSW10 looked. Seems consistently awesome!

Christopher Poole Keynote
Had seats near the very front for the Christopher Poole keynote. Here’s more on his keynote: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/13/christopher-poole-4chan-sxsw-keynote-speech

Charging the Splash Intense
Due to a mixup my Splash Intense was not charged for one night and it died. Fortunately I had my TRANS4M AC / DC USB Charger as a backup. You can throw any power you want on it and it’ll charge USB devices. It takes AC, Cigarette Lighter DC, 9 volt and AA batteries.

SXSW Future15 Mobile Panels
This was the room to be at at SXSW if you were into mobile. Back to back to back panels on mobile web, apps, design, development, strategy, platforms, NFC, what’s next- you name it.

Aboutfoursquare.com Podcasting: Eric Leist and Chris Thompson
Had the opportunity to guest host the Aboutfoursquare.com podcast at SXSW. Here’s Eric and Chris during the recording, talking about, what else, foursquare. You can listen to the podcast we recorded here.

Aboutfoursquare.com Podcasting: Alan Danzis, Eric Leist and Chris Thompson
During the podcast Eric ran the show and Alan, Chris and I relaxed in deep concentration while we waited for Eric to call on us. Either that or we were tired from our day at SXSW. Yeah, one of those :)

Firefox Mobile’s Real Life Badge
Not only did you get a nice foursquare badge for checking in at their ice cream truck (and did I mention, get ICE CREAM?) they also gave away these cool analog badges to boot!

Firefox Mobile Ice Cream Truck
Be sure to check in on foursquare!

Firefox Mobile Ice Cream Truck Menu
The Awesome Bar. Would you order anything else?

Pizzeria Papparazzi‎
A hole in the wall pizza place off 6th street in Austin. The inside is sharpified. Can’t recommended the food but the sharpie-fied walls are a spectacle.

The CMajor and Her Frisbee
We got handed frisbees by groupflier (a group texting app) while in line for bacon cones. Afterwards I texted my Beluga pod about the experience. *zing*

foursquare Golden Ticket Badge Unlock Display
foursquare was randomly giving out “golden ticket” badges that would get people into a special concert they were throwing with Pepsi. Here golden ticket holders CMajor and Chris Thompson pose with the sign.

SXSW11 = iPads
iPads were EVERYWHERE. It didn’t hurt that Apple opened a special popup store for the event to sell the iPad 2. Forget your laptop at events like these, touch devices are the only way to make it happen at SXSW.

foursquare Golden Tickets
These are what the golden tickets looked like that foursquare was giving away to golden ticket badge holders.

Seaholm Power Plant Smokestacks
This is the venue for the foursquare golden ticket badge holders concert. Unusual and cool!

RVIP at SXSW
It’s a roving RV where you can sing karaoke (and earn a foursquare badge). It was parked outside of the golden ticket concert entrance. If I wasn’t about to go into the concert I would have taken it for a ride!

Inside the foursquare concert
This was on the inside floor of the power plant. The power plant is inactive and used as a music venue in Austin. Very cool!

Notice anything Xtranormal?
Outside the convention center were two of the characters from Xtranormal: the animated video service AdAge said would redefine web creativity and economics. I met members of their team and posed for a picture with them.

Goodbye Austin, Goodbye Southby
Downtown Austin as viewed from the taxi on the way to the airport.

Accelerated Sunset
Flying east, watching the sunset over the wing aboard a JetBlue A320. Sarah Wallace had the seat next to mine and made the 4.5 hour flight feel like 5 minutes.

SXSW Gotcha!
As soon as I turn my phone on after landing I got this text message alerting me that I’d won a giftcard that I entered to win at the tradeshow earlier in the day. Doh!

SXSW MVP
By far the most valuable tech device at SXSW, aside from my iPhone, was the Splash Intense battery pack. Here I am, already missing Austin and SXSW, making good use of the battery pack while waiting for the C&J to take me back to New Hampshire.

I hope you enjoyed my photo blog of SXSW 2011. Did you take pictures or blog about the event too? I’d love to see what you shared, so please post a link in the comments!

In case you haven’t heard, it’s SXSW panel voting season. This year (thanks to Monica Wright‘s encouragement) I’ve submitted a panel that combines three of my favorite subjects, SXSW (My trip there this year blew me away!), foursquare (you know I’m addicted!) and Foursquare Day (zomg you didn’t know I was all up in that?). It’s titled Foursquare Day: Realizing the Location-Based Services Revolution. Foursquare Day founder Nate Bonilla-Warford will be co-presenting with me on the proposed panel! (UPDATE: Voting ends THIS Friday night so vote now!)

With special thanks to the thoughts and insights from Foursquare Day co-organizer Jessica Barnett and SXSW alum Margot Bloomstein (who has her own awesome panel up for vote!) Nate and I were able to put together a kickass proposed panel (atleast foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley thinks so! [Thanks @dens!]). The panel discusses the current and future possibilities of Location-Based Services, using Foursquare Day 2010 as a case study for how we helped accelerate that future and discusses how YOU can help realize the full potential future through participating in Foursquare Day 2011! Please check out our panel and vote for it! (Be sure to leave a comment here or on the panel picker if you do, thanks!)

Now, as you know, Facebook launched Facebook Places last week, and during the launch event they shared the stage with foursquare (and other partners) to speak about possibly integrating with Facebook Places. Now comes the ensuing discussion about foursquare’s relevance now that Facebook will be deploying Location-Based Services to their 500,000,000 users. Given the panel topic and our thesis about Foursquare Day 2011 I feel that I need to weigh in on the subject: I don’t think that foursquare is going to go away anytime soon. I think that Facebook Places will either integrate smoothly with foursquare to their mutual benefit or foursquare will march on without them to continued success.

On one side of the argument I think that the opportunity for foursquare here is tremendous. Facebook included foursquare at their Places launch event and appear to want them to integrate with their Places service in some meaningful way. They’ve also opened the door up for others to integrate as well (Gowalla, MyTown and Yelp so far). Effectively Facebook has handed the keys to their 500 million users to all these services. Given Facebook’s simplistic “check in and find out where your friends are checked in” service model I think there is a very strong possibility that Facebook intends to completely leave “value-added” experiences like badges, discounts and mayorships to 3rd parties to deliver. This might play out in the way Facebook applications have played out – 3rd parties would compete on the merit of their value-adding check in experiences through the marketplace of Facebook users choosing to integrate their service, or not. Given this opportunity the future is bright for foursquare: Facebook Places integration means that foursquare’s user base can grow as Facebook Places goes (which is already happening, by virtue of Facebook Places being a mainstream LBS educator). A win, win.

Now on the other hand, there is the possibility that Facebook and foursquare will never play nice and/or Facebook Places will not become a force for foursquare to reckon with. Some of these points were explored during the August 24th #4SqCHAT (which I strongly encourage everyone, especially fans of foursquare or LBS, to check out). I found the discussion to be very interesting- here are some tweet-highlights that shed light on this “other side of the coin”-

To recap, the feeling is that Facebook Places is currently just barely viable, Mashable readers atleast still prefer foursquare, yet if only 1% of Facebook adopts Places it’ll be bigger than foursquare. One of foursquare’s opportunities here is to convert Facebook Places users (as I discussed above). But hope for Facebook Places integration should be tempered by the fact that Facebook and Twitter have not played nicely in the past. Of course, since only 1% adoption makes Facebook Places huge the business opportunity is also huge, but it if only businesses are excited about this (I too am guilty of this, thinking from a marketing perspective and being excited there more than anything) then that’s a bad sign. This led the group to think on motives behind why foursquare was created versus Facebook Places, which pointed out that the spirit behind each yields different community reactions (Facebook rebellion as a movement versus Foursquare Day as a movement).

With either possibility, Facebook Places integrating smoothly with foursquare to their mutual benefit or foursquare marching on without them to continued success, it’s pretty clear that foursquare does not need to check out of the Location-Based Services game. Facebook Places may earn the “uber-mega-super-duper swarm” badge for having a larger user base, they won’t take over as mayor anytime soon. However by growing the LBS community, be it through Facebook or foursquare, we all stand to benefit- and that’s why I’ve proposed the SXSW panel. Please give it a vote, spread the word and let us know what you think!