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!

Today has been a foursquare kinda day for me (not foursquare day, that’s different). Today I wore my, cherished, favorite foursquare shirt (that I won at SXSWi by literally playing foursquare on the street with the foursquare team), I got to register a new venue on foursquare as well as log 5 check ins (including checking into a totally new venue for me [nope, it was not the one I setup]), AND I got to spend some time exploring a hot new foursquare analytics tool from a hot social marketing software company. (disclaimer: my good pal CMajor tipped me off to this because she knows I love foursquare and she works for Awareness.)

That said, onward with the awesomeness:

After re-confirming that I am, indeed, the mayor of all 3 MicorArts checkin locations (sans MicroArts SA of course), I started to explore this tool and realized I could use it to find out some awesome stuff that I can trot out to possibly get brands to pay more attention to foursquare and to start maximizing the value of the foursquare opportunity they’ve got in front of them (while helping to grow foursquare at the same time [which, in case you don’t know me, is something I’m passionate about]).

Let’s start with Planet Fitness. Take a look at their foursquare analytics. Over 400 venus have been registered with more than a third of those venues having 50 or more checkins. That kind of active check in distribution is similar to Starbucks! Granted, there are over 16,000 starbucks venues registered and Starbucks is a foursquare sponsor, but still- there is a reason they are a sponsor- because people love checking in at Starbucks. And you know what, Planet Fitness? People love checking in their too- so why don’t you step up and recognize? I know you’re atleast aware of foursquare. But think of how great it could be to formally make foursquare part of the Planet Fitness experience! As the video in that link shows, being mayor of your Planet Fitness is awesome, and desirable. Us foursquare users who are also PF members know this. But Planet Fitness, you could harness this desire and bring it to the rest of the smartphone-toting Planet Fitness members (and potential members!) and create so much demand you’ll have to create new franchise rules to accomodate it! Ok, I can’t guarantee that kind of demand :P – but think of the possibilities!

The other brand I wanted to highlight is, Cumberland Farms. Take a look at their foursquare analytics. The check in distribution is similar to McDonalds’ foursquare analytics – about a quarter of the 314 Cumberland Farms venus have had 11+ check ins. WIth only a slightly higher distribution of checkins in their favor, McDonalds embraced the Foursquare Day movement (and heck, they even became an early adopter of Facebook’s yet-to-be-launched location based service). But where is Cumberland Farms with their location based services…ahem…foursquare strategy? While I have to hand it to them for their pretty fun and effective Facebook page, I’ve got to say: Cumberland Farms, look at the numbers! You have a great Foursquare opportunity in front of you and you need to take advantage of it! Here’s an idea- how about free chill zone for the mayor? (disclaimer: I’m toooootally the mayor of my Cumberland Farms– but that’s only a small reason why I want Cumberland Farms to jump into foursquare :) ). Atleast experiment with it guys–at the very least, I’d like to see some participation in next year’s Foursquare Day. The opportunity is yours to make happen!

So, what about you? What brands would you like to see take advantage of the foursquare opportunity? Let’s talk about it and perhaps we can make a game plan for how we can get them involved!