Brendon Mills – CEO, RipCode
Todd Bryant – CEO, Netcast HD Inc
Jeff Kramer, Polycot Labs
Sloan Foster – Chief Mktg Officer, DCI
Ashley Still, Adobe Systems

This was a very good session with some good information. However, I do think that a running rule should be no more than 3 people on a panel. When you get more than that everyone has something say…a lot of resaying and restating the same information….tends to drag! Here are my tidbits.

The Holy Grail of video ubiquity is about the user interface, accessibility and….content, content, content! – Brendon Mills

U-Verse a 25 mbps service from ATT that you will see improve over the next 3-5 years. Problem is…U-verse is a closed network….wondering how long the public will let closed networks exist.

Net Neutrality

Scalable Video Coding looks like something we really need to take a look at.

The recent Writer strike showed us that people can and will move from television to the pc. The future will be one…you have to be able to go back and forth between the two!

The panel was asked who is doing online video well…here are there responses.

- www.hulu.com nice interface, easy to find…and have great content
- www.abc.com video unique interface, nice video,
- www.vtap.com mobile video is critical
- Miro
- Whole Foods Market, videopodcasts are amazing!

Dirac looks very interesting!

Bryan Mason – Chief Operating Officer, Adaptive Path
Sarah Nelson – Design Strategist, Adaptive Path

One of the best sessions so far. Similar to the Jason Fried session…nothing really new, but amazing information that we all need to hear again, and again, and again! I missed the first 7 or so minutes, but I caught the list…so here are the tidbits.

1) Cross training the entire team. Teaches you the possibilities within the team!
2) Rotate creative leadership.
3) Actively turning the corner. Creative period to production phase. Creative leadership.
4) Know your role! Successful team know what they do and what they are responsible for.
5) Practice, Practice, Practice! In crunch time you need to know how the team is going to respond.
6) Make your mission explicit to the team. -make sure your mission is actionable. Constrains are really good! Even when you don’t think they are…
7) Killing your darlings. Be respectful, but cut the fat and execute on the projects.
8 ) Leadership is a service. When successful, the leaders are servants.
They recommended The art of possibility
9) Generate projects around groups interest.
10) Remember your audience. They talked about this a lot!
11) Celebrate failure. Must take risks!! What worked, what didn’t, what can we learn?

Artur Bergman – Dir of Engineering, Wikia Inc/O’Reilly Radar
George Fletcher – Chief Architect, AOL LLC
Jason Levitt, Eep! Eep!
David Recordon – Open Platforms Tech Lead, Six Apart Ltd
Andy Smith, Google
Simon Willison, www.simonwillison.net

I will go on record and say I am a big fan of OpenID. I have been an OpenID user for a while now, and really see this growing, and growing. The panel for this session is a group of studs on this topic! Here are my tidbits…

The web NEEDS a single sign on, and many have tried and failed: Microsoft Passport, TypeKey, Facebook.

Basecamp, a 37signals product uses OpenID really well.

Simple Registration – OpenID can help with the registration process. Example: http://jyte.com/auth/signup

Great presentation on OpenID here.

Stuff on OpenID from Yahoo:

Yahoo became an OpenID provider in Jan 08
Yahoo is NOT a relying party
Yahoo only supports 2.0 and will never support 1.0
http://developer.yahoo.com/openid/loginbuttons.html
http://gallery.yahoo.com/openid
Wordpress PlugIN – http://code.google.com/p/diso/source/browse
http://developer.yahoo.com/openid

Simple Registration will play a big role in the future with OpenID.

Critical…. Pick an OpenID provider that will “not go away”. -How do you do that?

Site Launching tomorrow to help- http://www.clickpass.com/

Great session! Would of liked to hear more about the core security issues with OpenID.

Stephanie Booth – Web Consultant & Commentator, Climb to the Stars
Brian McConnell – Founder, Worldwide Lexicon
Kelly Thompson – Exec VP, iStockphoto Inc
Stephanie Troeth – Director of Interactive Technology & Solutions, CloudRaker
Kevin Marks – Dev Advocate, Google

I was running about 15 late to this session, so a lot of the core content up front I missed. Here is some of the things that I picked up…(oh, I felt like an idiot..I think I was one of only 4-5 people in this session that did not speak multiple languages.)

Internationalization is not only a language issue, it is a very challanging technical issue.

Translation is critical to find people who understand what you are asking then to do. Get translators that understand tech and web if they are working on your site. If you have HR or legal docs online, make sure that you have someone who understands the legal side and can translate effectively.

Creative Commons is doing a great job with translation, and Internationalization.

This is a very interesting site with Translation/Internationalization for video… http://dotsub.com/

Opening question: What did (do) you really, really want to be good at?

20 Things
1) User Telepathy, read facial expressions.
2) Serendipity, filter things for our users so we help with the Wow!
3) The dog ears principles.
4) Create Joy!
5) Inspire First-person Language, your site should NOT be about you.
6) T-Shirt First Development, have users passionate about you and share it with others.
7) Easter Eggs are great! A Smile in the Mind
8 ) Tools for Evangelism, give your users a way to woo other users.
9) Reduce user Stress!
10) Help Improve users body.
11) Give them superpowers quickly.
12) Did not catch this one!
13) Speed up user knowledge.
14) Make your user documents reflect great feelings.
15) Oops, missed this one.
16) Create a culture of support. No dumb question, no dumb answers.
17) Do not insist on inclusivity.
18) Practive seductive opacity, its not secrecy-it’s theater.
19) Missed it!
20) The man…he is all the above Gary Vaynerchuk

More great information here:
Cnet
Silicon Alley Insider
Technorati

Ok, here is something I just do not understand. Why…why…why…can the presenters no give me the presentation slides or notes before, or even after their presentation? Come on guys!

A really, really good session! Only a few tidbits to blog about, I look forward to learning more about Jared via his blog here.

Complexity fades into the background, simplicity comes into the foreground – Marissa Mayer, Google
Task completion predicts wether users thought a site was fast or not.
Farecast.com

Not great notes, but a great session.

Anyway, SXSW consider this a challange to get on the ball!

I really needed more Starbucks before this session. These guys are rock solid, and sharp…but I am really struggeling to translate and comprehend this morning. So, here are my few tidbits.

Be bold: Create, experiment, and Measure.
Focus on Metris for users! Stop thiking old school page views, session, etc!
Discovery is the new cocaine. (that is a great line)… we need to help users discover, and to be discovered.

New sites: http://www.etsy.com/, http://getsatisfaction.com/, http://discovery.crowdvine.com/

This was a “core conversation”, so it was not a big room…big stage.. I really like the idea of the round table converstation…because really…we are so much more about converstation than conferences. However, the idea of a round table deal is good, but this really was difficult. It was a huge room, with 4-5 core conversations going on, and about 100 people at our table and you could hardly hear a word. Here are my tidbits.

The world is not Flat! And you can not do it in 4 hours a week. Sood took a little stab at the folks who talk about this stuff and say its “easy”. It is not!
Tip 1- It’s hardwork. Do your research and do not go in blind.
Tip 2 – Look for the No. Most say yes…so look for the companies that say no.
Tip 3 – Everyone speaks, but not the same language! Interpretation is hard..be patient.
Tip 4 – Save now, pay later. Don’t forget the total cost.
Tip 5 – Moving beyond cost.
-scailability.
-the relay race (24 hour work cycle)
Tip 6 – Small is the new big. Digg.com, used elance.com he said.
We will be contacting Monsoon to discuss further and also we connected with the Flat Sourcing guys. I look forward to talking with them!