Our Top 3 from SXSW

This year we attended South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) for five days of geeky goodness. Amidst the action packed sessions, 3 top themes emerged as relevant and inspiring to our work.

1. Customers first
2. Gaming for engagement
3. Seed networks for social applications

1. Customers First
Two excellent SXSW discussions on this topic were “Delivering Happiness” and “Making Whuffie.” Because customer centeredness is core to the work at HopeLab, it was helpful to see other examples of this in action. In “Delivering Happiness”, Tony Hsieh (Zappos CEO) referenced a book – Peak by Chip Conley – that has inspired their approach. The same book recently inspired us – specifically the application of Maslow’s hierarchy – as a guide for our work in social media.

2. Gaming for engagement
Games were everywhere at SXSW, with a focus on applying gaming elements in non-game products as a way to engage users more deeply in the experience.

The most surprising use of gaming for engagement came from film. Gary Hustwit shared his top 3 tips for making film more engaging in this panel. His #2 tip: create games within the film’s story line. In his critically acclaimed film about typography and graphic design, Helvetica, Hustwit uses real-world examples of the typeface as teasers that give clues to the story without explicit narration. Simple, provocative and engaging. Even for those of us not in film, the message might just be that very simple mechanics can still be successful when executed well.

3. Seed networks for social applications
Startups launch at SXSW for many reasons – critical mass of early adopters, press attention, networking, etc. After trying a few of the newly hatched apps, this was our observation: apps like foursquare, that cultivated a network of users and evangelists before the SXSW launch, offered a more engaging experience and were more successful in getting traction.

The lesson here seems to be: in launching a new app with social features a big event might not be enough – consider how to seed the experience and inspire users to show others (“evangelize”) why they love it. Food for thought as we work on our own gDitty product.

If you’re interested in more notes, comments and thoughts on SXSW, here are a couple sources:

Slideshare search

Technorati search

If you have observations on these topics from SXSW, we’d love to hear about them via comments.