If you’d like to learn how to take a step back, re-organize the fast evolving world, and come up with those critical insights that will drive value and allow to predict the outcome – please vote for my session at SXSW 2012. Would appreciate your help and welcome all feedback.

Appreciated, and looking forward to another great year at SXSW.

SapientNitro is going to have great presence again this year, take some time and check out all our proposals.

Monday, 20 June. Review for Beyond the Horizon by PHD, presented by Mark Holden , Global Strategy and Planning Director.

Intro: The session was consistent with the overall 2011 theme of marketing technology – the role of technology impact in advertising, marketing, and customer experience. Mark did a great job describing a bunch of new tech and putting them in perspective of why they matter for the new consumer.

He opened up stating that there are 1.2 billion people in social networks – no surprise, but the next 1 billion will enter through mobile. We all knew how important mobile is, this is just a reassurance.

Next he explained that what drives technology is us, individuals, humanity. Technology is a human invention to solve human problems, being driven strictly by human needs. Therefore, technology is a consequence of human needs and desires – and what is driving humans? What drives humanity is need for abundance: we want everything, everyone, everywhere – and we won’t stop until we get it.

Following the intro, Mark jumped into multiple categories of technical innovations, grouped by infrastructure, interface, and internet.

Infrastructure: Fibre to the home will bring wired gigabit connections to every household. Similarly, 4g , lte, wimax will massively improve wireless connectivity. With ubiquitous broadband connectivity, there will be no more distinction between media types: HD video will download just as fast as 3d world games, music, or photos.

Connectivity combined with the growing cloud capabilities, will delegate storage and processing to the cloud, focusing devices back to graphic processing, graphic hardware acceleration, and sensors.

Interface: Oled and ultrahd will allow video 16 times better than HDTV to be displayed in a thin-almost-invisible flexible layer. Price is still prohibitive, but in the upcoming years this technology will allow video to be embedded pretty much anywhere.

Connected TVs will totally chance the dynamics of what is TV today. Addressable content – meaning it can be targeted and personalized -, a mix of current TV broadcast with the marvels of the Internet: everything is tracked, served dynamically, everyone can be a media company, publishers have direct access to the consumer.

The top experiences enabled by such mix will be embedded content, clickable content, video hot-spotting, and the already coined t-commerce for Television Commerce.

The first noticeable change will be linear TV with dynamic targeted ads, targeting the household by programs watched, demographics, or if the TV provider is also the ISP, perhaps bundle behavioral data into web usage, or if the TV is part of a gaming platform, them also get gaming and social behavioral data. Ultimately, content providers will sit in a world of data that will be used to personalize the TV watching experience.

We did not get into greater debates of what will happen to the 30-second stop, what would happen to advertising dollars, what would be the media and business model of the future.

Lastly Mark mentioned a bunch of interface techs, but didn’t get into detail for any of them: oled, graphene, audio spotlight, voice recognition, virtual personal assistants, markless AR, NFC, e-coupling. Out of these techs, you will probably see tons of buzz around AR and NFC in 2012.

Internet: This section talked about the socialization of the web and predicted that search will move from links to likes. The reasoning behind this assertion is that search will eventually become semantic, and will try to provide relevant personalized results as opposed to generic results. Tying search into the social graph and prioritizing results based on conversations, likes by social circles – or similarly +1 by Google Circles, part of their new highly popular Google+.

Additionally, the web is finally slowly moving from a massively unstructured pile of data to better organized self-descriptive objects, thanks to Facebook’s Open Graph efforts and now Google, Yahoo, and Bing’s schema.org efforts. Pages in the web will have additional metadata explaining the context behind them, as well as defining relations to other content. This will slowly have a big impact in SEO.

Other topics covered vertical search, social commerce, and gamification.

Following connectivity, the discussion naturally moved to mobile connectivity. We will rely on smart phones for what is now called real time living or just-in-time living. Every piece of information we need is always available at our fingertips, and we make real time decision, moving from from preset preplanned activities into real time experiences. And because we are making this real-time decisions, brands cannot just preplan a journey for us, they have to also adapt and engage in real-time experiences, reacting to every trigger and response.

Media agency 2016: So what does this all mean for the advertising industry? What does the media agency look like in 2016? The industry will shift from analog, dated, simple holding of a bunch of media properties to being a creative-technology led industry. Agencies will have to understand the power of technology in driving human experiences, and be able to creative and enhance these experiences. Media will be just data, and the largest agencies are already starting to invest in AMP: Audience Management Platforms.

Audience Management Platforms: Now I’ve heard multiple names for these platforms, such as CEP: Customer Experience Platform, MMP: Marketing Management Platform. Ultimately, it’s a data mart / data wharehousing platform that aggregates 360 customer data across every channel, and provides a layer of intelligence that drives personalized experiences. Content delivery, web sites, mobile apps, and media buying are nothing but layers of experience, that should be all centrally controlled by a single governing platform. This platform can hook into other contextual brokers, but I won’t get into too much detail right now. Back to Mark, he also sees this platform managing RTB: Real-Time Bidding and creative optimization; mainly meaning that it will control the time, content, and context where media is delivered.

With this shift in the media business model, we can predict that media futures exchange will become a very interesting area really soon.

Social: Mark predicts that in a few years the social media practice will be mature and in high demand, that people good at social will be superstars. I must say that people good at understanding human behavior are already superstars, and social is just the nature of humanity, and has always been part of connections planning. The discipline is simply evolving due to evolution of technology, but the roots have not changed.

Evolution of the Agency: Perhaps not so much evolution, but given that marketing is now getting the feedback loop and connected back into the brand essence, agencies will take the role of NPD: new product development.

Conclusion: At the very end of this long tech talk, Mark showed a phenomenal closing video! Very emotional, good sound and music, experiential. I will post the video as soon as I get a copy and clearance.

The session was pretty inspiring and reassured the critical role of a marketing technologist / creative technologist in the agency and client organizations.

Original Session Description:

Over the last five years the industry has seen the most dramatic changes to the world of communications. The social media revolution has fundamentally changed the fabric of society. Right now, one in every two people within the developed world is connected-up through social networks. This is resulting in to a quickening in the speed at which information, and therefore influence, is moving. More than this, PHD believes that this is changing the actual physics of how marketing works. And this rate of change is accelerating. Looking ahead this change will be driven by such things as demographic, attitudinal and psychographic shifts, and media-ownership regulation. But the biggest driver of change will of course be technology. Technology will not just be a driver of change it will be the driver of change. Technological advancements that are now on the horizon will enable the development of new marketing communications platforms through which to engage with people. New possibilities will emerge through the coming together of such as technologies as smart TVs, markerless augmented reality, enhanced voice-recognition, transparent OLED screens, haptic feedback, gesture input and NFC.

In this session PHD will explore the incredible technology that is on the horizon and project ahead on what the exciting possibilities are for marketing and advertising.

The keynote covers relations between people and brands, the evolution of the digital consumer, the evolution of technology and how it changed us, an introduction to contextual computing, adaptive experiences, the Internet of Things, and a few predictions for the next 5 years.

The events was recorded, but I have not managed to get the official video — luckily for us, someone at the front row recorded the entire keynote from their phone.

Find below the full video recording, slides, and an amazing infographic an artist made live while listening to my keynote.

YouTube Full Video Recording:

SlideShare with full audio voice over:

Last but not least, big thanks to Martin Meyer-Gossner from TheStrategyWeb for such an amazing review.

So what do you think? Will contextual computing control personalized experiences and media? Will the government try to regulate the Internet of Things? Will Facebook have the guts to get into display ads?  Will Google finally get one right and build the right experience for seamless social mobility into the Android OS?

If you’re not aware, the term Internet of Things refers to the interconnection of everyday objects (large and small) via an array of sensors and radio tags that would allow for a vastly “smarter” world empowered through technology. The amount of information that would be generated is staggering, but innovators will find opportunities to leverage this data (in conjunction with data from your social profile) to create amazing experiences in every day life delivered through this new found insight.

Imagine how a person’s lifestyle enhanced through digital experiences might change if devices, applications, or even marketing experiences were able to pull from a massively expanded pool of data delivered by understanding the current state of things they interact with such as their car, their personal electronics and appliances, the buses their kids go to school on, all the items in their refrigerator, and even their clothing. If each of these items were tagged and at minimum reporting their “identity” and location but potentially even sharing their operating status, power consumption, fuel level, capacity, current activity, or history of use computer logic could understand and make intelligent and highly relevant recommendations based on these factors that could be used to enhance any digitally enabled experience.

Let’s re-imagine a great marketing as a service example from recent memory: Fiat’s Ecodrive. Fiats’s brilliant Ecodrive system allowed your car to monitor your driving behavior and via their website was able to make driving recommendations on improving your driving style to increase fuel efficiency. Unfortunately it wasn’t real time or wirelessly driven but it did demonstrate a clear value to consumers and marketers how rich insight into your behaviors could create valuable experiences. Now imagine if experiences like that were all around us and operating in realtime without the need for thumb drives etc.

In a future world consumers with Internet of Things enabled appliances and products could benefit from always knowing the contents of their refrigerator with brands potentially providing services that make recommendations on replacement purchases or new products.

If all clothing was tagged, identified, and classified applications could be developed that could even recommend clothing based on occasions, the weather, or even what to pack for a trip based on your related travel booking and itinerary.

Anyone who thought the speed at which internet based business and marketing is evolving has slowed down since the hay day of the late 90s and 00s is clearly mistaken. The last couple of months alone have indicated that we’re achieving realization of the semantic web and now China premier minister Wev Jaibo has announced a plan to commit fully to national Internet of Things plan.

I’ve been talking about hyper relevance a lot lately. The concept that through your social profile and location based services respectively marketers understand who consumers and where consumers are in a way that’s never been possible before and this is allowing us to deliver hyper relevant advertising. If the Internet of Things came to bear we would also understand what people were doing and how they were doing it in a way that isn’t currently possible. Again our ability to deliver relevant experience only extends exponentially yet again. Amazing, yet probably spooky, experience await all of us as technology continues to develop along these lines.

The Reality of Internet of Things

Unfortunately the IoT is as revolutionary as it would be hard to implement. It would require universal adoption to achieve the type of world changing effect that is possible. These types of changes would require masses of corporations to work in conjunction or the support of a government with enough to conviction to push through massive innovations in a short period of time.

I believe that time is upon us. The Internet of Things reflects the next great evolution of the internet after the semantic web. We’ve just started to see further wide spread adoption of the semantic web and now China will be the country that has the conviction to lead this next great innovation. In 2015 not only will China reflect the world’s biggest internet community, but they will likely be leading the innovation of the web and the west will look to them for inspiration.

That easy enough with a still image, perhaps, but not so simple with video…  Technical University of Ilmenau’s figured it out, just draw a circle around the object you want to disappear and it practically disappears as the image synthesizer reduces the quality of the image drastically, removes your target and re-enhances in just 40 milliseconds per frame, using object tracking algorithms and guesswork to maintain the illusion as a camera moves around in 3D space. The framework’s presently running on Windows, but the team says they have plans to port it to Android soon.

Pretty impressive … I’m trying to figure out the applications where you wouldn’t have to manually specify the object to clear out … like automatically recognizing and removing cans of Pepsi from any video.

IDEO, respected company for their innovation and product design, came up with 3 concepts for the future of the book.

Nelson reinforces books as critical thinking tools, providing multiple perspectives, references, and current conversations on a single subject. The layers of information beyond the book itself provide greater context and encourages a deeper dive into the book throughout history and into the future.

Coupland addresses the challenge to stay on top of the thinking and writing in our world and professional field that so many of us feel. Readers can easily keep up with “must-reads” by following what colleagues are reading and interact with them through “book clubs” and other social layers (discussions, suggestions, lists, purchases) to help each other share and learn.

Alice explores new ways for users to interact and affect written narratives by introducing non-linear and game mechanics to reading. By introducing the reader’s active participation, this concept “blurs the lines between reality and fiction.” Certain interactions allow the reader to transcend traditional media by utilizing geographic location, communication with characters, and user contribution to storyline and plot.

Out of the 3 concepts, I like Alice the best. The first two don’t provide much vision, they just adapt to our current state. In fact, Coupland even assumes that people will buy books a-la-carte in corporate environment, instead of adopting the new trend of library or all-you-can-use subscription model. Alice in the other hand promotes interaction and engagement, key factors for the future of any digital product or service. It also has implicit AI (artificial intelligence) that personalizes the experience based on history, actions, context, and interactions. Very nicely done.

BTW, one thing no one is talking about yet is Places within the Graph API. You can query recent checkins by users, pages, places: GET https://graph.facebook.com/[place/Page/user_id]/checkins

That alone is SO powerful!

Anyways, starting today, you can immediately tell people about that favorite spot with Facebook Places. You can share where you are and the friends you’re with in real time from your mobile device.

Checking In with Friends

Ever gone to a show, only to find out afterward that your friends were there too? With Places, you can discover moments when you and your friends are at the same place at the same time.

You have the option to share your location by “checking in” to that place and letting friends know where you are. You can easily see if any of your friends have also chosen to check in nearby.

To get started, you’ll need the most recent version of the Facebook application for iPhone. You also can access Places from touch.facebook.com if your mobile browser supports HTML 5 and geolocation.

Go to Places on the iPhone application or touch.facebook.com site and then tap the “Check In” button. You’ll see a list of places near you. Choose the place that matches where you are. If it’s not on the list, search for it or add it. After checking in, your check-in will create a story in your friends’ News Feeds and show up in the Recent Activity section on the page for that place.

Places is only available in the United States right now. But we expect to make it available to more countries and on additional mobile platforms soon.

Checkin Friends

When you check in, you can also tag friends who are with you, just as you can tag a friend in a status update or photo. You can post an update along with your check-in to tell people more about what you are doing.

In the “People Here Now” section, you can see others who are checked in with you at that place. This section is visible for a limited amount of time and only to people who are checked in there. That way you can meet other people who might share your interests. If you prefer not to appear in this section, you can control whether you show up by unchecking the “Include me in ‘People Here Now’ after I check in” privacy control.

The next time you head off on vacation or go to a show, check in with Places to find out which friends are there. See who is close by and read the comments from other friends who’ve been there before.

Tagging and Control

With Places, you are in control of what you share and the people you share with. You choose whether or not to share your location when you check in at a place. When you check in, you can tag friends who are with you but only if their settings allow it. When you are tagged, you are always notified.

Only your friends can see when you visit or are tagged at a place, unless you have specifically set your master privacy control to “Everyone.” You also have the choice to set more restrictive customized settings.

When a friend tags you through Places, you will receive a notification on Facebook and on your mobile device. The first time this happens, you’ll be given the choice to allow your friends to check you in to places.

When your friends check you in, it is as if you have checked in at that place yourself. You also will appear checked-in to your friends. If you do not allow friends to check you in, then when they tag you at a place, your name will appear in the same way it appears in a tagged status update. You will not appear checked-in at that place.

You can always remove any Places check-in or tag using your mobile device or on the web. It’s like removing yourself from a photo tag. You also have the choice to turn off the ability for friends to check you in at Places. Go to your Privacy Settings and turn off the setting to “Let Friends Check Me In.”

You may want to share your check-in information with third-party applications that build interesting experiences around location, such as travel planning. Applications you use must receive your permission before getting this information. Your friends will be able to share your check-ins with the applications they use to help create new social experiences with location. If you don’t want to share your check-ins with your friends’ applications, just uncheck the new box in your Privacy Settings under “Applications and Websites.”

Everything happens somewhere. Start exploring your world with your friends by sharing your experiences at the places where you go. Take a tour of Places to learn more.

This is a smart move on Coke’s end. Everyone knows that Coke mainly targets teens, and what if instead of marketing to teens, you get teens come to you, promote you, share, chat, and advocate your brand? Dream came true …

Coke organized this experimental amazing hangout villa they called The Coca Cola Village. They’ve been doing it for a few years, or at least I found videos from 2008 and 2009.

This year’s was a little different though, an Israeli agency called E-dologic — part of Publicis, extended the event in effort to bring the Facebook “Like” to the real world. Not only they invited thousands of teens who talk about this through traditional word-of-mouth, but they used the Facebook Presence-like concept where they distribute teens a wristband, they link it to their Facebook account, and the village automatically digitalize, archive, organize, and share their experience. It makes it easy to re-live the fun, read the comments, see their friends, share activities, and for Coke? instant-massive-ultra-influencing system that leverages teens to promote Coke’s brand among their circles.

Really nicely done. As expected, Facebook will keep penetrating the real-world. Next efforts will probably use the open graph to describe more precise locations and describe relationships among people, places, and objects.

It always amazed me how SXSW calls for speakers about 11 months in advanced and has to lock down all sessions 6 months in advanced. Of course there could be some timeless sessions that will always make sense, but it’s hard to know how topics will be relevant 9 months from now … With that said, SapientNitro submitted 19 visionary topics that I think will make great sessions; some returning speakers (including Freddie and myself) and some great new speakers.

It’s great to see so much variety of expertise: creative, strategic, business, technology … from SapientNitro, Government Services, Financial Services, and from so many different people like our CCO, Business Lead, Creative Directors, Technology Directors, developers, and even recruiting. Tells a lot about the diversity, multifariousness, mixture of SapientNitro‘s capabilities and expertise.

Please read below and provide feedback or questions on these topics … what else would you like to see us cover? If you like a topic please take the time to follow the link and vote for it to make sure we have the opportunity to share it with you.

Bringing the Love Back to Brands by Gaston Legorburu

Technology has liberated the dialog between brands and customers, sating consumers’ love of sharing, connecting, raving, venting… But in many ways, it’s also driven isolation as we press “skip intro” to proceed to our desired action. In this discussion, Gaston Legorburu, SapientNitro’s worldwide chief creative officer, will explore the unique paradox that technology has introduced to the consumer/brand relationship. From isolation to sharing, technology is driving a massive social revolution. Learn the art of combining design and engineering to create relevant experiences, experiences that transform barely personable brands into “builders of moments.”

Location-Based-Services is so 2010 – Behold Context-Based-Services by Rob Gonda

Defined as using large mashup of data services to enable amazing experiences through mobile devices. What’s not digital nowadays?! Mobile is replacing the pc and becoming that unique personal technology gadget that no one lives without — and with it, comes connectivity, content, productivity, and entertainment. The magic is that mobile links the gap between digital and real world, extending experiences, and more importantly, making is easy, simple, and intuitive. Foursquare and Gowalla gaining momentum, Twitter added Places, Facebook launched their location based service and integrate with the Open Graph, Google “Me” relies on Latitude, location-location-location. But checking-in requires too much effort… Location will evolve from a reactive engagement to a proactive engagement … background services will be always-location aware. Apps will automatically react to actual location, history, friends, places, and a new set of data source mashups such as weather, humidity, light sensitivity, noise ambiance, and more. If you want to get inspired by innovations galore, this is a session you can’t miss.

Found the Crystal Ball – Unveil the Future by Freddie Laker

The world is evolving at an amazing pace and if companies want to keep up they need to evolve too; but evolution is not a simple concept; what are the right choices? where should you invest? what do your customers want, and what are your competitors doing about it? The best VC firms in the world cannot predict the future, but a good understanding for trends, culture and behavioral shifts, technology advancements, brand evolution, micro and macro economics, and having insights on R&D and new product launches. The best brands in the world excel in designing amazing experiences. Loyalty driven through rewards, direct response advertising, and frequency / reach is a concept of the past. Loyalty is a consequence of providing great experiences across any touchpoint with the brand. What if you had a crystal ball that hint you on upcoming trends that will drive and set customer expectations? Good news, we found it!

Old is the New Black: Content’s Comeback by Kevin Nichols

You think you know what content strategy is? Ha! If you think it’s just about marketing or Web strategy…that just scratches the surface. Join industry experts on Technology, Experience Design and Content Strategy as we talk about how content strategy is not just about content, not just strategy, and certainly not just about the Web. Oh, and it’s also not new. This panel will bring together unique viewpoints on the topic and address not only what content strategy is, but where it is going, and why you should in fact care about it. It will bring a focus to content that is largely under-represented in all the hoopla and buzz that is currently going on about the practice of content strategy. The conversation will review how web content strategy, semantic web and portable content are just a few things in a multiplatform and multichannel universe. We will also unveil how content strategy relates to technology and experience design. We will address content strategy as an ‘enterprise’ approach while contextualizing semantic Web and Web content strategy as just pieces to a much larger picture. Join a very diverse group of people as they explore this topic and its various implications.

Privacy Debate: Straddling the Line Between Improvement & Intrusion by Nathaniel Perez

Imagine this: guy meets girl in a bar and offers to buy her a drink. Girl intrigued, but before accepting she snaps a photo of the guy with her iPhone and scan for background info. Seconds later results come back with personal ratings, reviews, comments, and he scores 1/5 stars, is emotionally unstable, and selfing in bed. Needless to say, girl walks away. Technology is advancing at an amazing speed — nothing new here — and enabling amazing experiences. From augmented reality, facial recognition, conversation mining and analysis, mobile payments, and it’s setting expectations of instant gratification; instant gratification that comes at a price: technology needs access to data. Media has driven fundamental culture shifts in what we find to be normal or acceptable about privacy — who would have thought they would share every action, location, check in places, preferences, products and services they like, and make it mostly public. Marketers want personal data to enhance and personalize experiences which will result in better conversion. People want better services that use data to provide value. But when is it enough? There’s a very fine line that divides value and creepiness. Come to discuss and engage in an interactive session to explore boundaries of what’s acceptable.

What Can a Three-Year-Old Teach About Experience Planning by Juan Morales

While baby boomers have been driving purchase power in today’s economy, Gen Y has been driving today’s brand experience … but the true innovators, the digital age, are actually Gen Z. Everyone is trying to crack teen marketing. Everything changes: culture, attention span, intuition, expectations, communication habits … and they are driving the ultimate customer experience thereafter modeled for the rest of us. The best brands in the world excel in designing amazing experiences. Loyalty driven through rewards, direct response advertising, and frequency / reach is a concept of the past. Loyalty is a consequence of providing great experiences across any touchpoint with the brand. Learn how to focus on the right audience to build the brand experience of tomorrow.

Peer-to-Peer and HTML 5 by Rudo Boothe

HTML 5 allows communication over efficient, low-bandwidth connections called WebSockets. Many different types of applications can be built on top of this new architecture; none more exciting than a web-based peer-to-peer network. AWE. SOME. Join me for a brief discussion during which I’ll show you how this immediately impacts everything from widgets to mobile apps.

The Great Paywall Experiment: Evolving Digital Subscription Models by Donald Chesnut

New devices, new experiences, and new ways for making money: the world of media and publishing is on fire. This panel will explore the rapid evolution of content subscription models that are bridging the worlds of offline and digital, presenting new models for customers to subscribe to content, and the opportunities to create new experiences based upon a more market-dynamic and mult-channel approach to subscriptions. All types of content are undergoing evolution as a result of the changing digital landscape: Magazines, newspapers, cable and broadcast tv stations, music… Each is experimenting with new ways to address the iPad, mobile, Web, iTV, and offline. Newer services like Zinio, HBO GO, MagHound, Hulu are part of the newer landscape, while longer-term players like Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, Conde Nast, and Time Inc are continuing to evolve in their approach to content subscription and distribution. Looking at the landscape, who is innovating and leading the pack? What models are working better than others for both the content/media company AND the customer? How does the type of content change across distribution platform? And where do we think the concept of “subscriptions” is going? Intended for both experience designers or digital business innovators, this panel will bring together diverse leaders from the world of content, media, and publishing to share their thoughts on the emerging trends that are shaping the future of paid digital content.

Rise of the (Vending) Machines: Interactivity that POPs by Michael Leonard

Gone are the days when ”interactive” meant online. These days, interactive technology meets consumers at every touch point via mobile phones, digital signage and even smile-activated vending machines. Interactive technology at the point of purchase (POP) is the next wave of innovation in consumer engagement. As one example, SapientNitro has designed the world’s first smile-activated ice cream vending machine for Unilever, the world’s biggest ice cream manufacturer. A demonstration video of the machine can be viewed at the following link: http://www.sapient.com/en-us/SapientNitro/Work.html#/?project=157. To create this groundbreaking experience, creative technologists at SapientNitro harnessed the power of the latest technology across a number of realms, including facial recognition, 3G and Facebook. Designed in a lab by specialist teams intent on creating a machine unlike any other, the unique features of the smile-activated vending machine include: 3G technology to enable uploading and sharing of smiles via social media with the user’s permission and ground-breaking technology. A spokesperson from SapientNitro can discuss the machine, as well as highlight additional examples of interactive technology being used in new and innovative ways, such as signs that interact with consumers, augmented reality on mobile applications and more.

Designing iPad Interfaces – New Navigation Schemas by Lynn Teo

With every new “form factor” comes a unique set of design conventions and interaction paradigms. The emergence of tablet interfaces such as the iPad marks a new chapter in digital design. How much of web navigation or smartphone conventions persist in this new world? And what are we seeing that’s new? Are there specific wayfinding and browsing mechanisms that make for a satisfying and productive iPad user experience? Based on an assessment of 50+ iPad applications that run the gamut from utility/transactional interfaces to comic readers and other publishing apps, this presentation provides a focused analysis and assessment of navigation methods in a distilled format. Navigation schemas will be explored by interaction design themes, supported by examples, and recommendations on when best to employ them.

Digital Deprivation: 9 Unexpected Days Without My iPhone by Cory Siansky

Unforeseen circumstances cause a 9-day technology blackout. Practical and surprisingly, emotional reaction to the situation = this humorous and poignant SXSW discussion, and a thread on my popular blog, Well Known Fact (wellknownfact.com). The iPhone4 wasn’t in my immediate plans. Then, a good friend mentions 3G units selling well in the um, let’s call it “secondary” market. He explained that I would probably sell my old unit for about the same cost of a new iPhone. Hello, eBay. I listed the phone and watched the price soar. I timed my listing so that the old phone would ship when my new one arrived. Then I, and my 1 million best friends tried to pre-order new iPhones all at once. I was successful 18 hours later. By that time the initial delivery lot was sold out. My delivery date was two weeks away. More than a week would pass between when my old iPhone shipped and the new one arrived. Quickly, my loss was profound. Living, and working, without my iPhone was a much bigger deal than I imagined. Along the way I had to rework routines personal and professional. 3-part presentation: first, a quick discussion of my old iPhone 3G, and how I loved it. Second, my eBay selling process and new iPhone buying process in a Zupruder-film style timeline. Third, the arrival of the replacement phone and getting it set-up. If you’ve read this far, I think I’ve caught your attention. My emotional journey is now your entertainment. Sit back and enjoy.

4chan and /b/ – Internet’s Darker Corners Exposed by Ted Koszuta

4chan is a cultural black hole that most often is overlooked for both complexity and relevance to our business and the general populace. Right or wrong, this single “site” is matter-of-factly known for creating the vast majority of “memes” any digital community adheres to or looks towards/at — as well as being the sole-source impetus for tens of hundreds of digital and IRL movements, raids, protests etc. Black hole? According to the general theory of relativity, a black hole is a region of space from which nothing, including light, can escape. The same is true of 4chan. Nothing that is ever placed online is outside its grasp. Any bit of content (advertising, marketing, media etc.) is not only seen by the folks on 4chan – its chewed up and spat out. The only different is whether they blow a bubble with it, abandon it under a coffee table or throw it on the sidewalk for passers by to walk all over. The simple fact is the Internet has “darker corners” that our work is ultimately disseminated to/through, and the greater our understanding of their reasons for existing and the way they function the better. They are single handedly changing the way we do business, and how we all work and play online, whether we like it or not.

Thin is In. The Future of Digital Wallets by Christina Nguyen White

The growing hole in your back jeans pocket is getting a bit too personal. No need to swipe anymore. Just scan. When can we get rid of our wallets without losing the cash? We know mobile is here. Now learn how far we can take it. Digital wallets are within very close reach. With RFIDs, QR codes, and Big-Brother-like tracking, the technology is already in place. Checkout with your phone. Instantly grab coupons when you checkout. Scan your digital ticket at Friday’s ballgame. Digitally split the bill with your friends. The possibilities that we’ve always wished for are now within reach. Get a glimpse into how retailers are edging towards digital, understand the impact of how this will change the way we buy, and ultimately, as designers, understand how this will change the way we interact with our mobile phones.

Secrets from Five Masters of Multichannel by Brad Simms

It’s clear that Web-only businesses, social networks and highly-capable mobile devices like the iPhone have forced a shift of power to consumers. Consumer expectations continue to rise as large traditional businesses grapple with the design, organizational and technological challenges in presenting a truly integrated experience. Consumers aren’t channel bound but companies are–this troubling fact is easy to recognize but hard to resolve. This panel introduces five leaders driving multichannel integration in Fortune 500 companies–“Masters of Multichannel”–across industries including retail, consumer package goods, automotive, travel, retail finance and the customer experience firm SapientNitro. The panel will be led through a lively and timely discussion of multichannel evolution across industries, highlighting common pitfalls, successes and what to expect next. Special focus will be put on contrasting industries to bring together different perspectives on the term “multichannel”. We see the term used everywhere and marketing tends to overuse it. This panel intends to get past the buzz to make it applicable and relevant.

Bodies Buried Under Social Media’s Front Porch by Dan Willis

re you already dead? In this Age of Disruption, death is swift, but not always obvious. An organization’s lifeblood can drain out long before they board up the windows, shutters the doors and files all the necessary papers. Trivial tweets, user-generated videos and user-rated product reviews look innocent enough now, but just as surely as the Commercial Web has already killed dozens of newspapers and magazines, the Social Web’s treads will soon be clogged with the crushed skulls of organizations too inflexible to get out of harm’s way. To date, we’ve only found a tiny percentage of the bodies. This presentation will examine the characteristics common to Social Media’s known victims and hypothesize about both those least likely and most likely to survive in the future. More significantly, this presentation will help the audience identify the keys to their own survival. But survival isn’t enough. User content and influence has emerged as a powerfully disruptive force that, if harnessed properly, can radically improve the world. The Gov 2.0 movement, for example, isn’t about federal agencies adding Twitter to their communication plans. It is a multinational effort to use Social Media tools in the restructuring of government’s very core in order to create an unprecedented partnership with citizens. This presentation will show that organizations bold enough to experiment and strong enough to weather change have the potential for significant and meaningful evolution.

The Death of the Mouse by John McHale

The discussion examines all new interface interaction possibilities (touch, gesture, kinetics, mobile, etc) and how quickly users are adapting to new technologies. It will not only contain a historical retrospective, but will examine breakthrough interaction models that are setting the standard for what is the future. It’s not about us. It’s about what is possible. We plan on demonstrating this through an interactive experiment asking the audience to create art using their devices.

Kiosks, Mobile and the Evolving Retail Experience by Hilding Anderson

New opportunities for sophisticated in-store and digital interactive experiences are fundamentally changing the way retail stores connect with their customers. These changes – from interactive kiosks, sophisticated mobile devices, digital & interactive vending machines, and the wireless delivery of software – are creating opportunities for brands and marketers to connect and interact with their customers more richly. We will share how are clients are leveraging these tools, and our vision of where it is all going.

Manufacturing Serendipity: How Mapping Moments Integrates Multichannel Experience by Zachary Jean Paradis

Just 15 years ago, the relationship between consumers and companies was relatively simple. And linear. Customers learned about products through one of a few channels–TV, radio, print, mailers or in stores. Competition was more limited and local. The web, mobile phones and digitally enabled social networks (remember The Well?) were experienced by a select few. Now? Competition has multiplied and globalized; communication channels and media have both exploded and fragmented; the world is more virtual, more “social”, more mobile and more context dependant than ever. As UEX strategists and professionals, it’s our job to help clients untangle this mess and make sense for consumers. This presentation will outline a series of tools and methods focused on modeling experiences, discovering “moments”–opportunities for organizations to make the greatest positive and negative impacts with their customers–and identifying critical communication “channel pairs” which allow for more straightforward and impactful experience design. Illustrations used will be pulled both the professional and academic worlds.

Job Seekers – This One’s For You by Emily Brewer

Your work kicks ass, speaks for itself. Your resume couldn’t be tighter. But ever wondered what happens once it enters the black hole of the online application process? Are they into you and just too busy to call? Maybe they aren’t into you, but what if it’s because they missed something? What do you do? Sit back and wait for the call or take charge and make them notice you? Fret no more, this panel will answer all those questions and more! Senior recruiters representing a cross section of leading companies lead a presentation and Q&A discussion for job seekers in the creative and agency space. Learn everything from what they look for in a candidate and what they want to see in a portfolio and resume to dos and don’ts if you land the interview as well as keeping your options open if the timing isn’t right.

Microsoft has the same ability to display street view from person PoV filmed with 360 degree cameras, just like what we use with Google Street View every day … but they built this project to dynamically mash the photos to build an infinite panorama perspective …

For further details, including Microsoft’s research paper and more films, visit their site, here.

Systems such as Google Street View and Bing Maps Streetside enable
users to virtually visit cities by navigating between immersive
360panoramas, or bubbles. The discrete moves from bubble to
bubble enabled in these systems do not provide a good visual sense
of a larger aggregate such as a whole city block. Multi-perspective
“strip” panoramas can provide a visual summary of a city street but
lack the full realism of immersive panoramas.

We present Street Slide, which combines the best aspects of the
immersive nature of bubbles with the overview provided by multi-perspective
strip panoramas. We demonstrate a seamless transition
between bubbles and multi-perspective panoramas. We also
present a dynamic construction of the panoramas which overcomes
many of the limitations of previous systems. As the user slides sideways,
the multi-perspective panorama is constructed and rendered
dynamically to simulate either a perspective or hyper-perspective
view. This provides a strong sense of parallax, which adds to the
immersion. We call this form of sliding sideways while looking at
a street facade a street slide. Finally we integrate annotations and a
mini-map within the user interface to provide geographic information
as well additional affordances for navigation. We demonstrate
our Street Slide system on a series of intersecting streets in an urban
setting. We report the results of a user study, which shows that
visual searching is greatly enhanced with the Street Slide interface
over existing systems from Google and Bing.