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I went into this keynote with no expectations, having never heard of either Jane McGonigal or Alternate Reality Gaming (for a great example of ARG, check out World Without Oil, one of Jane’s creations) before. In fact, I was debating whether or not to go to this or Secrets of JavaScript Libraries. However, I found this event to be unequivocally, the most inspiring and eye-opening event I attended during SXSW.

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First let me preface this by saying that if you are involved in the interactive industry and haven’t read Getting Real, you should. The way 37signals approaches web development really is a breath of fresh air. Although Jason Fried (President and Founder of 37signals) didn’t really share any concepts that hadn’t been communicated in some way or another in Getting Real at SXSW, it was great to hear it directly from the man behind it all (note: Jason ended up sharing 14 lessons instead of 10).

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I don’t really need to post about this as it has been covered just about everywhere you can think of, but since I was there, I thought I would share my thoughts on it and provide a couple updates to the story. First of all, I didn’t think Sarah Lacy’s questions were that bad. I found some of them to be quite insightful. I was just more upset at how she started off the interview by attempting to humiliate Zuckerberg (very odd considering she was hand-picked by Facebook). He clearly wasn’t totally at ease to begin with and isn’t known to be very open so I doubt embarrassing him would encourage him to open up.

Also, her conversational interview style didn’t seem to work too well for him as she ended up talking far more than I think anybody would have liked to hear, leading to the mob uprising. While the way the audience reacted was not warranted, she reacted very poorly to the situation. If she had ignored them, the interview would have likely had a happier ending. Instead, she went on the defensive, lashing out at the audience and even her interviewee.

To make matters worse, in an interview she gave at a party shortly after the fiasco (nearly 40,000 views so far), she put the blame on not only the audience, but also the organizers, implying that what she was talking about was over the heads of the audience and that SXSW isn’t a good forum for someone of Mark Zuckerberg’s stature (funnily enough, he showed up and did an open Q&A at a Facebook Develop Garage the next day to some acclaim).

This dissolved all sympathy I had for her as her reaction to the situation clearly put her at just as much fault as the audience. Regardless of who was to blame this should have been the point where she apologized and admitted to having had a tough day, instead she insults the audience that includes a number of key influencers that could have a profound impact of the sales of her upcoming book. I wonder how her publishers reacted. I would love to know what their sales projections were for the book before the interview and whether or not they have shifted and in what direction.

Related Links
Full video of the interview
Sarah Lacy’s first article for Business Week in the aftermath (still unapologetic)

In a succinct presentation, Charlene Li from Forrester Research presented a process that can be used to create a social media strategy, identified some examples of how companies had used social media to their advantage and gave the audience some tips on where to start. While several members of the audience expressed disappointment (through the Meebo chat) that the strategies used in many of the examples Charlene provided are now fairly common place or part of most social media strategist’s consideration sets, I think those audience members missed the point.

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I thought I would share a brief outline of what I have done to date at SXSW Interactive and share some brief thoughts on what I have seen. I decided to combine Days 1 and 2 as Day 1 wasn’t really too eventful. I will likely be expanding on some of the thoughts/threads below in the coming days.

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I just arrived in Austin for SXSW Interactive and will be posting some coverage over the next few days. I am looking forward to some great panels and keynotes.