Readers of Online Marketing Blog may know that after last week’s WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference, I stayed over the weekend in Austin for the Interactive portion of SXSW. I’ve heard up to 9,000 people were registered for the SXSWi event and by looking at the conference sessions, hallways and restaurants/bars, it was undoubtedly the place to be. Below is a summary of my brief time at SXSWi in picutures where search marketing, social media and public relations people converged, networked, talked and listened.
If there were baseball cards for internet marketing and social media superstars then these three would be Upper Deck Premium: David Berkowitz of 360i, Frank Gruber from AOL and Brian Solis, owner of FutureWorks PR
Charlene Li, previously with Forrester and now founder of the Altimeter Group, presenting on the future of social networks. Summed up in 9 words: “Socnets are like air and in Google we trust”
If you want the Godmother of PR & social media measurement, here she is: The one and only Katie Paine
Dave McClure aka 500hats & Foodzie People strike a pose at the Driskill
Let’s Get Social! Peter Kim, previously with Forrester and now with a well funded startup in stealth mode, Liz Strauss and Aaron Strout from Powered, connecting in the Techset Blogger Lounge
Search Marketers Todd Friesen of Position Technologies & Scott Polk of Bruce Clay with plenty of reasons to be happy
Amber Naslund of Radian6 & Jason Falls of Doe Anderson keeping lively at the Mohawk
Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy 360 PR & Rich Brooks are all smiles because the coffee is fresh. Kinda. In the blogger lounge.
Jeeze, this Jason Falls guy is everywhere! Hanging out with Krista Neher aka Marketess & Jason Baer in the Blogger lounge
A press room will never look like this at a conference. I wonder if some people ever left the blogger lounge. I think they reported on the entire SXSWi event without having to go anywhere because everyone came to the Techset lounge eventually. Even Willie Nelson’s daughter came and sang for a bit.
Hey search marketing people, remember our favorite Yahoo PR person, Heather Meeker? Here she is in a BlogWorldExpo sandwich with founders Rick Calvert & Dave Cynkin. Heather now works for Whrrl
Ah ha, more search marketing people (Tony Adam of Yahoo and Kate Morris of New Edge Media) and there’s that Polk fellow again. This time at Stubb’s BBQ for the Diggnation broadcast. Or maybe it was just for the beer.
Chris Brogan of Chris Broganland and Scott Monty of Ford chatting it up in the Pepsi BlogTalkRadio Pavillon.
Social meets Search. Chris Heuer of AdHocnium and Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing
Pedicabs on 6th Street are a welcome sight at 2am
Lee,
I was *so* very happy to finally meet you in Austin! Thanks so much for the great pics, and hope that we get a chance to say hello in person again very soon.
Cheers,
Amber
You bet Amber – it’s always nice to meet the person behind the name and I’m glad we had a chance to say hi in “real” life. 🙂
Lee – love the formate of your post. I’m going to steal it for my “picture” post.
Great to meet you IRL after following you for a while on Twitter. Awesome podcast too btw. We will hav it live on our blog.powered.com site in the next 3-4 days.
Best,
Aaron | @aaronstrout
Thanks Aaron, great meeting you in person as well. I appreciate the podcast interview and am looking forward to hearing it. Cheers, Lee
Looks like a ton of fun and good connections to be had. I’ll definitely go next year!
I assure you that my popupshop.com rookie card is totally worthless. Thanks for the note, and great seeing you out there.
Great seeing you too David – you are hands down, one of THE best writers & thinkers in our industry and it’s always good to see you in person.