Get Out the (Powered) Vote for SXSW 2011

It's hard to believe that it's THAT time already but it is THAT time already. What time is "THAT" time you ask? Time to start voting for your favorite South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) panels.

This year, I'm in the enviable position of having several Powered colleagues have panels that made it to the next round. The only downside of having so many great submissions make it through is trying to promote everyone's panels while NOT pissing everyone off that follows me/us. To that end, I'm trying to consolidate efforts by putting everyone's entrees in the same place.

Below you will find the following information for each of the panels:

• The title of the proposed panel
• The first sentence of the panel abstract
• The suggested speakers
• A link to the session (SO YOU CAN VOTE FOR IT)

Just remember, you need to sign up to vote. It takes less than a minute and doesn't cost you anything (and the folks at SXSW are very respectful of not spamming people to death).

1. Marrying for Money: The ROI of Relationships
   You CAN measure the ROI of relationships - personally, and professionally, and this seminar will show you how. No spreadsheets needed for this lecture, and only minimal algebra...
   Jen van der Meer -  VP Analytics, Powered
   
   
2. Flip the Funnel: Retention is the New Acquisition
   What if we got it all wrong? What if we've been going about marketing strategy completely the wrong way?
   Joe Jaffe - Chief Interrupter, Powered
   
   
3. VideoBlogging: Go from Amateur to Outstanding
   You have a video camera and a YouTube Channel – now what? This panel will be a “Master Class” in online video and teach the next steps in building momentum in the online video space...
   Joe Jaffe - Chief Interrupter, Powered
   
4. Is the Marketing Microsite Dead?
   Thanks to advances in technology and the rapid adoption of social media platforms by consumers globally,  marketers,  brand managers and their agencies are all discussing the pros and cons of driving consumers to marketing "microsites" vs. social media destinations like Facebook,  MySpace and even Twitter where they're already spending time...
   Adam Keats, Weber Shandwick, Joe Jaffe, Powered, Bonin Bough, Pepsi.
   
   
5. Everyone’s Wrong about Influence. Except your Customers
   What is influence? For a decade, Malcom Gladwell's The Tipping Point has served as a touchstone for those who believe that influence resides in the hands of a select few. Not so, says a new generation of marketers. They believe that thanks to the democratizing power of the Internet, anyone can be an Influential...
   Valeria Maltoni - Director Strategy, Powered
   
   
6. Your Content Stinks! Drive results with Content Marketing
    Are you creating content that drives results? Marketers are jumping on the content marketing bandwagon in droves, creating mountains of boring, useless, copycat content that has no impact on their business...
   David Meerman Scott, author, Jay Baer, Convince and Convert, Joe Pulizzi, Junta42, Valeria Maltoni - Director Strategy, Powered
   
   
7. Get Big Results by Thinking and Acting Small
   Each day the world sees more than 1 million new blog posts, tens-of-millions of tweets, hundreds-of-millions of new pieces of Facebook content, and more than 1 billion YouTube videos...
   Greg Verdino - VP Strategy, Powered
   
   
8. Cage Match: Social vs Video
   Social media and online video battle for mindshare among marketers. Which one totally rules? We’ll lock Craig Wax, CEO of Invodo and Natanya Anderson, VP of Content Strategy and Delivery at Powered, in a cage (metaphorically – or maybe literally) to duke it out. Tim Walker will enforce the rules...
   Natanya Anderson, Powered, Tim Walker, Breaking Point Systems, Craig Wax, Invodo
   
9. Using Online Video to Build Your Company's Audience
   With over 24 hours of video being uploaded every minute on YouTube and over 56 hours of video being uploaded per minute to lifestreaming sites such as UStream and Justin.tv, companies are starting to use videoblogs as a way of directly reaching out to new and existing customers...
   Melissa Pierce - VeriSign (Powered client)
   
   
10. The Steroid Culture of Social Media: You Use?
    Ever think about taking shortcuts to boost your numbers? You know, the numb that show the success of all those interactive social media marketing programs. The numbers that decide your end of year bonus...
    Tim Walker (Breaking Point Systems), Laura Beck (Too Short Productions), Kyle Flaherty (Breaking Point Systems) and Aaron Strout (that's me!)
    
    
11. The ROI of Customer-centricity
    While some of us are single-mindedly focused on social media as a phenomenon,  we often lose sight of the source of its importance...namely,  its ability to enable companies to be more customer-centric...
    Frank Eliason (Citi), Jess Berlin (Cirque du Soleil), Reem Abeidoh (GroupM Search) and Aaron Strout
    
    
12. Generation C: Changing the Future of Business... Forever!
    Forget about Gen X and Gen Y,  it's all about Gen C -- the Content Generation. Business is changing and content is becoming king...
    Edward Boches (Mullen), Sydney Owen (Weber Shandwick), Sherry Lowry (Lowry Group) and Aaron Strout
    
    
13. Road Rules for Mentorship: What's Appropriate (and What's Not)In a world where the saying "it's all about who you know" is more and more relevant across multiple platforms,  mentoring is more important than ever...
    Sydney Owen and Aaron Strout

What's in it for you you ask? Include the name of your panel and a link and I promise that I'll go over and throw you a vote as a little thank you for your participation. And if you don't have a panel, just consider that I owe you one should you choose to vote for any/all of the panels above.

Hey SXSW. Got .tv?

With a nod to dystopian classic, Animal farm, you may have heard the quote "all [clients] are equal, but some [clients] are more equal than others. To that end, our newest client, VeriSign (the company best known for doling out "dot com" or "dot net" domain names), happens to fall into the "more equal" category. So it shouldn't surprise you to hear that they chose to kick off an exciting project at the event that has been dubbed by outsiders as "geek spring break" aka SXSW Interactive.

Which project you ask? Well, let's just say it involves creating awareness around the .tv domains -- considered less valuable in the past -- to meet the growing need of video creators (like my colleague, Joe Jaffe) to showcase their stuff. Seriously, this is a perfect way whether your an individual or a company to showcase your commitment to video. Rather than hunting and pecking, customers/fans searching for video content can simply replace the "dot com" or "dot net" at the end of your URL and immediately see all of your video content in a single view.

To help generate excitement and education around this new initiative, the Powered and VeriSign teams have created some fun activities over the next few days to help you get started if you're new to video or get seen if you're already a video maven:

• southby.tv: First of all, you'll want to check out southby.tv. Whether or not you're at SXSW, it's a great place to get a look at some of the cool stuff happening in Austin -- shot by the real people who are in the thick of things. As we say on the site,southby.tv is a "living diary" showcasing video content from the insiders at the festival. Which brings us to point #2 -- if you're at the event and have your video camera or phone in hand, your content can be part of the southby.tv line-up. Just hit the site, follow the submission instructions and your clips may be chosen by our curation crew.
• You can be the Next .tv Star: We're not just giving you a chance to have your SXSW clips appear on our site; we're giving you a chance to hit the weblebrity big leagues (eww, yes, I ready said weblebrity.) All over the event, we'll be shooting audition videos for anyone who wants a chance to win a cool prize package and a shot at being a correspondent for an upcoming Best of .tv web show. The prize includes an all expense paid trip to San Francisco where you'll spend the day backstage at Revision3 and get a private video production coaching session from Diggnation producer Dave Prager, one of the guys behind one of the web's most widely watched video series. And of course, you could become a Best of .tv correspondent...
• Read on for more details about how you can audition in Austin over the next few days. Or visit southby.tv to submit an audition directly (and to learn all the rules and legal stuff, of course.)
• The .tv Street Team: We'll have a team roaming the event, shooting audition videos for anyone who wants a shot at being the next .tv star and handing out must-have swag. Be on the lookout and make sure you say howdy (or whatever it is they really say in Texas...)
• The Bigg Digg Shindigg: .tv is sponsoring Saturday night's Live Diggnation event (7pm at Stubbs BBQ). We'll have a big ol' tent where we'll be shooting auditions for the next .tv star and doing some other fun stuff, so be sure to check it out. If you can't be there, you can also watch the fun when the Diggnation episode hits iTunes.
• Special Offers: And finally, to coincide with .tv's SXSW presence, we will have special offers for anyone looking for an excuse to get going with video. Check out the offers page on southby.tv for your shot at freebies and more.

Special thanks to my friend and colleague, Greg Verdino, who let me -- willingly or unwillingly -- "borrow" some of his images and bullets for this post. You can read his more eloquent post on this topic here.