Carina's First digestion of SXSW

Dear Fallon SXSW readers:

This is overwhelming. There is so much good information, and so many great people to meet. It seems that every time you turn around, you find someone fascinating who you just have to keep in touch with. From vendors to mentors, every one is here.

Few takeaways from the day:
Adobe / SEO: I promised a less geeky translation. The bottom line is that Flash is a movie, and SEO can be implemented if you put invisible pauses in the movie. The key is deciding where those go, and why they go there. Which leads me to the biggest takeaway of that session: PLAN. Every project needs more planning time to manage SEO expectations, and to decide what we even want to archive out of SEO.

Another note about this one: People are why the Flash/SEO stuff is a big deal. This is the first time that Adobe as a company has put out an official POV on it. www.adobe.com/go/seo to check it out. Adobe gives it a strong voice.

Emerging Mobile Trends was packed today. The big talk was regarding augmented reality, and how cool that could be for mobile. Think - augmented reality meets location aware device, and you have something way cool to play with. The augmented reality piece comes in with cameras on the phone. You can point the camera at these special shapes, and boom, an AR experience. See:



The next cool conversations were about image recognition and the possibilities surrounding that. The camera can be very very smart, and it could recognize a shape of an apple or the design of a logo.

Biggest takeaways from this: The image recognition has the possibility to transform a 2d, one stop user experience, such as seeing a logo, into a much much deeper engaging experience with just one click. Theoretically, pointing your camera at a Gap logo could pull up Gap.com or if you'd prefer, launch a Gap application on your phone.

Another one: Pay attention to Europe and Asia - they have had all this technology for a long time. There are cultural differences as far as use goes, but mostly our technology is playing catchup to theirs. Even the iphone is totally uncool in Japan.

Next biggest takeaway: image recognition is coming. Right now, AR comes from seeing a special symbol. Soon, you'll be able to point your phone at an avocado and have an AR experience.

I am out of wind. Those two were great. The YPulse Panel was great, and I'll dig in tomorrow.