Interactive Austin 2008 Overview
Last Thursday (June 19th) was the first Interactive Austin conference. This year’s title was “Social Commerce at Work.” Live Oak 360 was a sponsor for the event and we were very excited to be involved. The event was sold out, which is always a great thing to hear and the first sign of a good event. The sold-out status was the first indicator regarding the demand and interest regarding social media in Austin. It’s no secret that social media is a hotbed of activity in this town. We’re all in sync with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. SXSW ensures that all the geeks can showcase their expertise by flocking to Austin each year in March. From the list of attendees and conversations that I had with them, social media is starting to make a dent in the enterprise. Small business folks see it as a way to get ahead of their larger competition. Enterprise folks see it as a way to tap into the smaller, but hungry markets. And everybody sees it as the next big thing. We had attendees who were buzzword-oblivious, but we also had folks that were heavily into all the latest social environments. From the back of the main conference call, looking out into the sea of laptops showed a combo of twitter.com and twemes.com/fg2 on nearly every screen.
The panelists were amazing. I thought they did a great job of really helping folks understand the momentum that is building and the amount of opportunity that is out there. What it boils down to is that we’re at the cusp of the social media wave. Those of us who have been “on the scene” for the last couple of years may be growing tired of the buzzword-bingo articles and conversations, but nevertheless, the opportunity is real and the market is ready.
