A SXSWi plan

So I’m going to South by South West Interactive, the geek segment of the mighty SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, USA. There’ll be four full days from March 8th to 11th featuring all manner of events about stuff related to “the internet” and related things. The thing is, I’m not going under my own steam. I’m being sent and while details of who’s sending me and why will emerge when they’re ready to announce them, suffice to say I and a few others are being sent on behalf of the West Midlands.

Now, I could treat this as a big jolly and spend all my time at parties or I could actually do something useful here. I intend to do the latter (and spend some time at parties, naturally) and since it’s a big “interactive” event and I’m a big blogging nerd it makes sense to, y’know, get all interactive.

The idea I’m developing is that I will be a conduit for others to virtually attend the event. An avatar, if you like. Say you’re really interested in, to pick one at random, Tim Shey’s “Quit Your Day Job and Vlog” talk. If you’re the first to peg me for that timeslot then I’ll attend it for you. If you want a video I’ll do that. If you’d like me to ask a question on your behalf I can do that. If you’d like me to switch on Skype and pipe it through to you directly I can try and do that too.

Another more general idea would be to use a blog, let’s call it SXSWBrum (which by my reckoning is Longbridge), which all of us can use to keep everyone back home posted on what’s going on. Not in a “having a fantastic time and you’re not here, suckers!” but the opposite. People can give us tasks to do, people to seek out, questions to ask in panels, anything that they would do if they were there. And as we report back on the day, posting up photos, video, Twitter feeds, IM conversations and all that jazz, the subsequent conversations with back home can influence how the next day unfolds.

I’d say it’s early days but we do fly off in a month (!) so I’m open to any other ideas along these lines. There’s probably two prongs to it all – connecting the West Mids and SXSWi and showcasing how all this techy stuff can work in a real world situation. Think big, people, but keep it simple.