I’m not there but I’m trying to keep abreast with what’s going on. Fortunately, this is a lot easier to do than ever before. Twitter and Seesmic are updating me with observations from people who’s opinions I respect and my rss reader is busy gathering feeds. There are also a number of tools I can use to ‘manually’ find content – digg, del.icio.us, hashtags etc.

But sifting through the gossip, chatter, informed opinion, official texts, party videos etc etc to identify key themes, opinions and zeitgeist is a daunting task.

Established publishing channels such as Wired seem to be doing a good job of recording key moments and general observations. But I’m not totally certain their reporting is accurate. What if they are completely failing to notice the Twitter buzz around a new application?

What I’m faced with is my perception of trust and authority in the recording of this event. I need to employ a number of methods to build a complete picture of the conference as there isn’t one source to do that for me. I trust that I’ll be presented with well informed, intelligent, crafted commentary from the Wired blog, and I also trust my Twitter and Seesmic friends to reflect zeitgeist and offer their expert opinion.

What I need is a website where I can get a roundup of what the Twitterverse is buzzing about, what’s being discussed on Seesmic, what’s being blogged, rated, bookmarked and so on.

I’d still like to read ‘professional’ editorial and interpretation but this and the user generate content would complement each other in order to present a holistic vision of – in this case – SXSW.

I wonder if this is the approach established news publishers will need to move towards in order to survive changing perceptions of authority and the inevitable mainstream establishment of user generated content?

What do people think? Does anything like this already exist?

To be honest, I was sceptical beforehand and my scepticism was at first confirmed by being one of only about 5 people with a laptop, and there being no free wi-fi. Am I too ‘un-conferenced’ these days?

Anyway, in actual fact the day turned out to be extremely useful with a consistently high calibre of speaker and a few genuinely interesting case studies.

Abbreviated notes and comments:

• The established media clearly don’t ‘get it’ if they think (according to Shane Richmond) that bloggers are official spokespeople for the brand. But hey, it’s something we need to be aware of
• Applying a persona to your programme may help focus and inform the nature of engagement
• Apparently the mobile internet isn’t worth talking about
• Some established media giants might actually think people will always read print newspapers
• I like what Kodak are doing with 1000 words & 1000 nerds. After all, experience IS the product
• Oh how I love stats
• Penguin are doing some really exciting things with social media – engaging interest groups and facilitating user-generated content, merging on- and off-line
  (Wondering how they’ll respond when faced with the same challenges the music industry are currently facing. Hoping book publishers will learn from music publishers mistakes)
• Will McInnes twitters, and said some interesting things like:
  • Negative reviews generate conversions AND reduce product returns (because expectations are lower)
  • You demonstrate confidence by linking to competitors
  • Fake people are so much better than real people

  And he also wrote up his thoughts from the day here.

• 12-14 year olds trust unknown peers more than experts and they are source agnostic. And deys de future, man
• Authority is now with the ‘louder voice’ rather than seniority

…the means of production and dissemination are shifting, and the cacophony of internet voices means we all feel lost in the woods.

bbc.co.uk

Really?

This implies that online audiences are in a permanent state of confusion over what is trustworthy, accurate, expert, authoritative, etc.

In this increasingly media-savvy generation, are people really that confused about the nature of user-generated content?