So long South by Southwest, what an experience and what a great event for PepsiCo and Conn3ct. As my bio mentions, I am in R&D at Frito-Lay so my ability to employ social media in my day-to-day job is limited but there were a number of great sessions that I was able to take some great skills from. I think that is why SxSW is so unique, it offers up unlimited opportunity to explore a number of different topics and allows each attendee to get out of the event what they want.

The two sessions that really made an impact, and I hope I was able to convey the ideas in my other posts, were the ‘Memory Matters’ session, and the ‘Turning Work Into Play’ session; both had some lessons I have already started applying in my day-to-day activities. The tricks for the memory matter with regard to remembering names was great. Taking a person’s name, associating it with an object or idea and ‘assigning it’ to the person whose name you want to remember really does work! Additionally, the ability to turn every-day tasks into a game, or encourage or promote work by making it ‘fun’ and adding a game aspect also has its uses. I think the concept could be even bigger for marketing and communication, but don’t think we don’t know how to have fun in R&D!

SxSW was unique in that there were so many ways people communicated with each other, Four Square for location check-ins, following certain hash tags on Twitter, sending updates through Facebook, a number of different video sites, and even more! It just goes to show that if your message isn’t getting across try sending it in another format. As part of Conn3ct it was a great opportunity to showcase our brand culture and bring a bit of the social media experience back to the rest of organization. PepsiCo made a great impression all week; the networking opportunities and the ability to serve as ambassadors for the company was excellent and besides it was a lot of fun!

Don’t think that the whole weekend was work, having to blog took time but the weekend was a a blast! The Burlesque and Cupcakes party, the PepsiCo hosted event at the Cedar Street Courtyard, and the Mashable event at Buffalo Billiards were among my favorites.

I hope that I was able to bring a bit of SxSW to the readers and I hope that in the future we are able to send more Conn3ct ambassadors to share the ever evolving experience of South by Southwest with the rest of PepsiCo. Feel free to post comments or questions, I look forward to hearing from you. Signing out for this year!

David Stein