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

Think about social games that give you achievements or badges for completing tasks (Farmville), or for checking in at different locations (Four Square), the ability to add a sub game to the actual activity you are asking your users to undertake really drives their usage and behavior. The ability to get people to undertake undesirable tasks, like exercise and turn it into a game (Nike+) gives more incentive for continuing to engage in that activity.

The concept is to align incentives with desired behavior. Encouraging networking, collaboration, and being able to track metrics or points tied to a specific goal can motivate and encourage! Think of all the scorecards and metrics we use at work; the ability to pit teams and locations against each other in their drive to achieve business results.

It also applies for consumers, turning consumption and product use into a game. Our ability to link products and usage and provide a social or community aspect allowing them to achieve points, or allowing them to unlock unique experiences for groups could be a way to responsibly encourage consumption. There is of course limits to the things we can do and we must always remain socially responsible.

I would encourage everyone to get a feel for what the panel discussed; there is a ‘game’ for Excel and Word called Ribbon Hero, click here to download. You can link it to your Facebook account and it gives incentives for trying, using, and experiencing MS Office. Give it a shot, and maybe that next PowerPoint deck you put together will score you some mad points! Happy Gaming!

There are a number of developers and graphic artists working and showing off their wares, giving attendees the chance to see how the drawing process works and letting them try out the latest in games. There was a great RockBand setup, featuring the new RockBand Network allowing independent artists to get their songs up on RockBand, sharing them all over the world. There was also a great section of the room dedicated to the classic art completed by some of the artists who design our favorite games. It was interesting to see how their artistic talent translates into a game and onto a canvas.

SxSW’s game focus is growing and the ScreenBurn Arcade really provided an opportunity to showcase the fun side of the digital experience!

Panelists from YouTube, TED, and OK Go shared their thoughts; most important was that it was all about the content. Having video that was inspirational, surprising, or provided unexpected wonder or unexpected combinations were more successful than negative messages that usually don’t spread. The panelists also talked about the two types of viral videos, viral by accident (family or home movies that catch fire), or viral on purpose, those created with the desire to generate views.

The concept that production values were an important part of the formula only in that they matched the message in the video was evident. The shaky cam in the backyard, or the professional multi-camera experience at an event like TED, were what made a video more able to go viral.The panelists were all adamant about allowing videos to be embedded and that having exclusivity for the videos significantly hindered their ability to reach the largest audience as possible, everyone always ends up on YouTube. Metadata was also discussed and how important it is to generating searches, and that fooling the audience with a fake cover screen grab just leads to angry users.

At Frito-Lay we use user created content like our Crash the Super Bowl program, allowing users to upload their Doritos commercials. What it seems every entrant really wants to do is create the most viral video so that they get the votes and they potentially end up winning the ad rankings at the Super Bowl. Everyone can create a video but it takes a combination of talent and tools to make it a success.

Viral videos are a great way to get an idea out and the panelists certainly had a number of great ideas for creating your own!

Mark and Paul were both from the BBC and they demonstrated their memory prowess, Mark managed to memorize 30 random numbers on the spot and recall them back to us. They talked about how we have different types of memory, iconic memory which lasts about 100ms, short term memory lasting about 10 seconds which holds about 7 items and finally working memory which is a combination of short term memory plus experience. The trick to remember things is to be able to associate or file them with pictures or locations and put them into your long-term memory. The key was to use imagination and association! Their strategies were:

1)      The Link System – which is to take exaggerated ideas linking them to specific information. So tell yourself a crazy story and have each item be a trigger for a specific piece of information. Their example went from having Cruella DeVille riding an emu to a number of buffalos playing pool. Each trigger word was the name of a bar in Austin, not too shabby!

2)      The Mental Filing System – This is about assigning objects or words to items or places in a mental filing system. They suggested using a room you are sitting in (roaming room) by picking an item on the wall, then in the corner, then the door, etc. and assigning the information you want to remember to each item in the room.

3)      People’s Names – Their suggestion for remembering names was to, get the name and assign a picture to the name (Brian would be a brain, or Rich would be a pile of money, etc.). Then you put the picture on the person’s face assigning it to any unique feature about that person or just picturing the item or assigning it to the face.

4)      Memory Maps – The idea here is to build a memory map, see the picture, for ideas and concepts. You can assign pictures and more easily remember the map if you build with relevant words and only use one word per branch.

Let’s hear it from the readers, what additional techniques do you use to help you increase your memory and improve your ability to remember ideas?

The concept was that science fiction drives innovations and our creativity and new ideas are influenced by our experience. The world today is losing some its ability to dream, with the pending end of the space program the number of children who will be influenced into careers in science and engineering will be impacted without a driving force to fill that void. Adria asked the question, how can we inspire the future generations of tomorrow?

Being in R&D our ability to recruit and encourage students to pursue their passion in math and science is vitally important. Without the next generation of great engineers and scientists our ability to innovate and come up with the next great idea could be in danger. The session served to remind us that science fiction does more than tell a fun story it provides a new way at looking at the world and inspires minds to think of ideas outside of the box!

New product ideas like our Mountain Dew Game Fuel relating to the over 10 million World of Warcraft players are only the start of possible product ideas and ways as a company that we can reach out to the gaming community. I hope to be able to share some ideas from a number of different sessions during both the Interactive and ScreenBurn events. I will be Tweeting from @Prime81 during the sessions and posting recaps after they are complete.

Feel free to post and start a discussion on any of the topics that interest you!