As you saw in my bio, I work in Talent Acquisition for PepsiCo. I attend about four major national conferences/conventions per year to recruit candidates and represent PepsiCo. I had expected SXSW to be somewhat similar to these other conferences. Boy was I wrong! It was a power packed event and it was amazing. I thought I would be attending a few seminars and hanging out at the PepsiCo booth. This was so much more… There was so much to do, so much to see and this event definitely put the SOCIAL in social media. Here is a 1:25 second video that is seeing SXSW through my lens….

I really hope you enjoyed my blog, videos, tweets and Foursquare check-in at all hours.

A big, big thank you to the PepsiCo Social Media Team (especially Bonin Bough, Josh Karpf and Jaime Soper) and the Weber Shandwick team. The organization behind this event was amazing – From the pre-SXSW training to the technology help sessions, you were amazing. I also want to thank Conn3ct and especially Christa Cooley for the opportunity to represent PepsiCo as an ambassador as such a cool event.

See you on Twitter or Foursquare,
@jimschnyder

Demo of the Sobe “Share The Ink” kiosk at SXSW Interactive. The Sobe tent at Sxsw interactive featured the ability to snap a photo, select a tattoo, place it on your picture and then share it with your friends. It was pretty cool….

The best new iPhone app has to be FourSquare.   For anyone who has not heard of this application for the iPhone, you will.  Shortly.  Think Twitter about a year ago.  It emerged onto the SXSW scene and hit it like that “Pants On the Ground” song did to American Idol this year.

 FourSquare is an application that utilizes GeoTracking.  Your mobile device has the ability to track your whereabouts – if you let it.  Foursquare leverages this technology and enables you to “Check-In” to a location if you are near it. 

 Why “Check In?”  Well, the FourSquare app has the ability to “alert” all your friends that you just walked in to a restaurant, bar, are at the Cowboy game or even on a plane.  Plus, the brilliant minds that built this app have made it a sort of competition and award you for certain check-ins with “badges”.  This is not something you wear on your sleeve like in Boy Scouts, but this is a virtual badge.  If you are the person that “Checks In” the most at a specific location, you also have the ability to become “The Mayor” of that venue and your picture and name are shown every time someone checks in there.

 O.K., so where does the party chasing come in???  Well, one cool thing that FourSquare does is it shows you “Trend data.”  This is nothing more than the number of check-ins at a specific location.  Why is this important?  If you are at a conference and want to be seen at the biggest and coolest parties, you just need to watch the number of check-ins or trend data.  There are 300 people that are checked-in over at Stubbs?  Let’s go!!!    Ever at a lame party?  Look at the trend data and chase the party. 

What do you get as a Party Chaser?  Well, there’s a badge for that – the Swarm.

Bonin Bough, PepsiCo’s Global Director of Digital and Social Media, talks about a few of the activities the company is sponsoring at 2010 SxSW Interactive.

I did a little digging and found a link that states this.  It is a really good article about the whole SXSW event and some history. 

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/top-stories/sxsw-stays-course-continues-growth-1.2189966

Key quote from the Daily Texan Online link about is:
“Beth Krauss, spokeswoman for the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau, said registration for the interactive conference is up almost 40 percent from 2009, surpassing the 10-percent increase from 2008 to 2009.”

About halfway through the presentation, a member of the audience asked one of the co-presenters a question about the best ways to get your resume into a company…and that’s when things changed!   Our friend the presenter said, “Well, we have three recruiters right here in the front row, so why don’t we ask them?”  The session quickly changed to an informal panel discussion – with me being one of three people answering questions and offering tips and tricks to job seekers. 

Audience members were asking for our opinions around LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook in the employment process and we were also critiquing their tactics.  There were a lot of best practices shared and advice given to them- some which was totally counter to their tactics.  You can imagine why the crowd started referring to the three of us as the American Idol judges after a while.    It was great to be able to help a number of people in their search for a new role.

 This is my first South By Southwest (Sxsw) experience and I am absolutely honored to have the opportunity to be in Austin at the event.  I have learned a ton about new technologies and ways to leverage Social Media in the last 24 hours.  Imagine having all of the experts in your field talking about the new cool tools they are using and what the future looks like for Social Media.  This is Sxsw Interactive!

 The PepsiCo team has done a world-class job of presenting and showcasing the brands and the booth.  Free product!   Check out the picture of the PepsiCo Zeitgeist – a totally interactive media production.  This is six video screens highlighting the various activities going on here at Sxsw.

I have been enjoying the iPhone application called FourSquare.  When you arrive anywhere in Austin, you open FourSquare and “check in”.  Immediately, all of your friends are alerted and you can see who is there (or recently was there).  At a conference, this is really helpful. 

Another cool tool for the iPhone has been Glympse.  I actually have set this up to allow the app to “geo-track” me for about four hours.  Friends are able to know where I am (if desired).    I am at the PepsiCo Podcast Playground right now.  Click on the link (or paste into your browser) to see where I am on the map.  http://www.glympse.com/Y3Y-HEX  

 More to come!

Jim