Coming from a large company such as PepsiCo, it was a very different feeling to be surrounded by so many entrepreneurs. Besides admiration for their brave forays into the ranks of the self-employed, I feel greatly inspired by everyone’s willingness to collaborate, to help one another, to be open to new technologies and readiness to turn on a dime and head in a completely new direction. I assure you that I am hard at work on making sure that I infuse as many people as I can with that same inspiration.

Besides the feeling of inspiration, in my capacity as the Marketing lead for CONN3CT (TX), I want to harness the best ideas Austin Convention Center had to offer. The overarching topic of most panels I attended was the importance of social media in branding, marketing, communication, and engagement. This very site demonstrated to me just how much untapped talent resides in our little group – we embraced social media, became exemplary brand ambassadors, and genuinely engaged with our readers (who were fellow employees and consumers). My goal is to give CONN3CT members even more opportunities and platforms to represent their company to the world as brilliantly as they have done in the past few weeks.

Now, who’s with me???

As Internet denizens, perhaps even avid Twitter users, you may have gone online to express your… ahem… unfavorable thoughts on a particular brand, product, campaign or customer service failure. You know you’ve all complained about something. The $64K question becomes – does this ultimately help or hurt the company that has so thoughtlessly offended YOU (don’t they know who YOU are???)?

The answer lies in what exactly the company does with the information they receive from their customers. The beauty of social media is that for the first time ever, customers are able to talk back to corporations, and thanks to real-time web (shameless plug: read my post on real-time web here), the things that customers have to say really do matter. If companies respond by fixing the issue, overall perception of the brand will be positive. However, if the company uses social media as a marketing tool only and ignores complaints or questions, a brand’s image is likely going to suffer.

Now, because we’re close and I’m nice, I will let you in on a secret: I have found that asking a company to solve my issue through Twitter is an absolute shortcut through the clutter of 800-numbers, endless menus, and unhelpful customer service reps. Additionally, being a responsible Internet citizen, I shower the company with praise after issue resolution. Yet every time I type up a 140-character complaint, I wonder just how long this tiny customer-service shortcut will last – once *everyone* discovers the power of Twitter, it will probably become unsustainable for any company to operate their customer service through this platform.

There are 1.8B Internet users in the world today and they are all collectively tired of hitting the ‘refresh’ button to get the latest information. Enter real-time web.

What is it? The best example you’ve probably encountered is the newest Facebook redesign that refreshes your news feed automatically. In short, this is the entire concept – latest information coming to you without you having to ask your browser to synchronize.

Google has already incorporated real-time results into their searches, Twitter is obviously the very personification of real-time, and many other information providers are jumping on the bandwagon.

What does this all mean to you, lowly Internet user? For one, the original killer-app, email, may be on its way out – it’s simply too slow for what we’ve now come to expect (it may also be too private and not collaborative enough, but that’s a story for another post). Additionally, knowing that information comes to you faster, companies are able to offer their consumers time-sensitive deals via Twitter and other social media platforms.

Personally, I like all this speed – I say, the faster the better. Plus, if it saves me the trouble of pushing ‘refresh’ – my index finger thanks this new technology. Do you like your web in real-time? Discuss!

So, you asked for it and you got it – Tips for Remote Employees it is. PepsiCo execs – take note – your young professionals want to know more about making showering optional!

The panel was really more of a discussion which included most of the attendees (the majority of whom were remote employees). What were the most important tips? The general consensus was that overcommunication was key to successfully remoting to work – show your work, make sure your boss knows exactly what you are working on, and make sure that you have regular check-ins with the rest of your team.

Many people felt like sometimes they were forgotten or left out of the loop because they worked remotely – volunteering for new projects, being made like they are part of a larger team through recognition, and continuing to over-communicate were agreed on as possible remedies for this situation. One surprising consensus was that it was far better to have an entire team be remote as opposed to just one member – this way no one was ever excluded from conference calls or team meetings.

Tools such as video-conferencing, IM and Basecamp were mentioned as the top tools to make working with a remote team much more efficient.

As one might expect, many of SxSWi attendees are involved in the technology sector – the remote employees in the room were mostly programmers and coders. What do you guys think – could working remotely be instituted in a company such as PepsiCo where so many people are not in IT?

Now that the bandage has been ripped off, let’s get to the meat of the presentation. The speakers talked about the old paradigm of phone-person interactions (click on app, interact, click off, repeat as necessary) becoming outdated and being replaced with the new paradigm of a live view of physical world augmented by meta data. In other words, you will be on your phone at all times. Even when you are not on the phone, it will be generating information and interacting with your surroundings on your behalf.

The grand hypothesis was that the next iteration of your phone will not be something you hold in your hands, but something you wear (such as the lovely glasses i have on in the photo above. With your phone being able to see what you see, it will also let you see things that are not necessarily there – virtual objects, pets, avatars, grafitti ‘tags’, etc.

Moreover, combining your phone’s compass, GPS, and new seeing-abilities, in the near future, your phone will be able to label the building you’re looking at so that once and for all you’ll know if you are gazing at the Hitchcock or the Sears tower (given that you are in Chicago and are wandering around the Loop aimlessly). Your phone will also be able to recognize what paintings you’re looking at inside the Art Institute (you’re still on that hypothetical trip to Chicago, remember?) and point you to a Wikipedia page with further information.

OK, so your phone cannot taste your kitchen experiments for you just yet, but I, for one, look forward to these new developments coming very soon to an eyewear-enabled device near me!

All around me various young people rush off to get their BAs and MBAs, agonizing over their choice of school, concentration and trying to finish under the traditionally-allotted time. PepsiCo spends a lot of time and effort to recruit from traditional school campuses virtually every year. Many Conn3ct members attended a prestigious school or two.

Yet here are two respected professors from Miami of Ohio, telling a room full of people that departments within universities shouldn’t exist and that tenure should be abolished. In fact, they were positively giddy in describing the choices that online learning and teaching provides students and adamant that online degrees 9or no degrees at all) are the way of the future.

Being something of an educational theory junkie (hi, I’m Julia and I’m a dork – as such, I am contractually and genetically obligated to be interested in bizarre topics), I appreciate this novel view of the secondary educational landscape of the future. However, I also am cautious to embrace it – I still feel that online-only education lacks certain quality control. Furthermore, with the for-profit education on the rise, I wonder what will happen to all philosophy, gender studies, and other non-commercial topics of education.

Did you go the traditional route of education? Did you like it? Was something lacking? Give me your thoughts

So, when I saw the name for the panel was ‘Cooking For Geeks,’ I obviously had to check it out.

And let me tell you, this certainly did not disappoint. The audience got to figure out if they were ‘Super-Tasters’ – i.e. people with more taste buds than others. Alas, I was not – it seems that I am not destined to become a master chef.

The news is not all bad though. If you are not a super-taster, you require less salt and less sugar on your food. This, of course got me thinking – how do we account for people’s differing taste buds in our product development? R&D people, chime in here? What kind of super-secret taste tests do you guys perform? And can I participate even though I’m not a super-taster? Pretty please?

I am also in the midst of packing – let’s see what should I bring? I’ve never been to SxSW so I assume comfortable shoes…erm…I own no comfortable shoes. I suppose I shall be mingling with the web’s best and brightest minds, so footwear is the least of my worries.

Speaking of mingling, let me tell you how excited I am for this whole experience! As you’ve undoubtedly read in my intro blurb (located somewhere on this page, I’m sure), I lead Marketing and PR for Conn3ct. What is Conn3ct, you ask? We are a global PepsiCo group for young professionals. We work to develop the future leaders of PepsiCo and if in the process we get a few VPs to set up twitter accounts, so much the better, amirite?

And as a young professional, what better place to catch the latest trends, meet the up-and-comers, and share our experiences than at SxSW Interactive?

So, bear with me while I throw some uncomfortable shoes in a suitcase, jump in my car and race down the highway (strictly adhering to the speed limit, of course, kids!) to Austin. Follow my posts to find out the latest in social media, networking, marketing and don’t be surprised if some of the best ideas get implemented at PepsiCo!

Want to know more? Have a panel or question in mind you want me to attend or ask? I am at your service – just comment on a post or send me a tweet (@smeeshok).

It’ll be fun!