Austin, Texas

Tony Hsieh is CEO of Zappos.com the world’s largest online shoe retailer.

Approx half the room has purchased from Zappos. 2-1 Female/male buyer ratio.

(I’m sitting near Darryl Orht from Plaid.)

Tony originally co-founded another dot com that was sold to Microsoft. Left when lost desire to turn up to work.

Zappos was a company he invested in (one of several) then decided to work in.

Zappos is about the brand and excellent customer service. Doesn’t see it staying as a shoe retailer only. Could be an airline in the future.

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Austin, Texas

The South by South West Interactive festival is underway in Austin and the tech-set crowd had descended from all corners of the globe.

The first thing to try to comprehend is the size of this event. It is massive. Thousands and thousands of the web industry elite have come to learn, listen and speak. Its like Lollapallooza for the Twitter set.

And Twitter is once again a major topic on everyone’s lips. Two years ago Twitter was launched at SXSWi, but this year it is the main form of digital communication for the attendees. Everyone is tweeting their whereabouts, tracking each other down, announcing flash-parties and recording their thoughts and observations.

BlogTalkRadio interview tents

Needless to say, Twitter has been pushed to its physical limits and the fail whale has beached itself here a few times already.

The Austin Convention Center is also a massive venue, taking a good 15 minutes to walk from one side to the other. Rooms are jammed with various interactive panels and sponsors mini-events.

There’s an amazing carnival-like atmosphere throughout downtown Austin and everyone is incredibly friendly. They see the SXSW badges and just start talking.

Given the scale of the event and shear volume of panels, sessions and parties, its nearly impossible to work to a plan. Its best to just go with the flow and be very fluid in your thinking. One minute you’re heading to a panel, the next you’ve been invited to a local bar to have a chat with someone.

The SXSW Interactive Festival officially kicked off around noon on Friday 13 Mar, but Thursday night was already in full swing. Once we picked up our badges/passes, here were several pre-launch parties in the downtown area that lasted well into the morning.

Pepsico SXSW Interactive display

Mack Collier told me prior to arriving that the social events are more important than the panels and I’m starting to believe him. You can suddenly find yourself at a restaurant table or bar stool talking to a dot com start up legend, Weblebrity, or social media guru.You can learn more in 5 minutes there than 2 or 3 sessions.

In the last two nights I have had drinks and chats with (in no order, and I will forget more names than I remember): Dave Armano (@armano), Kevin Rose (@kevinrose), Kevin Gawthrope (@gawthrok), Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee), Beth Harte (@bethharte), Heather Rast (@heatherrast), Jeffrey Kalmikoff (@jeffrey), Ken Yeung (@kyeung808), Jason Baer (@jaybaer), Seth from TNT (@mostlymuppet), Leigh Duncan-Durst (@livepath), and Rebecca Caroe (@rebeccacaroe). There are so many more but its hard to keep track of everyone.

SXSW is a mind-blowing experience. Its almost impossible to take it all in and not suffer sensory overload. Its one event every web-focussed business person should get to.

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Media Hunter on Tour

I flew to LA this week on the new V Australia and was very impressed with the whole experience.

Qantas has totally dominated this route for years and the quality of their service has noticeably dropped over time, so a new competitor is very welcome.

The V Australia experience begins at check-in which is efficient, friendly and even fun as the staff hand out Mintis to the queue and wave Aussie flags. At LAX the V Australia staff were still at work helping guide us through immigration and baggage collection.

The new Boeing 777-300 is spotless and quite comfortable. It had more legroom than I’ve been used to on longhaul flights and the in-flight entertainment system is amazing. Movies, music, videos, TV shows, games and more. Each seat comes with a USB port for charging computers and smart phones, so you can get more done on the flight.

The flight crew are typically Virgin. Very friendly and relaxed.

The food is more than adequate but a warning on drinks folks. Only the first alcoholic beverage is complimentary. You pay after that. Boonie would go broke.

Best of all, the new planes are faster. We did the trip in 12.5 hours, the fastest I’ve ever flown to the US for sure.

The flight was full, but that was only after V sold plenty of heavily discounted seats in the week leading up to departure. The guys sitting in my row had both purchased tickets in the last week for $1000AUD.

If you are considering a Sydney/LA flight soon then I recommend giving V Australia a go. And keep an eye out for cheap tickets, there should be plenty around this year.

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Later this week I will be in Austin, Texas for the South by South West Interactive Festival. SXSW is world-famous for its great presentations and even greater social events. Already my dance-card is looking very full between the daytime sessions and night time socialising.

Here are some of the people I am lined up to see and meet:

Alex Bogusky from Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Mack Collier publisher of The Viral Garden

Beth Harte from Harte Marketing and Communications

Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV

Gina Trapani from Lifehacker

Tony Hsieh, CEO of  Zappos.com

Merlin Mann creator of 43 Folders

CC Chapman from The Advance Guard

Loic Le Meur, Founder/CEO, Seesmic

Robert Scoble (announcing his new direction)

Dave Armano from Critical Mass

Marina Cilona from Pure Profile

There are many others I hope to run into in Austin, so it looks to be a very interesting trip. I’ll post news and views as they happen.

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Newcastle TV ratings week 10, 2009

As the weeks go by the Hunter ratings get more interesting. NBN last week was a clear winner with a 10.6 lead over Prime. This week that lead rises even higher to a 12.5 win. The most watched programs ladder says it all – NBN splashing 6 out of the 10 most watched programs with Prime only 3 on the board with the ABC and its new show ‘New Tricks’ jumping on to join the ride. It seems Novacastrian’s enjoy watching Australian made reality shows…….:Note to self.

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National TV ratings week ending 07 March 2009

Source: David Dale, Sun Herald blogs

Channel Seven easily won the first “normal” week of the ratings year, averaging 30.0 per cent of the prime time audience, to Nine’s 27.0 (Ten 21.7 thanks to NCIS and SYTYCDA, ABC 15.4, thanks to Spicks and Specks, and SBS 5.5, thanks to Top Gear).

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Next week I fly out to the US for a series of conferences, meetings and deal-making. The trip includes the South By South West Interactive (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas and the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.

I’ll be using this blog to report back on the latest news, announcements and activities in the world of media and marketing and advertising observations in the USA. I will also be including a big dose of the latest relevant tech news.

I will try to update as frequently as possible with photos, interviews and coverage of the main events. Of course, I will be on Twitter with plenty of chatter, but the blog will have the broader stories and details.

There might be some cool surprises too as a few big names are lined up for a chat.

Some of the coverage will be online at Marketing Magazine as Kate and the team at Niche have asked me to send some reports back for them too.

The entire trip has been arranged online using a multitude of sites and technologies, so I will try to detail how technology and social media played a part in each aspect of the trip.

So please subscribe to the RSS feed in the top right hand corner to stay in touch. And send me a Tweet or comment if you’d like to know anything in particular or have a question for anyone I happen to talk to.

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As a kid growing up in Lake Macquarie radio listening options were pretty limited. The old 2NX was on the AM dial playing Top 40. Fortunately the FM band started to come alive with scratchy sounds from Sydney when 2MMM launched.

I managed to rig up a rather large aerial and pick up the Sydney signals loud and clear. It was a revelation. Great music, higher quality sound and fantastic announcers. 2MMM became my station of choice in the 80′s. I woke to Uncle Doug Mulray, listened to Stuart Cranney, Jonno and Danno and Rob Duckworth every day. Golden years.

Now, word is out that one of those favourite announcers of my youth is about to do a stint at NEWFM. Rob Duckworth is said to be filling in for Blanchey while he takes holidays, and that he may stay longer. This is great news for NEWFM, bringing an immensely experienced and professional talent to Sandgate.

Duckworth was axed from TripleM in December after the station posted its worst-ever ratings.

The big question now, if it does actually happen, will be what effect Duckworth has on the ratings. He is not a household name in this market, despite a long history in Sydney. He will be in a daytime shift, probably Drive, so it won’t give the station the Breakfast kick they need. And it doesn’t mean the format and music will change (unless he will have a say in programming too). We are already well into Survey one so we can’t realistically expect this to make a big impact.

All the same, it could be good news for NEWFM, especially if Rob Duckworth decides to stay. Time will tell.

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Newcastle, Australia

The Herald, Newcastle’s main newspaper, has finally acknowledged the existence of Twitter. Today’s Herald has one story dedicated to Twitter and another mentioning it.

Sarcasm aside, this is actually relatively significant. Newcastle is often used as a test-market in Australia as it is seen to be an excellent microcosm of Australian society. They say that if products can sell here, they can sell anywhere in Australia.

Newcastle is also a pretty conservative town, slow to adopt new technology and innovations. If Australia is 3 years behind the US (as is often claimed) then Newcastle is usually 6 to 12 months behind Sydney. That’s not a criticsm, just a reality.

So when the local paper in Newcastle starts talking about Twitter as the “new must-have communications method” then you know Twitter is starting to make an impact in Australia.

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In a first for Newcastle and The Hunter Valley, The Post newspaper has launched an online version of their free weeklies.

The Post Digital Edition has just launched, providing readers and advertisers with additional opportunities. Each new edition launches 9am each Tuesday.

Advertisers now have the opportunity to link directly form their advertisement to their website, and have their advertisements be seen for much longer in the archived editions.

New online advertising packages will be available from April 2009.

The only negative is that the reader system is flash based and therefore not searchable. The Post are missing a massive opportunity to create a long tail of searchable information that would help them and their customers.

But overall, congratulations to The Post for taking a leap into the 21st Century and good luck with this new initiative.

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