The 4th annual Australasian Media and Broadcasting Congress will be held in Sydney from 31 August to 3 September 2009 and I am honoured to have been invited to present on two panels at this years event in what promises to be some vigorous and topical discussions.

Looking at the program I realised that I am the only marketing blogger to be presenting at the event, so I’d like to think I can be a strong representative of the Australian marketing blogger community.

Therefore, I’d like your input. What would you like to see addressed or mentioned in the panels I am involved with? What issues do you feel need covering? What questions would you like to see asked?

Please leave your thoughts & suggestions in the comments section of this post.

Here are the two panels I will be involved in…

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Over at the Marketing Magazine site, I’ve posted a story called A glimpse into the future at SXSW and Web 2.0 chronicling the latest web, media and marketing initiatives I observed on my recent US conferences trip. There’s some really relevant information for Australian business considering the Rudd government’s recent National Broadband Network announcement. Please give the story a “Thumbs Up YES” if you find it useful.

The Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco is a slightly more staid affair than SXSW, but certainly still had its highlights. Here’s some of the things that caught my eye at Web 2.0 last week:

Union Square in beautiful San Francisco

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Pre-launch drinks in Austin

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Tim O’Reilly, co-founder of the Web 2.0 Expo and the person who coined the term Web 2.0, entered the stage to a rock star-like welcome for the first Keynote presentation of the event.

Tim wanted to talk about Web 2.0 five years on. He said that the term Web 2.0 was meant to explain what happened after the original dotcom crash; the second life of the Internet. It was never meant to signify new stages, like Web 3.0 and so on.

So what’s next for the web?

Tim O'Reilly

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Soren Stamer twitter.com/heartnsoul

Soren is a German entrepreneur who has applied the theory of Darwinism to business and the Internet. Darwinism is based on life without a creator and so life must continually evolve.

Soren believes that MASSIVE networking, such as what we are now seeing online, drives CHANGE. Our world is massively connected on global level leading to these consequences:
1. Increasing dynamics – life cycles are shorter. 6000 days of web life has changed world incredibly
2. Rising complexity – makes it impossible to predict, so better to stay AGILE
3. Increasing transparency – we know more and more about everything.
4. Global synchronisation – this is first globally synchronised recession. It creates opportunities too.
5. Collectively we are smarter
6. Abundance of options – declining GDP & explosion of services. Scarcity of attention.

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Presenter: Trae Chancellor from Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com has become successful and famous for moving their entire business operation online and into “the cloud”. Trae began his presentation with a big logo on screen saying “no software”.

The company drew up a vision of their business operating in the cloud:
Salesforce IT Vision: Get Salesforce on Salesforce
Organisation = Improve productivity & innovation
Operations = Improve efficiency
Infrastructure = reduce costs

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South by South West (SXSW) is the most significant event of the US digital and interactive conference circuit. It attracts A-List bloggers, the biggest and best tech companies, ambitious start-ups and thousands and thousands of the brightest minds in the online community to Austin, Texas for an amazing week of information, presentations and evening events.

SXSW is an extremely stimulating and almost overwhelming experience. Thousands of people constantly move around the Austin Convention Centre heading to the various panels and presentations. Multiple events are held simultaneously, making it hard to choose which to attend. Many attendees attempt to check out more than one session in an hour, while others follow one event on Twitter whilst attending another.

For many, the greatest value of SXSW is meeting and talking with others they have only previously known online, or holding impromptu doorway meet-ups with so many keen minds.

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SXSW is as famous for its parties as much as its tech-set meetings. Official parties, unofficial parties and impromptu parties are breaking out all over a town that really knows how to party.

Here’s some of the action:

Craig Wilson & Guy Kawasaki at The Driskell during SXSW

Partying at Speakeasy in downtown Austin for SXSW

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.