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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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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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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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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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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From humble beginnings only three years ago the short messaging, social networking service known as Twitter has exploded onto the Internet to become one of the hottest online applications. Originally the love child of tech geeks, it initially took off at South By South West Interactive Festival, Twitter may have just gone mainstream judging by the amount of traditional media coverage it has recently attracted.

The New Year has seen a myriad of Twitter stories in the mainstream media and an explosion of users.

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A few weeks ago I posted Why My Kids Will be the Death of Traditional Media. Only today we were explaining why to a few clients so they could understand our enthusiasm for new media options and alternative marketing thinking.

Seems that the funeral march may have already started with Gen Y consumers according to uber Gen Y blogger and media observer Zac Martin.

This week Zac has rather eloquently posted his Gen Y media  consumption habits. Media producers and advertisers take note.

Zac’s post has generated plenty of comments and discussion. Not all agree with him. Nor do I advocate abandoning traditional media channels when trying to reach Gen Y or their kid sisters and brothers. But the point is, where there’s smoke there’s fire. A massive transition has commenced from the dominance of Boomer media to the imminent predominance of Gen Y (and beyond) media.

Your marketing mix must start including alternatives to the traditional media channels because they are loosing relevance.

16 Jan: Follow-up

I asked Zac how we advertisers and marketers should reach Gen Y consumers who don’t use traditional media. He didn’t have an immediate answer to this obviously crucial dilemna but he did point me to a light-hearted set of potential online business models to consider. Zac also said he has some more suggestions coming. Stay tuned.

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For the last few years many Gen X pundits (like myself) and rising Gen Y influencers have been predicting the imminent demise of the traditional media. While these two transitional generations are witnessing the steady move to a more digital future there is another generation that is oblivious to the change and will wonder what we were ever debating.

Millennials are history’s first truly digital generation and over the next two decades they will increasingly influence the future of media. Bad news traditional media – you are not even on their radar.

This wasn’t a planned post. I am writing this during my Christmas holidays on a brilliant sunny morning whilst watching my 6 year old son play with my iPhone. He does it intuitively, in a way that would frustrate Boomers, and many Gen X adopters of new technology.

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When I set out to determine the best Australian media and marketing blog post of the year, The Moggy, I didn’t realise what a difficult task it would be.

Firstly there were dozens of great nominations, some by the authors, most from readers, that I had to sift through in order to whittle down to a worthy Top 10. That itself was a challenge as I wished to display the wide variety of blogging styles and content. I am sure that some might disagree with the final ten, but I was satisfied that it was representative of the quality and variety in the Australian blogosphere.

I enlisted the help of three judges who were involved in the media and marketing blogging community and had journalistic background. Mark Chenery (ex-Adnews), Kate Kendall (Marketing Magazine) and Mark Jones (ex-IT editor for AFR) then scored each of the Top 10 finalists looking at the quality of the post and the contribution to media and marketing discussion online.

proudly supporting The Moggy Awards

I thought that would have produced a clear winner, but when I tallied the scores it became apparent that 2 posts were well in front of the rest but still locked together. A tie breaker was needed. Fortunately, I had formulated an additional criteria in case it came down to this. Rather than me deciding which of the final two I preferred (and they are both very good for very different reasons) my criteria would be to look at the reaction both posts created. After all, a well written piece that few people read or respond to isn’t one which is making a significant contribution to the conversation.

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Thanks to technology like this, which allows citizens to blog & tweet from their mobile phone, traditional media (as seen in picture) is becoming less relevant. Please discuss?

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