More for less (day 198)

A full day today.  I was more familiar with the lay of the sxsw land so things were a bit more relaxed.  One of the things I realized yesterday was that I couldn't really tweet and listen at the same time.  I might be lacking that gene (or decade).  So I decided to listen and take notes in Evernote of the moment that were more, well, notable.  I retweeted a few things that agreed with my own observations -- a kind of second-hand or amplified tweet.

First a few comments I forgot about yesterday.

• A few more Ze Frank projects that were interesting: angrigami, re-enactment of baby pictures (can't find a link to this!), his suggestion that we all re-enact habitual childhood walks on Google Street View or Bing Street Level. 
• Danah Boyd mentioned sharing more to gain privacy, in the context of celebrities.  If they don't share enough they get more scrutiny.
• Robert Fabricant posits that people respond better to badges than graphs when it comes to personal information presentation.  Someone in the audience asked how far the game metaphor is going to go.  Will we wake up early and get 5 points, exercise and get 10 points, etc?  It's starting to feel a bit like a Brave New World.  I've been using FourSquare during the conference and I've unlocked one badge.  It seemed kind of random and even though I am checking in to places it still feels a bit forced.  Perhaps if I was competing within a group, I would be more motivated.

A attended five sessions today.  The first was a session on storytelling by Dr. Sanjay Gupta & Suneel Gupta who spoke about the Kahani movement which collects stories of (mostly) South Asian people.  A the beginning of their talk I was expecting something so completely different that I didn't fully grasp the impact of community-based collection of stories.  I liked the way they presented the material and the heartfelt responses they got from the audience.  As they talked I remembered a sunny afternoon in Montreal when my dad told me stories I had never heard before.  It felt like an unlikely moment and I wondered why I'd never even thought to ask.  We spend so much time with our parents we think we know them.  I liked how the Gupta brothers were asking us to look again.

The next session was by Michele Bowman, on cartography.  She presented a series of maps combined with data collection.   The ones that stood out for me were:

• emotion maps
• subway smell map
• cultural values

Then I went to a conversation with Michel Gondry who is always a pleasure to hear.  I'm not sure if he was kidding (probably) but he seemed to have a particular sensitivity to people leaving the room while he was talking.  They showed a clip of his music video fully made from yarn, incredible (can't find the link but will post it when/if I do).  The thing that stood out for me was his very relaxed manner and the way that he seems to fully inhabit a creative world.  When asked by someone in the audience to answer the question "what would you do to someone who wouldn't stop talking during one of your films" he mumbled a few words about not doing anything to them but then quickly jumped in to an anecdote about having shushed a crowd during a performance where he was playing music with his girlfriend.  He then expanded on this and said it might be nice to create 'shush' units that could be installed on the theatre seats and remote-controlled by the filmmaker.

Then I went to see Valerie Casey's keynote.  It was a call for interactive people to be responsible to sustainable practices.  She said many things that were interesting including "when will be stop thinking that less bad is good enough?" Implored people to employ systems thinking.  Said that we are all operating at the pleasure of the systems we are part of. 

I also saw a panel on crowdsourcing and emotional gaming, neither of which made a big impression.  Plus it's getting late here.  If I feel more generous tomorrow I'll add some comments.

A song for this post.