3/8 – 10:00AM – Room 8

Game development is really hard. Lots of moving parts, ever evolving state of the art and the great unknown of what exactly makes up “fun” conspire to kill most projects before they see the light of publication. Best stick to the tried and true technologies and techniques, right? No! There are lots of great ideas that have emerged in the past 20 years but few have been applied to game development. Will these new techniques make game development easy? No, complexity cannot be removed, only broken down into smaller chunks. Because of this complexity, game developers eventually shoot their eye out in one way or another. We’ll examine building a better gun so that when we shoot our eyes out we can recover faster and do less damage.

David Koontz Happy Camper Studios

3/8 – 10:00AM – Room B

The road to a richer web experience is full of dead ends and wrong turns. This session will cover the mistakes made and lessons learned building SlideShare.net. I will discuss how we interweave Flash and Ajax to create a compelling user experience for SlideShare. I’ll talk about the shortcuts we took building the initial version of the site, and how they came back to bite us later. Most of all I will talk about scaling the front end – how the use of rich web technologies changes as one goes from a newly launched app to hundreds of thousands of daily users.

Jonathan Boutelle CTO, SlideShare

3/8 – 10:00AM – Room Day Stage

Your web site is a business – design it like one. Billions of dollars in spending decisions are influenced by web sites. So why aren’t businesses laser-focused on designing their sites to maximize their Return on Investment (ROI)? Web design can do more than make a site look good – it can be a powerful strategic weapon that enhances financial returns and creates competitive advantage. It’s time to make web sites accountable. It’s time to make design decisions based on metrics and business goals. It’s time for Web Design for ROI.

Lance Loveday CEO, Closed Loop Marketing

Sandra Niehaus VP UE, Closed Loop Marketing

3/8 – 10:00AM – Room A

Rich media content is rapidly becoming one of the most effective ways to engage audiences around the world. However, to engage them, audiences must first be able to find the content to see the value in these experiences. Crowded with other media fighting for their attention, making your online material stand out can be quite a challenge.

Attend this engaging panel of experts as they discuss their challenges and share successful approaches to making content stand out. Each panelist will share a project and discuss the challenges and successes behind making it discoverable. Topics will include, but not be limited to:

• The rise of rich media and the future of search
• Challenges behind depending only on SEO
• Deploying additional ‘find’ strategies for shorter-life content
• Optimizing metadata
• How metadata affects search engine placement strategies

Moderator: Richard Galvan Prod Mgr Flash, Adobe Systems Inc

Todd Nemet Custom Solutions Engineer, Google

Bill Hunt CEO, Global Strategies

Peter Cole Dir Creative Dev, AKQA Inc

Richard Galvan Prod Mgr Flash, Adobe Systems Inc

3/8 – 10:00AM – Room C

Accessibility is a key aspect of high-quality websites. Accessibility is about real people using and creating the Web. We’ll demo how accessibility makes your website available and more usable to people with disabilities; to people using mobile phones, PDAs, and other such devices; to people with low bandwidth connections (which is more of a problem than many are aware of in the U.S. and throughout the world); to seniors, an increasingly important demographic; and others. There’s been a lot of attention lately on the more complicated aspects of accessibility, but if you’re missing the basics that’s not going to help you. This session runs through the easy things and the most important things you can do now to get your project up to speed on accessibility. You’ll get code and design examples, and see/hear how assistive technologies and mobile devices handle them. We’ll look at why accessibility is vital, and how accessible sites are more effective for all — including those developing your website and those using it. Come with your pen or keyboard poised for a fast-paced run through of the basics, along with shortcuts for getting more examples and guidance. (If you’d like Shawn to review your site and use it for demos during the session, send email to shawn@w3.org with subject: SXSW – site for demos!)

Shawn Henry W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

3/8 – 10:00AM – Room 18ABCD

Design is in the Details is a look at how an interactive designer can tighten up and bring layouts, comps and designs to a final and brilliant polish to take it from ‘nearly there’ to ‘there’. The panel will cover the critical thinking and ideas, as well as tips and techniques for bringing a design to life and result in execution.

Naz Hamid Art Dir, Weightshift

3/8 – 10:00AM – Room 6

You know the drill – you’re in the early stage of developing a website for an idea and suddenly realize you’re wasting time cutting up placeholder images, experimenting with fonts, and trying different form layouts when what you ought to be doing is making those forms actually work! But you want to demo this thing to your friends and get some feedback, and you want it to look decent.

We’re going to be discussing the pros and cons of borrowing UI and principles from other sites and folks who’ve done the testing.

Some things you’ll get out of this panel:

• Recognition that patterns come at all levels. Learn ways to be conscious of that and understand the implications of each level.
• When to filch so that you don’t bypass the thinking process.

Lindsey Simon Web Developer, Google

Luke Wroblewski Sr Principal, Yahoo! Inc

Skip Baney UI Engineer, Apple Inc

3/8 – 10:00AM – Room 19AB

Vitruvius, the first Roman Architect to write about architecture, asserted that any well-designed building must exhibit the three qualities of firmitas, utilitas, and venustas or be durable, useful and beautiful. Can these same three tenets be applied today to help us design better interactions in a digital environment? This presentation will first touch on the similarities between designing buildings and designing digital interactions. Then, there will be an introduction to Vitruvius and his book, De Architectura. In his book Vitruvius writes about this notion of a well-designed building being durable, useful and beautiful. Those three qualities will first be looked at in their historical context, but then will be examined to see how they translate into the contemporary context of interaction design.

Jennifer Fraser Lead User Experience Designer, Corel Corporation

3/8 – 10:00AM – Room 10

Paradigm busting interfaces are bringing new life into computing and entertainment, enabling people to interact with digital tools in more natural and intuitive ways—with Intention and Motion as the key platforms for communication. Harnessing the explosion of the emerging digital experience that is changing our lives.

3 Takeaways:

1. The ethnography of evolution: What’s changing about people to make this possible?

2. How people will adapt to and adopt these new interfaces and what that means for the people creating the technologies.

3. Influence of the “new” early adopters – from 20 somethings to 60 somethings; and from gamers to paraplegics.

Kristin Alexander Dir, Microsoft Surface

Christie Dames Founding Partner, TechTalk/Studio

Brewster Kahle Digital Librarian, Internet Archive

Lee Shupp EVP, Cheskin

Kai Huang Pres, Red Octane + Guitar Hero

3/8 – 10:00AM – Room 12AB

Is it possible yet to make a living in online video? Hear from some of the people who have made videoblogging their main endeavor as to where they think video on the internet is going, how they got where they are, and how you can get into it, too. Our panelists, well-known figures in online video, will share experiences working with big media companies, startups, news organizations, and Hollywood as they’ve charted their way through the space. Key takeaways will include an overview of opportunities for videobloggers and filmmakers to get regular paying gigs creating content; how to get started, either independently or pitching your talents to a company or organization; and a discussion of the types of online video jobs there are right now, from entertainment to reporting to marketing and communications. We’ll also ask the audience about their own thoughts about online video, and whether they think there are enough viable opportunities for everyone that may be interested. Videobloggers, filmmakers, and online video creators are encouraged to attend and share their experiences.

Zadi Diaz Principal, Smashface Productions LLC

Bre Pettis Video Podcaster, Make:

Timothy Shey Founder, Next New Networks

Lisa Donovan Zappin Productions

Lindsay Campbell Producer/Host, Wallstrip CBS Interactive

3/8 – 10:00AM – Room 9

Today’s ‘totally wired’ teens have driven the early adoption of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook as well as many widgets and applications. They are also super communicators who can’t live without their phones. At the same time, they embrace technology for different reasons than adult early adopters. Anastasia Goodstein, founder of Ypulse.com and author of Totally Wired: What teens and tweens are really doing online, will moderate a discussion with six teens (boys and girls) between the ages of 13-17 giving you an opportunity to ask them questions about what works online and on cell phones, and more importantly, what doesn’t.

Moderator: Anastasia Goodstein Publisher, Ypulse

Anastasia Goodstein Publisher, Ypulse

3/8 – 10:00AM – Room 5

Cutting-edge today, falling behind tomorrow – this is the dilemma facing the latest cutting-edge artists of today. Over the past few years many musicians, artists, and celebrities have effectively used social networks and other Web 2.0 platforms to build rapport with fans while growing their fan bases. But will that be enough in the future? MySpace and Facebook helped many artists promote themselves effectively and without wasting their marketing dollars, but next generation technologies will allow artists to communicate more effectively in real-time. Why post to a Web site when you can talk to your fans directly? Today’s cutting-edge artists have already realized this and are benefiting from technologies that provides direct communication with their fans. Not only will this panel have the visionary CEOs that have created this technology, but also host the artists that are taking advantage of, and benefiting from, improved interaction with their audience. Also speaking on the session is LOUIC LE MEUR, a French serial entrepreneur and blogger. Le Meur served as Executive Vice President EMEA at software company Six Apart after merging French blogging company Ublog with Six Apart in July 2004. In late 2006, he became a public backer of French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and joined Sarkozy’s campaign team as an advisor on Internet-related topics

Stephen Stokols CEO, WooMe

Ron Bloom CEO / Co-Founder, PodShow

3/8 – 10:30AM – Room Day Stage

Cascading Style Sheets enable you to rapidly create web designs that can be shared by hundreds or even thousands of web pages. It accelerates development cycles by centralizing text and layout information for easy editing and updates. This book teaches you everything you need to know to start using CSS in your web development work, from the basics of marking up your content and styling text, through the creation of multi-column page layouts without the use of tables. Learn to create interface components, such as drop-down menus, navigation links, and animated graphical buttons, using only CSS (no JavaScript required). Discover how to design code that works on the latest standard-compliant browsers, such as IE7 and current versions of Firefox, Safari, and Opera, while working around the quirks of the older ones. With a mastery of CSS, your web design capabilities will move to a new level, and everything you need to know to get started and build your skills is right here in this book. You’ll be stylin’ in no time!

Charles Wyke-Smith Dir of User Experience, Benefitfocus.com

3/8 – 11:00AM – Room Day Stage

Want your web site to display more quickly? This book presents 14 specific rules that will cut 25% to 50% off response time when users request a page. Author Steve Souders, in his job as Chief Performance Yahoo!, collected these best practices while optimizing some of the most-visited pages on the Web. Even sites that had already been highly optimized, such as Yahoo! Search and the Yahoo! Front Page, were able to benefit from these surprisingly simple performance guidelines. The rules in High Performance Web Sites explain how you can optimize the performance of the Ajax, CSS, JavaScript, Flash, and images that you’ve already built into your site—adjustments that are critical for any rich web application. Other sources of information pay a lot of attention to tuning web servers, databases, and hardware, but the bulk of display time is taken up on the browser side and by the communication between server and browser. High Performance Web Sites covers every aspect of that process.

Steve Souders Google

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room Day Stage

Want to break into blogging but don’t know where to start? Dynamic duo Joelle Reeder and Katherine Scoleri of The Moxie GirlsTM show you how to start your first blog, polish your prose, get involved in blogging communities, make sense of RSS feeds, podcasts, photos and more – all with fun, humor and attitude! Inside you will find the need-to-know info to get your blog noticed: How to choose the right blogging platform or content management tool, select a web host, dress up your blog, manage blog content and keep your privates private! When you are ready for more, The Moxie Girls will treat you to insider dish on blog etiquette, analyzing blog traffic, blogging for business, creating podcasts and adding bling to your blog with plugins, add-ons and more. Throw in the refreshing cocktails, beauty tips and gossip with the Girls at the end of each chapter and you’ll be Blogging with Moxie in no time. So, what are you waiting for?

Joelle Reeder Owner/Creative Dir/Author, Moxie Design Studios

Katherine Scoleri Owner/Creative Dir/Author, Moxie Design Studios

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room Ballroom E

You used to work with a friend, maybe in a basement somewhere. You had fun. You never gave a lot of thought to your workflow, your payroll, your phone lines, or any other of the hundreds of little things involved in a business. But then you got a couple of clients or customers, then a few more, then before you knew it your two-man operation in a basement is twenty-five people in six thousand square feet of office space. Can you still work the way you used to? Can you still have fun? Do you have to start writing inter-office memos? Are you going through these problems right now and you don’t know what to do? Or do you have all the magic answers you want to share? Come talk with a couple of guys who have been there. Eric Smith is the President and CTO of UnWired Nation, a startup that has gone well beyond the startup stage. Allen Mendelsohn is the VP of Plank, a web design agency that went from a couple of people just two years ago to an always-increasing number of designers, programmers, integrators and managers. We’ve lived through the growing pains, but we’re also still suffering them. Let’s talk about some of our solutions, and hopefully we can all put our heads together and figure out how we can all grow up.

Allen Mendelsohn VP, Plank

C. Eric Smith Pres, UnWired Nation Inc

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room Ballroom E

David Allen’s Getting Things Done (aka GTD) revolutionized personal productivity. Many of you have heard about processing your inbox, the two-minute rule, contexts and “Next Action” lists, but how do you put this into practice day by day? And how does it hold up when your company grows 500% in one year? We’ll share tips, apps, and collaborative tools that help us maintain “minds like water” when managing web development, publishing, customer service, and employees. And if you DON’T know about GTD, join us for a down & dirty intro. You might just learn something that will change your life. It certainly did ours.

Scott McDaniel CEO, SurveyGizmo

Derek Scruggs Derek Scruggs dot com

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room 19AB

An advanced course on enjoying SXSW – attending the best panels, meeting interesting people and achieving geekgasm – without making a mess. SXSW is huge. With lots of panels, tons of people and even more free drinks, sorting through all these options can be a daunting task. While you don’t want to plan every minute of your time here, a little bit of planning can go a long way. We’ll share our previous experiences of meeting people, painting the town red, and still making it to a panel or two. Plus, we’ll dish out our best tips, from where to hang out to who to hook up with – or, more importantly, who NOT to hook up with!

Moderator: Veronica Belmont Host/Producer, Mahalo Inc

Glenda Bautista Agendacide

Ryan King the ryan king

Casey McKinnon 8bit Brownies Inc

Ariel Waldman Social Media Insights Consultant

Veronica Belmont Host/Producer, Mahalo Inc

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room 6

There is life before and after 18 to 35. More U2, New Order or Talking Heads than Tony Bennett. Rewire rather than retire. Life is short, let’s enjoy it! Don’t just consume food, cook some mean dishes. Rekindle passion. Travel. Read. Slow down. Take a nap. Who and what is online for people in their late 40’s and early 50’s and why are some sites targeting baby boomers failing to deliver? What difference does it make to be over 50 and have a presence on the web? How does it change the way you work, consume, live? What do early boomers spend their time and money on? Travel, restaurants and food, financial products? How do companies and marketers reach out to them?. Are they successful? Are they using the right approach? How can writers, musicians and movie makers tap that audience? Old is a state of mind. (you’re as old as you think you are—up to a point…)

Visit our Just Over 50 and Not Dead Yet companion blog for details and updates.

Serge Lescouarnec Founder, Serge the Concierge

David Markus CPO, TeeBeeDee

Rhea Becker Writer, The Boomer Chronicles

Ted Cohen Managing Partner, Tag Strategic

Janet Greenlee SVP Sr Partner GM, Fleishman-Hillard

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room A

The next generation of the web isn’t going to be on your desktop, it may not even be on your mobile device. Context is going to be increasingly important and Nick Finck of Blue Flavor will take you through the process of designing and architecting for context as well as creating sites and apps that work regardless of the context. He will step through the elements of context and what is critical to think about when considering your user’s environment, interface, display, task, skill level, and more.

Nick Finck Publisher, Digital Web Magazine

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room Ballroom E

With the likes of Google, Facebook and Yahoo! throwing wads of money, stock options and free snacks at the top talent, how do we, as start-ups, attract and retain great team members? Once we have a great team, how do we keep its members highly productive, creative and, most of all, happy? In this discussion, Dogster/Catster co-founders John Vars and Steven Reading will discuss some of the mistakes and successes in building their team. The conversation will touch on hiring and firing, what a start-up can offer that the Googles of the world cannot, communication hits and misses, motivating different people to reach the same team goals, why happiness counts and how office space can make a huge difference. This should be a conversation above all, so bring both your own experience and your questions.

John Vars Co-Founder/CPO, Dogster and Catster

Steven Reading Founder, Dogster Inc

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room Ballroom E

Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo and Oracle have been acquiring startup companies steadily over the past few years. It seems like the perfect time to start a company and get acquired. The market for talent is tight. Salaries are skyrocketing. Is a Bubble the right time to start a company?

David Crow Microsoft

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room 8

The videogame industry has begun an irreversible metamorphosis. Whether it’s changing into a beautiful butterfly or a Kafka-esque cockroach depends on your point of view. The industry is evolving into an online experience that will look and feel different to everyone involved, from developers to publishers to consumers. No longer required for distribution, traditional game publishers will face a difficult choice-change or die. But don’t shed any tears for EA. There are still plenty of ways for them to earn a piece of the pie: financing, marketing, and talent recruitment-though we’ll also see the rise of niche companies who can provide these services. Perhaps the most exciting benefit we’ll see is that of consumer choice. Without the space constraints of bricks-and-mortar shops, we’ll finally see the rise of the “Long Tail” for video games. Ultimately, the online model will be a boon to both established game producers and independent teams. Without the burden of hitting World-of-Warcraft-sized revenue requirements, the established developers will be able to greenlight more projects. On the other side of the economic spectrum, indies can compete in the market with fewer barriers to entry.

Corey Bridges Exec Producer, multiverse.net

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room 9

The internet and web technologies have torn down a lot of walls. But for every new, empowering opportunity, there’s some slimeball trying to make a quick buck off “harnessing user-generated content.” As artists, how do we tell one from the other? And as creators, how do we invite community participation with the respect it deserves? Join internet pioneer Derek Powazek for an inside look at how forward-thinking companies are innovating media by empowering readers to become writers, consumers to become creators. Powazek will share his experiences from Pixish, his new creative community source, and Fray, a book series that sprang from a virtual community; as well as insights on community-first companies online.

Derek Powazek CEO, Pixish

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room C

Lingo from web 2.0 and social media are irresistible to ad hacks seeking to stay buzz compliant. 2007 saw a boom in ad campaigns abusing jargon like widget, blog, mashup, and “consumer-generated-whatever.” This panel of bloggers and marketers will dissect ten terrible ad campaigns that abused the ideals of people-powered media, then award The Suxorz Trophy to the worst. Bring your rotten tomatoes. To pre-game, join the Facebook group [http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=14910105470].

Henry Copeland Founder, Blogads.com

Steve Hall Publisher, Adrants

Jeff Jarvis Blogger/Prof, Buzzmachine/CUNY

Rebecca Lieb VP & Editor-in-Chief, The ClickZ Network

Charlotte Selles Global Brand Mgr, Beam Global

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room 18ABCD

Tony Hsieh joined Zappos.com full-time in 2000. Under his leadership, Zappos.com has grown gross merchandise sales from $1.6 million in 2000 to over $800 million in 2007. Zappos.com is projecting to do over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales in 2008. Tony focuses on continuing to grow the business at a rapid pace while maintaining the culture and feel of a small company. Tony’s presentation focuses on Zappos.com’s mistakes over the years and how those mistakes have shapedthe company’s growth strategies. Tony will also talk about the importance of building a company culture that can survive for the long term.

Tony Hsieh CEO, Zappos.com

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room 10

By pinpointing a user’s location, websites and applications can deliver a compelling, contextually relevant experience. Game developers are now incorporating this context of location into gaming, with very fun results. Like transforming your neighborhood into an island home-base for pillaging from other pirates. Or physically running around the room to escape a Zombie attack. This session will provide an overview of current location-based game development and the positioning technologies used to make it all happen. The panelists will review the various methods of identifying a user’s geolocation, including Wi-Fi positioning, IP location, and cell tower triangulation, and how these technologies can be deployed across different platforms – like handsets, laptops, and gaming devices. This session will use three popular location based games as case studies, Plundr, MobZombies, and Phone Tag.

William Carter hauntedcastle.org

Ryan Sarver Dir of Prod Dev, Skyhook Wireless

Jeremy Irish Pres/CEO, Groundspeak

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room 12AB

How can indie directors/producers get their work onto the growing number of digital screens in the US, and what are the economics of encoding your film so it can be downloaded digitally and onto a cinema’s server? We’ll also explore how digital cinema is changing the balance of power between Hollywood studios and independents, and what new developments lie ahead.

Moderator: Scott Kirsner Editor, CinemaTech

Scott Kirsner Editor, CinemaTech

Ted Mundorff CEO, Landmark Theatres

Lance Weiler founder, Workbook Project

Josh Green VP, Distribution, Emerging Pictures

Russell Wintner Pres, WinterTek Inc

Christian Zak Exec Producer DI, Technicolor

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room Ballroom E

There are four things you can do right now to make it in the global workforce, and to up your ante in global production networks. Specialist or generalist, we’ll present the strategies and tactics used by “best practice” global teams to coordinate and collaborate productively. How do you communicate about “high-touch” things, emotion and effect so that people in 14 countries can create? Who’s responsible for making meaning? Does culture matter? Is it all about the specification? What percent of your time has to be face-to-face? Welcome, natural public problem solvers and social innovators . . . No one profession, country, software vendor, or region has the lock on how to create in a distributed environment. We’ll present data and findings from the gaming industry, a global Fortune 5 online development team and an award winning commercial music production company. You provide context, exceptions, share nuance. Learn to differentiate yourself and maintain work life balance at this hallway conversation in the round.

Catherine Crago Managing Dir, Diversity Interactive

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room 5

Community managers unite! Learn best practices, lessons learned and skills needed for managing online communities. We will discuss community management essentials, skills needed to become and effective community manager and what it takes to ensure you are providing value to your customers as well as for your business. The panelists have experience managing communities for companies such as Lego, Fox Interactive, Belo and AT&T.

Miles Sims Small World Labs

Jake McKee Chief Ant Wrangler, Ant’s Eye View

3/8 – 10:00AM – Room 3

Join the EllisLab team for a special preview of the upcoming version 2.0 of ExpressionEngine, the world-class web publishing system used by thousands of individuals, companies, and organizations around the world.

Rick Ellis EllisLab Inc

3/8 – 11:30AM – Room 3

Join the EllisLab team for a special preview of the upcoming version 2.0 of ExpressionEngine, the world-class web publishing system used by thousands of individuals, companies, and organizations around the world

Rick Ellis EllisLab Inc

3/8 – 11:30AM -Room B

Social media, interactive communities, and online marketing have ratcheted up the ways we use the web. What are the barriers experienced by people with disabilities trying to use web applications? From Facebook and YouTube to JK Rowlings and NetFlix, what level of accessibility is expected, achievable and reasonable? No one wants to give up the richer and faster experience facilitated by these new techniques, but should we really just accept that a certain number of people will be locked out? Sharron Rush of Knowbility moderates the panel and explores three critical aspects of this question. First, Susan L. Gerhart, a sofware engineer who has lost her vision, demonstrates common barriers. Lisa Pappas of SAS shows us how the industry is working collaboratively to address the problem. Finally Becky Gibson, a Web accessibility architect for IBM, demonstrates Accessible Rich Internet Applications being developed under the umbrella of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI-ARIA). Attendees will leave with a better understanding of the problem, will know how to participate in providing solutions, and will get code level examples of how to improve the accessibility of widgets and other rich Internet applications.

Moderator: Sharron Rush Exec Dir, Knowbility.org

Susan Gerhart IT, apodder.org

Becky Gibson Web Accessibility Architect, IBM

Lisa Pappas Accessibility Analyst, SAS