Many of you who Twitter or Friendfeed the past couple of days may have noticed the hash-tag #sxsw has become quite popular. That’s because the South by Southwest Conference opened up their Panel Picker web application, allowing the public the ability to vote up or down the list of panel ideas submitted for the 2010 event. And, because a heck of a lot of people submitted (142 movie panels, 297 music panels, over 2200 interactive panels). A lot of people are promoting their panels using the “megaphones” at their disposal – social media.
SXSW says that this is to be encouraged, and that a high vote count will be used to influence whether the panels will be accepted or not (the public voting only accounts for 30% of the decision making process – staff counts for 30%, and an advisory board counts as 40%). But, since there is a lot of promotion going on right now, there has also been the inevitable backlash. A frequently-“retweeted” statement today was from @CtrlAltRicky, who wrote: “Vote begging for SXSW on twitter is distasteful and Forced Reciprocity is not a social media strategy. Try being awesome.” Ah, dissent – so wonderful to see.
I love stuff like this, when sites like Twitter become wrapped up in something, and I think that when we see self-promotion on such a scale, I’m a little less concerned about our future – what some may see as self-centered egotism I see as personal branding and assertiveness – Enlightened self-interest in the social circle.
Of course, the cyncial among you may look at this blog post as just an opportunity for yours truly to hype his OWN #sxsw panels – to which I reply, well… yeah, somewhat. Click here for a couple of very interesting ideas (if I do say so myself) that may benefit from some thumbs up voting, if you prefer. Or not – I leave it in your capable hands.
(Oh, and did I mention that if you vote for my panels, you’ll get a pony? Yes, PONIES!)