Me (as a blond) and Kyle at Pitchfork Fest 08

But this year, don’t forget your iPhone. Web 2.0, social media, new media… musicians, concert venues, and music festivals are all jumping on the ‘interactive’ bandwagon.

As if crowd surfing wasn’t interactive enough.

Obviously, SXSW has been the leader in merging music and technology (click here to read Daniel’s post from 2008’s festival), but more and more, other fests are forced to think out of the proverbial box.

Voice too hoarse to shout your request? No worries, Pitchfork Fest is giving ticket buyers the opportunity to name the set list of their favorite bands online. This year’s headliners The Flaming Lips said they “will do their best to accommodate the wildest and most obscure of request– covers included.”

Photo by David Donovan Evans

And from what I’ve read in the news, it all seems to be working. Despite the recession, music festivals are thriving.

Photo by David Donovan Evans

To what do they attribute this success? According to this internet marketing blog, “MySpace has long been a popular social network within the music industry. Artists often preview new albums on the site, for example. When it comes to these concerts, however, MySpace doesn’t generate nearly the engagement of Facebook, or even Twitter or email.”

One of my most favorite new media + music mash ups of all time is the All Eyes series from CurrentTV. Check out the fan-sourced video of My Morning Jacket at Lollapalooza.

This really gets my gears turning about possible ways we can apply these new media/social media stategies to the programming here at the IMA for The Toby and Summer Nights, or other events at the museum. How have you seen social media used effectivley at a concert, festival, or event?

A snapshot from Pepsi's real-time keyword swarm from SXSW

Take half of Twitter’s activity base, bring them together and you have SXSW.  This group of people are just some of the many that are driving what we will all know as the real-time web.  To the left you can see a screen shot I took this morning from a real-time keyword swarm driven by Twitter and SXSW attendees (compliments of Phil’s Pharmacy).

Twitter has been the source of many of these popups.  You can find a real-time evolving tag cloud of what’s popular right now, or if you are a finance junkie like me, get bleeding edge news and opinion on every stock in your portfolio.  Real-time updates on the real-time web anyone?  Finally, bring them all together on your desktop with TweetDeck.

Bringing it all together with TweetDeck

Facebook has jumped on the boat as well with the recent updates to user’s profile pages.  The emphasis has moved solely to the latest updates from your friends. Video sharing site UStream.tv has pushed the envelope by offering free streaming of live video to anyone.

Facebook's recent changes to promote real-time activity

Internet users are being groomed to have an expectation of receiving information as it is generated.  In an age where e-mail is the new snail mail, could a start-up with a decent semantics engine make Reuters tremble?

plenty more here

I’m in no way comparing our new site with Lolcats. But they mentioned a strategy that we have directly copied with European Design – and will be doing so with a another ‘art video’ site later this month. They shared with the packed Austin, TX audience (munching on cheeseburgers), that with I Has a Hotdog! they very quietly released the site. No major marketing campaigns, no online ads, no webcasts – you get the picture. It launched and they watched. They watched it gain traffic, made changes and waited. We’re doing something similar with European Design.

European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century

This exhibition opens March 8, so in the weeks leading up to this opening, you’ll begin to see more marketing strategies associated with the exhibition and this new site. This will include print pieces, billboard, e-mails, etc. This is one of the earliest site launches ever done by the IMA and the site is still incomplete. I don’t see a problem with that.  With our projects, we often wait until the very last moment – or when we feel that it has reached the ‘perfect’ level.  I’m all for taking a more informal approach to what we publish.

We will be adding Designer Profiles on a regular basis between now and the run of the show. We will be adding audio and video content. And we have a couple of tricks up our sleeves for other content ideas. Some IMA staff have posted this site on their Facebook walls, e-mailed friends, or tweeted. You may have found it within IMA’s main site.

Now I’m letting the lolcat out of the bag – blog style. Come see a site that will keep getting better and before the real marketing campaign begins. It’s like a band that’s on the verge of making it, and you can say, “I knew it when…”

I love Texas. I always have. So it’s good to be in Austin for SXSW. It’s my first visit but honestly, I’ve never been a big conference fan. I’ve always appreciated the opportunity for professional development, the chance to meet new colleagues and of course learn something new, but I must admit, they can be boring. Is SXSW boring? No way. Keep SXSW weird.

The future of web is here. The people at SXSW Interactive are shaping the online environment of tomorrow. It’s mind boggling. I’ve sat in tons of sessions (some terrible, most great, a couple truly inspiring) and I feel refreshed, motivated and full of new ideas. My role at the IMA is to produce digital content – to tell stories in innovative ways. This experience has shown me we can do much, much more. We will.

It is a weird conference and I mean that as the biggest possible complement. I have sat next to a variety of characters – CEO’s, marketers, artists, developers, rock star bloggers, and pretty much who knows. I’ve walked out of some useless sessions, but mostly have been soaking it all in. There have been two magical moments…

Anyone that knows me, knows I love uncomfortable situations, especially humour. I love the British Office and Little Britain. One of my favorite films is Made (it made me squirm). So imagine my glee when the keynote event, featuring Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, descended into chaos, with the crowd revolting and the interviewer, Sarah Lacy talking smack back to the crowd! I have never seen anything like it – read it about here or relive it here. Part of me wanted to hide, but in the end, I sat there with a big smile on my face exchanging quips with the people around me. Thank you SXSW!

I want to be the guys from icanhascheezburger. They put captions on picture of cats and other animals. They do what they want in a strategic, intelligent way. It is their job! And they get 1.5 million hits a day. Are you kidding me? Their session was brilliant, funny, educational and to beat this word to death: inspiring. They have built and cultivated an online community that is loyal, vocal and immense. We (the IMA we) are trying to do the same thing, but without the lolcats. They had cheeseburgers delivered to the session and afterwards I had the site founder, Eric Nakagawa, sign an autograph for my sister. I also asked if he wanted to be a guest blogger. Stay tuned.

I’m now sitting in a session about the future of video content online. It’s good and incredibly technical and it confirms we should be pursuing H.264 for our future video compression, especially for our next big project IMA TV. But I must be honest, I am looking forward to the next weird moment. Uncomfortable or not.

The other day I sat in a bar drinking a Texan beer, listening to a German-French-Scottish folk band. I love Texas. (clap clap clap clap) *deep in teh hart of Tecksus.

But here I am, typing my post from home while watching the latest re-run of Family Guy. Two of my fellow nuggeteers are also out of the office at the SXSW conference in Austin.

I hope we all get an update tomorrow from Daniel’s next post. By the way, have you noticed a pattern yet? We have taken to blogging more regularly so that all of our dedicated readers can wait excitedly for their favorite IMA author’s post.

Back to the business at hand…On a tip from Noelle, I am working up a post centered around an article in the most recent Wired magazine, but in my mini-vacay state-of-mind I would prefer to keep this one more casual. So look for that next week.

This week I am looking for some perspective and spending some time selfishly trying on shoes and other similarly indulgent endeavors like surfing the web.

Are you similarly looking to waste time or find yourself? Here are some websites that will help you on either journey:

BAPE – Getting in the mood for Breaking the Mode? When I think of Japanese fashion, I first think of street fashion. This site is one of my favorite surfing experiences and also features an awesome hip-hop influenced Japanese street design brand, A Bathing Ape. You have to download some stuff for the site to work, but you should. It’s worth it for the soundtrack alone.

http://cubo.cc/
This one is amazing. Recommended to me by my endlessly interesting boyfriend (that’s not sarcasm), it is fun and unique. Click on the link, give it a moment to load and then cursor around the screen. Not for those with slow internet connections. You can click the link for more info, but you won’t get any. You will get a whole new kind of crazy fun, though.

Maken Trance Project – This is my favorite JPOP song right now. I can listen to it over and over again in my car, singing all the parts I know and making stuff up for the parts I haven’t yet memorized. And the video is giggly and fun. This song make me want to create my own para para choreography. Maybe I can spend some of my vacation time working on that.

Kid Robot – Love contemporary art? Then you might like this…it might be too low-brow for you, but for me, well, it is just right. There is room in my life for admiring contemporary art that I can’t afford AND buying little toys that I can. Besides, if vinyl toys as art is wrong, then I just don’t want to be right. On a related note, the IMA store is starting to stock some of this stuff. You know the best way to encourage that? Buy some.

Hope you enjoy visiting some of these sites and find something new to obsess over. Until next week…