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If you vote for our panels, unicorns will appear. Pinky swear.

August 11th, 2010 | 3 comments | SXSW

Come one, come all – the nerdery can officially begin. Publicly, that is. For months, your nerdy friends have been planning fantastic sessions for SXSW Interactive that surely, you’ll want to attend. In the interest of promoting our friends as much as I promote our stuff, I’d like to extend a formal invitation for you to pimp your panel in the comments section or shoot me an email, and I’ll make a pretty little write-up of all the panels that are going to be total badassery for SXSW 2011. I want to highlight what our community thinks should be at SXSW next year. So send me a little diddy about your panel, cool?

While you do that, I’ll start with the ones I am fortunate enough to have a hand in. Click on the titles of the panels for the full-blown descriptions.

Road Rules for Mentorship: What’s Appropriate (and What’s Not!)

Who is speaking? Yours truly and Aaron Strout, CMO at Powered, Inc.

What’s it all about? In a world where the saying “it’s all about who you know” is more and more relevant across multiple platforms, mentoring is more important than ever. But once you’ve managed to find someone who is willing to take you under their wing, how do you keep that relationship alive? What subjects are appropriate fodder for you and your newly-found mentor to discuss?

During this session, you’ll have the opportunity to see just how mentoring can benefit you not only personally, but also professionally. The panelists will share industry research and unique insights on what is appropriate in a mentoring relationship (and what isn’t), how to keep the relationship alive after it has been established, as well as how to reap the most benefits from the relationship.

Generation C: Changing the Future of Business… Forever!

Who is speaking?
Edward Boches: Chief creative officer, Mullen (resident Boomer)
Sherry Lowry: Founder/CEO, The Lowry Group (resident Silent Generation representative)
Sydney Owen (that’s me!) Assistant Account Executive, Weber Shandwick (resident GenY-er)
Aaron Strout: CMO, Powered Inc. (resident GenX-er)

What’s it all about? Forget about Gen X and Gen Y, it’s all about Gen C — the Content Generation. Business is changing and content is becoming king. Gen C understands this; Gen C is both audience and media, focused on creating, sharing and participating, versus promoting, interrupting and selling. Best of all, Gen C isn’t defined by age but by ideas — it’s 20-somethings working alongside 70-somethings. Leading edge companies know it’s about collaborating, not competing, and Generation C brings that to the table.

During this inter-generational panel, you’ll learn why age matters less and content is the new currency. You’ll hear why it’s important for companies to harness the power of Generation C and what businesses can do to leverage Gen C employees. The future of business depends on content; find out where and how Gen C’ers can deliver it.

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  • mikediliberto

    Hey Sydney, looks like some good panels; I love mentorship, and I would be nowhere today without the mentors that have helped along the way. I like to cross-generational distribution of panelists in the content presentation, that promises to offer interesting perspectives.

    I'm involved in 2 panels this year:

    First, a panel about workplace collaboration, focusing on how we may be over-complicating our quest to give workers cutting edge collaboration tools. Email is successful because it is simple to use. Twitter is successful because through it's simplicity, users were able to define it's implementation. The adoption rates of both email and twitter speak volumes. When it comes to enterprise collaboration, however, we keep seeing very complicated solutions being pushed into the workplace that offer neither the simplicity of email nor the malleability of twitter, and as a result, these solutions rarely improve communication or collaboration. My panel aims to bring together plans for deploying simple solutions in the enterprise, taking lessons from the adoption of similar tools in the consumer space. (http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/7271)

    The next panel deals with intrapreneurship, building innovation within large companies by embracing the behaviors that make entrepreneurs successful. Simple to explain, yet many larger firms struggle to let go of control and embrace “innovation from below”. This panel aims to show that rather than ushering in chaos, allowing innovation to flourish benefits the individual as well as the firm. (http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/7474)

  • http://KarlSakas.com/ Karl Sakas

    More unicorns, Sydney!

    My SXSW proposal is about how old-style marketing is new again, from my experience working on a 1930s railroad car. It's called “Unexpected Marketing Lessons from Mixing Martinis at 79mph”: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/6461

  • http://twitter.com/lizpope Liz Pope

    You're fabulous! I just voted for both of your panels :) Sarah Evans and I were actually just chatting earlier today about dropping you a note for a promo idea for SXSW PanelPicker.

    Sarah's involved in two panels:

    Spin Doctors: PR Best Practices for Social Media, submitted by Nicole Ravlin (http://j.mp/voteSE)

    The Global Online Community: Improving Cross-Cultural Relations, submitted by Andrew Kneale (http://j.mp/voteSarah)

    Best,
    Liz