Weekly Roundup: SXSWi edition

In the week since I've returned from my first South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference, I'm still digesting what an overwhelming and amazing experience it was. From hearing incredible feedback from entrepreneurs about the Startup America Partnership, to watching the amazing ability of the SXSW community rally around the crisis in Japan, to getting involved in great conversations about the intersection of crowdsourcing, brands and nonprofits - it's hard to know where to begin. And that doesn't even include experiencing the awesome Austin culture - from the biggest breakfast tacos I've ever seen, to food trucks galore, to great music and weather.

In any case, I digress... Whether you did or didn't make the trip to Austin this year, with all of the news and blog coverage on SXSWi that has appeared in the last week, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the multitude of articles and blog posts on the conference. To help you sort through the clutter, I thought I'd put on my "weekly roundup" hat and pull together a roundup of this year’s SXSWi takeaways, as reported by trusty bloggers and reporters:

• As reported by AdAge, Hashable - the networking app that lets you track your relationships and makes business cards obsolete - was a big hit. Hashable could catch on big time for exchanging e-business cards.     
• John Berstein of T3 Think Thank remarks that SXSW Interactive had a main focus this year – humanity.  He found social media to be at the forefront of brand marketing, emphasizing the use of social media as an aid to conversation and community building.
• Group Messaging was a popular trend at SXSWi, with attendees using group messaging apps like Beluga, Kik and GroupMe to meet up or rally around a cause.  Check out this useful blog post from our own Andrea Zediker.
• Nathan Lustig remarks in his blog recap that perhaps the most interesting news out of SXSW were the unique startups displayed, including SparkRelief, Startup America, Artsicle, Flavors.me, and Grubly.
• In this great roundup, Oliver Burkeman of the Guardian shares his SXSW observation that "the boundary between 'real life' and 'online' has disappeared" and argues about the benefits and pitfalls of losing those boundaries.
• And, in this TechCrunch piece, MG Siegler argues that the "winners" of this year's SXSWi were advertising and the iPad2. 

We've observed that every year, the contingent of folks at SXSW who care about the intersection of technology / social media and social good grows. Once again, leveraging new technology to address social challenges was a hot topic at the conference and was even more of a priority due to the devastating events in Japan. 

• The always popular Beth Kanter puts forth a useful recap of her panel, A Global Conversation: Free Agents and Nonprofits in a Networked World, complete with the presentation, afterthoughts and details of how she organized the session.
• Katja Presnal of lifestyle blog Skimbaco talked with Social Media and Digital Director Bonin Bough from PepsiCo and Ellen McGirt, the Senior Innovation Editor at Fast Company magazine at SXSW. In the video below, they discuss some of the themes at the conference, including how using social media for social good is changing the way we think and use social media and how it impacts in the global well being.
• More than a few social media start-ups for social good were present at SXSWi, focusing on the use of mobile devices to geographically connect people to charities or other forms of social good. Marcia Stepnak of Justmeans provides a useful list of these startups here.
• Amanda Lehner of the Adlibbing Council mentioned an “amazing new data application for nonprofits to show impact to consumers, stakeholders, the board, etc.,” called the Impact Dashboard. You can visit the website to sign up to be the first to have it!