Peter Bodenheimer and I went up the the Web 2.0 Expo the week before Thanksgiving, and spent the week hanging out with some pretty impressive folks.  It’s clear there is a lot of energy in the NY startup scene right now, it reminded me of the first FOWA conference in 2006 where the Web 2.0 energy was palpable in San Francisco.

It’s important for me and Flatsourcing, TribeCon, and Launch Pad to be connected to New York.  As strong as the New Orleans startup movement has been, its critical we maintain our direct ties to innovation hubs like Silicon Valley & New York. We need to know what they are up to and vice versa.  In this post, I’ll summarize some of the exciting things we saw and people we met.  In addition, I’ve got a proposal that I want to float to continue to build our ties to NY.

First, what we did and what’s happening in NY:

• Monday night we went to Ignite NYC and ran into Elliott Adams (good to see the state going to these conferences).  This was my first Ignite, and we saw some great presentations in preparation for the launch of Ignite NOLA in February which Adele Tiblier and Chris Boudy are leading the charge on.
• Spent Tuesday hanging w/ Andrew Hyde, he’s just ran the NY Marathon and is hard at work on his new startup which I’m trying to twist his arm into locating to NOLA.  (He hates winter weather. Advantage: NOLA)
• Watch the keynote by Tim O’Reilly for a great overview of the state of the web. He’s concerned that we may be entering another “closed garden” period.
• Chris Brogan was surprisingly Zen in his presentation, but and great.  It reiterated to me how great it was to have his co-author of Trust Agents at Tribecon.  Favorite quote: “The difference between audience and community, is which way you turn the chairs”
• Having the tweets running on the screen behind the speaker blew up with the final keynote. IMHO this is a bad idea, and I was glad we didn’t do it at TC.
• Tuesday night Pete and I went to the Net Neutrality Tech Debate at IAC. It was fascinating to see the policy makers who will shape the FCC legislation debate in this forum.  Thankfully, the need for net neutrality won the debate with the more convincing argument.
• On Wednesday we went to the Launch Pad to watch startup pitches by 5 companies: Foodspotting, Apstrata, Earth Aid, Neighborhoodr, & Set Jam.  All the pitches were strong, and it really pounded home to be how tight a pitch needs to be and how well the constraint of 5 minutes worked.
• Baratunde Thurston brought down the house with his keynote on Wednesday: “There’s a hashtag for that” If you watch one thing I’m posting, make it this.
• The conversation with Caterina Fake (founder of Flickr) was interesting for her commentary on the NY tech scene, and the reasons why she chose to locate her new startup Hunch in NYC.
• I really enjoyed the conversation with John Borthwork, founder of Betaworks.  This is probably the most startup company/incubator going right now, and is an inspiration for me for where I want to take Voodoo Ventures.  If you like Tweetdeck & Bit.ly, you’ll like where he thinks the web is headed.
• Wednesday night we met up with Mike Karnjanaprakorn, its exciting to hear about the success of By/Association and his understanding and use of the importance of mystery, human curation, and exclusivity.
• He soon spotted a check-in from Foursquare founder Naveen Selvadurai at a nearby bar.  The power of Foursquare to connect people was quickly evident as it seemed every startuper in the city was there within 15 min.  Chatted with Tantek Celik and Richard Blakeley.  I think I finally grokked hype-local from Richard.  Basically, the concept behind Neighborhoodr, is that the more granualary you slice a community the more you care about it.  You may not care about everything going on in New Orleans (perhaps just the tech scene), but you care about everything going on on your street.
  

All in all a great week.  I know the bullets review like an itinerary of “here’s what we did,” but I’m trying to convey the energy we felt being up there.  Some of the clear concepts were mobile, hyper-local, and simplicity of concepts.  I heard on more than one occasion from people that they hear “New Orleans has something going on…” but they all wondered “who was our signature startup?” Who is our signature startup? Not just a company that we all know about… a startup that everyone knows about.

So, what about the NOLA -> NYC connection you mentioned?

Well, we’re conjuring up an idea, and though its not ready for launch yet, I am interested to get feedback on it.  It is based on a conversation that Brian Oberkirch, Perry Chen and I had at TribeCon.  The idea is theirs, I’m just hoping to help implement it:

A visiting scholar program for startups.

The idea would be to bring startup CEO’s down from NYC to NOLA to work here, interact, mentor, and learn about what people are doing down here, and then take that gospel back to NY with them, spreading the seeds of what is happening here.  Basically a direct, personal, mentorship and marketing program.

Take it a step further, and reverse it, sending Louisiana startup CEO’s up to NY to work, learn, and engage.  Then we’ve got the sharing going both ways.

Economic development agencies like GNO & LED are already spending a lot of money on familiarization tours.  I wonder if a program like this would qualify under that kind of budget?  My guess is that using the lean, mean, startup fundamentals we all know so well, that we could create a very effective program.

What do you think?  Would you support a NOLA-to-NYC visiting scholar program?

I’m excited to share more details about TribeCon, a conference about communities – both online and offline.  Tiffany Starnes and I have been working for the last six months to put it together along with a lot of help from our Tribal Council and a lot of friends from Net2NO.

We’re producing the conference in partnership with the Voodoo Experience.  TribeCon will be the official interactive component of the Voodoo Experience.  This is a tremendous opportunity for TribeCon. The Voodoo Experience has grown into a huge annual music festival, and together we can build TribeCon into a integral part of the experience and a major interactive conference.

So let’s get to the details:

• What: TribeCon is a conference about building communities, online and offline.
• When: October 29-30, 2009
• Where: Voodoo Experience – City Park, New Orleans, LA
• How much: $169 for TribeCon includes single day Voodoo Experience ticket. $269 for TribeCon includes three day Voodoo Experience Ticket.
• Who: The speakers are all people passionate about building communities.
• Why: Building a community around your brand, cause, or mission is the most powerful way to grow.  Today’s social networking tools make it possible to reach your audience in powerful new ways to build a movement.  At TribeCon you’ll learn how to build community online to effect action offline.

Why does TribeCon need New Orleans?

One of the things I’m most excited about is bringing the conversation about authentic online communities to New Orleans.  Having the Voodoo Experience has a partner enables us to make this truly a world-class conference.  TribeCon connects with New Orleans because we have such a deep sense of community here.  From the Mardi Gras indian tribes to front porch neighbors, New Orleans culture is rooted in community.  Andrew Larimer, Tim Soslow and Matt Tritico will be curating a special panel presentation that will be a celebration and exploration of community in New Orleans.

Inspired by SXSW, and now TribeCon is just six weeks away.

The idea for TribeCon was inspired on the Y@ Pack trip to SXSW organized by the Net2NO community.  We had such an amazing experience together, and it was truly amazing what a motivated community can accomplish.  On the bus ride back from SXSW in March, we hatched the idea for TribeCon.  We pitched it at the GNO Inc Digital Media Alliance meeting in May, and though I regrettably made a couple of miscues in my pitch (ugh), we started to line up support and Robbie Vitrano helped us line up meetings with Rehage Entertainment.

So after a long summer of laying the ground work, here we are, just six weeks away from the inaugural TribeCon, with a supportive partner in the Voodoo Experience and a tremendous slate of speakers. Tiffany and I are both getting much less sleep these days, but we’re doing it, and really excited about producing TribeCon.

TribeCon is important to the tech community, and important to New Orleans.

So, you’re interested in getting involved?

Fantastic.  We need your help to make this a success.

• We’re bouncing a lot of ideas off our friends and supporters in the Tribal Council.  Everyone on it has been tremendously helpful and it has really shaped what this conference is, in addition to helping us make decisions on branding, marketing, content and more.  Membership is open to all, so join the Tribal Council.
  
• We will be looking for volunteers to coordinate a number of things for TribeCon.  If you’re interested getting to TribeCon for free, please contact us.
  
• We’re also looking for sponsors to support TribeCon and connect with an audience of community activist and online influencers.  We have a sponsorship package that we can send you, please let us know if your interested, or know someone for us to reach out to.
• Stay updated with all of the latest, follow @tribecon on Twitter.
  
• Ready to sign up? Great, head on over and buy a ticket to the conference.

Thanks to everyone for all your support.  We’re excited to present TribeCon and connect with the community.

Have more questions? Hit me up in the comments! Thanks.

The last few months have been invigorating in New Orleans.  There have a ton of exciting things going on in New Orleans, and the momentum in the entrepreneurial ecosystem is swelling to a head.

One thing that I’ve noticed myself slipping into, that I’m calling myself out on is the human tendency to lift yourself up by pulling others down.  Something we’ve all known about and experienced since grade school.   It’s a human tendency to compete, but I think its so important to understand that we are competing globally and nationally.  The work we are all doing is to expand the pie, not slice it up in ever smaller pieces amongst ourselves.

With that in mind, I pledge to:

• Support my tribe, New Orleans entrepreneurs (and not just those in Launch Pad).
• When I have something nice to say, I’ll sing it to the world.  When I don’t, I’ll keep my mouth shut.
• Focus on family, work & friends. Balance.
• Help people achieve, succeed, and go further than I have.
• Not succumb to the petty or get sucked into squabbles.
• Give what I can when I can, and be honest when I can’t.

I’ve been so inspired by working around the Launch Pad family.  It is such a great vibe here, and we’re just getting started.  I know that a big part of that is the support that we all provide for eachother and the successes we do and will celebrate together.

Negativity is such an energy suck and so unproductive.  Positive energy is all I have time for right now.  So, I’m brushing it off and ready to rock n’ roll.

Ford has asked me and Greta Perry to host a “blogger dinner” for a Ford executive Sunday night in New Orleans.  This is part of their social media strategy.  I am looking for 2 bloggers to join us.

The deal is:

• we get to check out the new Ford Taurus
• they treat us to dinner Sunday and we’ll share things going on in NOLA w/ a Ford exec
• if we want, we can meet them on Mon and give a tour of things we feel they should see in NOLA
• we are under no obligations to blog (but obviously thats a bit of the idea)
• we may or may not get exposure on a Ford social media campaign

Here’s how to play:

1. comment on this blog post w/ your name, blog URL & the 1 or 2 spots that you think are important for them to see in NOLA (with potential for exposure).
2. tweet me @cschultz and tell me you’re interested

Should be fun, and I’ve agreed to co-ordinate a group and participate.  Full Disclosure: I get $250 for my time.  (I’m pretty sure you just get a free dinner)

On a personal note, I’m going to try to use this to get an LPTV interview with Noah, the Ford exec.  I also want to showcase some of the things I am passionate about in NOLA.  Thinking Carver HS (future site of 9th Ward Field of Dreams).

In case you’re wondering how I got into this, last week I got an email (posted below) from Ovilgy PR reaching out on behalf of Ford inviting me to host a blogger dinner and check out the new Ford Taurus.   I must note, that shilling in social media can be delicate, and I thought the email was genuine and that they “got it”.  Do check out the Outreach Code of Ethics, its one of the things that really convinced me.

Hi Chris,

I’m writing to you on behalf of Ford to ask you to be the official co-host from New Orleans for Ford Executive, Noah Mass, Manager of Systems Architecture on Sunday, July 12 and Monday, July 13.

This summer, Ford Executives are hitting the road to introduce everyone around the country to the new 2010 Taurus and its story.  On Sunday, Noah would like to take you and some other New Orleans bloggers out to dinner to hear from you what makes New Orleans special.  Then on Monday, Noah will host an event at the dealership that’s open to the public and you and any of your readers would be more than welcome to attend.  Schedule permitting, Noah will take the Taurus out to the places you and other bloggers have recommended.

We’re interested in you because you know the area and can help us find the right place to have dinner, invite other bloggers, and spend time with Noah; we’re eager to work with you to share the very best of New Orleans with the Ford community.

If you’re interested in being a co-host, we would promote you and your blog across Ford’s social media properties and compensate you $250 for your time.  (Note that this not in exchange for any positive vehicle review or Ford testimonial, but rather for your guidance and expertise as a New Orleans social media insider!)

If you’d like more information, please let me know.  If you’re not sure you can co-host, but would like to attend Sunday’s dinner or any of Monday’s events, we’d love to have you join us as well.  I know it’s a holiday weekend, but I’d love to hear back from you by Tuesday of next week so we can begin to firm up the day!

Thanks so much.  Hope to talk to you soon,

Karen

PS- Ogilvy Public Relations is a governing member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and our outreach is governed by the Ogilvy PR Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics.

Karen Untereker
Digital Strategist | 360 Digital Influence

If you’re still reading, maybe you want some Ford factiods:

• Sounds like the new 2010 Taurus is a big deal for Ford.
• Taurus sales peaked at 409,000 and last year were at 52,000.
• Looks like Ford dealers are getting onboard with Twitter too, which is cool.
• I remember the original Ford Taurus as being cool b/c it was round.  My prediction is that this one is going to be cool b/c it is techie.  Look forward to seeing it.

Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret gets it.

In one fell swoop, after hours of wrangling on Monday at the Louisiana State Legistature, Moret was patched in on a crackling cell phone connection. After listening to all sides, he said that the most important thing to him for a company to qualify for the Digital Media Tax Credit is that 80%-90% of it’s revenue come from out of state.

It’s interesting and revealing to note, this has nothing to do with who does the work, where the work is done, or what the work is.  Now, I’m not saying he doesn’t hold opinions about these things, and they will be codified in the bill, but his primary focus was that this work is export work.

Why?

Because, building websites and applications by Louisiana businesses for Louisiana business is going to happen anyway.  It’s already happening now, people need this stuff, but it doesn’t expand the fiscal pie.  So why incentivize it? On the flip side, if we can build businesses here that have clients in New York, San Francisco, London, LA then it gets interesting.  Sound familiar?

Let me submit what I recognize is a controversial argument, but is in line with Moret’s 90% rule: My company, Flatsourcing, is good for the state of Louisiana.

Now, many readers know, but for those who don’t, Flatsourcing is a software development firm, based here in New Orleans, with production offices in Kazan, Russia.  I just returned from a trip there last week with Peter Bodenheimer and two clients.  We have a team of 21 people over there, and the business is growing.

I talked about Flatsourcing when I testified before committee at the State Senate this week.  Of the six or seven of us, I was the only one asked a question, and it was clear that “shipping jobs to Russia” went over like a lead balloon.  I was asked whether Flatsourcing would qualify for the Digital Media Tax Credit and I said no. I know the company would have more of an economic development impact if those 21 jobs were here in New Orleans, but for a variety of factors (too many for this post), they are not.

The economy of the 21st century is based on knowledge work, the creation of stuff that can be broken down to 1’s and 0’s and therefore done anywhere.  Because of this, borders are pourus and its close to impossible to understand, much less regulate, where the work is done.  The value chain is long and distributed, often globally.  The most important factor of who wins this race is where the value is captured.  Value capture = wealth creation = profit.  If a company is based in Louisiana, and those profits are captured here, they will be taxed here and spent here.  This is certainly the case in terms of Flatsourcing.

The fact that more than 90% of our revenue comes from outside Louisiana, flows into a company that is based here, is distributed here as profit, and gets spent locally very clearly economic development for the state.

When I speak to people about the stigma of outsourcing, I often bring up what the rest of the world calls it: competing.  While I certainly agree that in an ideal world, all the people we employ would work in the same office here in New Orleans, this simply isn’t the way the world works anymore.

When I work with entrepreneurs who are starting businesses, one of the first questions I ask is: are you locally or globally focused?  I believe you must be looking worldwide for customers.

It was refreshing to hear Moret focus on this idea of expanding the economic pie with the simple metric: does 90% of your revenue flow from out of state.  We see it happening right now, right here.

Benjamin Reece with Deltree has national level clients through Deltree, has a partnership in New York that drives this business to him, and yet bases his company in New Orleans.  Kyle Berner may manufacture his flip flops in Thailand, but he markets them all over the country, not simply in a local New Orleans boutique.  Naked Pizza may be a local pizza shop right now, but the vision is much grander, and I know Jeff Leach won’t rest until they’ve got franchises all over the country.  I am confident that all of these businesses will soon meet Secretary Moret’s 90% rule if they don’t already.  These are the businesses that will expand the economic pie for Louisiana.

Turning back to Digital Media, it is unlikely that this 90% rule can be codified in the law, and that’s probably a good thing.  We don’t want the state having to audit accounting statements.  But it was great to see this understanding at the State level.

We’ll see how the Digital Media tax incentive works out, but I am very enthusiastic to see this high level understanding of what economic development is all about from Secretary Moret.

I’m excited to announce that Peter Bodenheimer has joined Voodoo Ventures as our new Interactive Director.  He makes a great addition to the Voodoo & Flatsourcing team.

Peter and I have known each other for a while and its been a pleasure working with him thusfar.  He brings very technical project management experience to the team.  Peter will be adding a layer of client strategy & support for our Flatsourcing clients and assisting with product development for Voodoo Ventures projects.

I’m thrilled to have him aboard and look forward to continued growth for Voodoo & Flatsourcing.

Peter Bodenheimer, Interactive Director, Voodoo Ventures, LLC
A native of New Orleans, Peter has over 15 years working in interactive development in markets across the country. From working in product development for software companies to providing leadership in interactive projects for Fortune 500 companies, local governments, and everything in between, Peter has been involved with software and web development since the infancy of the Internet age. Whether in Boston, Silicon Valley, or New Orleans, Peter has focused on using technology to solve problems for clients such as Olympus, Business Week, Visa, Hasbro, and Tabasco.

Prior to Voodoo Ventures, Peter served as Interactive Director at Trumpet Advertising. Prior to that he played a leading role in the strategy and execution that resulted in the dramatic rise of the City of New Orleans website from a ranking of 70 out of 70 in 2003 to being awarded the Center for Digital Government’s award for the Best City Portal in 2005. Aside from the project to overhaul the city website, he drove numerous other projects for the city’s Office of Technology, including bring the permitting system for the City of New Orleans online after Hurricane Katrina, working night and day his team built a system from the ground up that used the Internet and physical kiosk implementations to handle over 600 permits per day, up from roughly 40 per day before the storm. When he’s not building or exploring the online world, Peter spends his time honing his poker game, reliving his days as a professional chef, and trying to tire his dog out riding around Bayou St. John and City Park.

Eric Marcoullier has been a huge supporter of the NOLA tech community and has become a good friend through time spent at SXSW and in SF.  He went to school for a minute at Tulane and is coming to town this weekend.

Eric’s done a lot, and I’m really looking forward to hearing him speak.  He was one of the founders of MyBlogLog (see the pics to the right of this post, thats it) which Yahoo bought two years ago.  Now he’s got a cool startup called GNIP which is making sure the tubes carrying all your tweets and stuff don’t get clogged.

Let’s show him some NOLA love and all go see him speak on Monday at Tulane.  The event is free and open to the public.

Eric Marcoullier

CEO, Gnip Inc

When : April 20th, 2009 5.30 pm – 6.30 pm

Place: Graduate Business Building (Goldring/Woldenberg Hall 2) Room 2110

Eric Marcoullier is CEO and co-founder of the online data services company Gnip, Inc.  Previously, Eric co-founded MyBlogLog, a distributed social network for bloggers that sold to Yahoo in 2007.  Eric’s other ventures have included CEO and co-founder of training games provider Minerva Software and co-founder of IGN.com, which sold to Fox Interactive Media in 2005.  He advises several companies, including recent Automattic acquisition Intense Debate, as well as Future US, Zynga Games, Zemanta and Zentact and Megamesium, both of which he also co-founded.

We’re back from SXSW and I was invited to present a review of the Net2NO Y@ Pack’s efforts at the Digital Media Alliance (DMA) yesterday. It is great to see the DMA gaining steam and taking an active leadership role in the New Orleans tech community.

While I was tapped to present the results from the SXSW road trip, I have to say that it was a total team collaborative effort. The leadership of Damien Lamanna, Jessica Rohloff, Adele Tiblier, Tiffany Starnes & Andrew Larimer was what made this trip possible. And of course the support from GNO, DDD, City of NO, and all our sponsors. We’ll be posting a case study that is being put together very shortly with success metrics, but I wanted to convey how impactful the support of the trip was in terms of raising awareness about the New Orleans tech scene.

On the way home from SXSW, Tiffany Starnes, Adele Tiblier & I spent eight hours brainstorming on a bus about what we wanted to do next, how we were going to capture and build on this momentum. We kept coming back to community. We got home and tore through Seth Godin’s Tribes, and started bouncing the idea off people we respected, forming a Tribal Council. Today, we’re pleased to present our conference idea that heretofore has been under wraps.

What is happening in New Orleans right now is just a microcosm of what is happening all over the world. Traditional organizations with top down power structures are giving way to grass roots community-driven movements. Let’s call them tribes. These tribes self organize and galvanize to action. Let’s put a conference on to explore this phenomenon:

The Tribe Conference is a conference for people passionate about building communities. Over the last several years there has been an explosion of grass roots organizations that have been built through connecting people online with the mission of spurring action offline. These communities have developed organically and have consolidated national and international presence through websites, wikis, and branding. The communities are very grass roots and inherently local. As these communities evolve, there is a further need to facilitate a sharing of ideas, best practices, and development of a national community for the growth of all of these movements. The Voodoo Tribe conference mission will be to educate and connect communities, with a focus on the exchange of ideas about common ties of community-building, rather than a focus on what the communities do.

When we look at the ideal time for a conference like this in New Orleans, it fits well with the Voodoo Music Fest which is a great music festival around Halloween each year. The ethos of the music fest fits well with the idea for this conference too. I’d be interested in feedback on whether that timing is a draw or a drawback. We believe people like to come to New Orleans around great events like that to get some of the New Orleans cultural experience in addition to the conference.

The communities we would be interested in reaching out to are the ones that share these common threads:

• unconferences / unorganizations / movements / tribes
• web-based self organization through twitter, facebook, wikis, meetup.com, google groups, etc
• grass-roots but part of a larger national & international movement that people have simply picked up and run with
• Examples: Net Squared, BarCamps, WordCamps, Co-working, Ignite, Social Media Club

Want to learn more? Contact me, Tiffany or Adele. Want to be a part of the movement?  Join our Tribal Council.  Let’s make this happen together.

I’m taking a quick moment this morning to reflect on everything that happened, and everyone we met at WordCamp NOLA this weekend. I wasn’t able to be there on Saturday because of family commitments, but Friday was a really stellar day and I heard the same about Saturday.

I want to thank John Ramirez and Computer CC for all the hard work they put into WordCamp. John has worked tirelessly for the last 8 months to put this together, and everything at the conference was first class. They really worked hard on and went the extra mile to make the conference as professional as possible.

Thanks to all the speakers who gave their time and in some cases traveled to New Orleans to be a part of this. But most of all, thank you to all the folks who came out and participated, you made this what it was!

There was very positive feedback on Twitter. @lizmoney said:

RT @w2scott: Seriously: RT @lizmoney: RT @champsuperstar: can we do #wordcampnola again next weekend? L$: can we can we?

Thanks to everyone for the support, it’s exciting to have great events like this happening in NOLA!

Friday morning the Net2NO krewe (aka NOLA <3 SXSW aka Y@T Pack) will be on the road to Austin.  This road trip has taken a lot of planning, and a lot of people have worked very hard to make it happen.  And now it’s here, so let’s rock it.  This post is based on my personal experience at SXSW over the last 4 years, but I still have a lot to learn, so I look forward to your thoughts in the comments

How to Rock It and Get the Most Out of SXSW

• Work Hard / Play Hard – You’re going to be dead tired a week from today so get over it.  Don’t party so hard you can’t make the panels, and don’t panel so hard you miss the parties.  I learn so much each year going to really interesting panels, I love seeking out new and interesting speakers.  But the best connections I make are over a few beers at the parties.  You have to be able to do both.  So suck it up and don’t plan on getting a lot of sleep, you’ve got to hustle at SXSW.
• Planning Your Panels – There are several good panel planners online.  These are great to sift through the panels ahead of time.  Me? I take a yellow highlighter and go spend an hour going through the SXSW book on the day I get there.  I select my panels based on person, not topic.  Anyone who you find interesting on twitter, or who may run a company you respect or think is cool is probably worth seeing.  I highlight out a schedule for each day, then tear of the panel picker and stick it in my badge pass holder each morning.
• What to Wear – While this isn’t going to be a problem for us, since we all have t-shirts, I’ll offer my 2 cents.  You’ll see a lot of hipster cool, ie: Threadless Dirty Coast tees.  You’ll see very few ties unless they are skinny or ironic.  Jeans are de riguer.   Be comfortable and if the weathers iffy, bring a jacket, because you might not make it back home before the evenings activities.  Generally, I take the conference day directly into the party circuit evening.
• What to Carry – iPhone & Moleskine.  Maybe a camera.  That’s it.  I don’t carry my MacBook to the conference each day, b/c personally I don’t need to immediately blog my day.  But really its because I just don’t want to carry it around.  A bag to carry stuff is nice, but you have to carry it around all day.
• Who to Meet – Anyone and everyone.  SXSW is literally the friendliest conference I’ve ever been too.  You can walk right up to your favorite web-celeb and introduce yourself.  Don’t be shy, that’s what we are all here for.  Don’t do anything alone.  Find people to go to lunch with, go to dinner with, go out with.  You’ll meet so many new friends.  Relax and have fun.
• Parties to Hit – Personally, I tend to skip most of the official parties.  A general rule, the bigger the name (Google, Facebook, Digg) the bigger the crowd.  Most of these parties are so packed that people are waiting outside for hours.  Not me.  It’s not worth getting in and then not being able to get a drink.  Go to the smaller, more intimate events.  Follow twitter and you’ll find them. They usually have much cooler people anyway.  The Dorkbot party and all of the outdoor happy hours are great.  I always have fun at these and like the outside ones. (Don’t miss the NOLA Party on Monday and St. Patricks Last Stand on Tuesday)
• Awards Night – Sunday night is the web awards night.  I skip it.  But then I don’t really like the Oscars or Grammys either.  You’ll hear who won on Twitter anyway.
• BarCamp – BarCamp Austin is a great way to spend a day or an afternoon away from the convention center on Saturday.  I go every year and spend a 1/2 day.  I highly recommend you plan to stop by.  Register @ Facebook.
• Twitter – Definitely the official back-channel for SXSW.  I wrote a post in 2007 about what social software would emerge at SXSW.  Clearly it is Twitter.  So much so that Dodgeball is now down for the count.
• Rawk It – this post was inspired by the the panel How to Rawk SXSW.  So go to that too.

In addition to those general way to rock SXSW, I’m super excited about what New Orleans is doing to take Austin by storm….

NOLA <3 SXSW – Road Trip Details – Lots of people have been asking me exactly what we are doing, so here is the down low:

• Who – 30 Louisianians will be jumping on a bus and cruising to Austin for SXSW.
• What – We’re going to promote New Orleans and Louisiana as a fantasic location for digital media & tech professionals.  We’ve got fantastic culture, quality of life, and a creative climate. Since Hurricane Katrina the city has literally reinvented itself and we’ve had an influx of passionate, talented young people who want to make an impact.  Our local chapter of Net2 has been instrumental in harnessing this energy and building a community of techies, now 175 strong in only 8 months.  The Downtown Development District , GNO, Inc and City of New Orleans Film Commission have been instrumental in our ability to pull this trip off.  We’ll be spreading the gospel of New Orleans at SXSW!
• Shirts – We’ll be easy to spot because we’ll all be wearing the same shirts.
• Booth – Stop by our booth 811 at the SXSW trade show to meet us, grab some schwag and tell us your story.  We’ll be giving away a free weekend in NOLA each day at 5:04pm.
• Panel – Shameless plug: Come to my panel Outsourcing 2.0 – Is the World Flat or Not? on Monday at 11:30 am in room 8.
• Party Bus – Look for the NOLA <3 SXSW party bus cruising around the convention center and the parties each night.  We’re providing free shuttle services between all the parties.
• Party – Don’t miss the New Orleans Party on Monday night 10pm-2am at the Lucky Lounge.  DJ Othertempo and the Austin Knights Brass band will perform.  It’s going to be a NOLA style throwdown. RSVP here.
• Twitter – follow @net2no for official details on the trip. And our hashtag is #nosxsw so you can search for that too.
• Google Group – all messages and discussion for everyone going on the trip.
• Blog – We’ll be posting everything on the Net2NO site.  Stay tuned!

I’m excited to see old friends and new at SXSW.  Here are my digits, let’s connect:

• Email me @ cschultz@voodooventures.com
• Follow me @ twitter.com/cschultz
• Call me @ 504-931-6099