Clay Shirky at the recent TED@State conference:

In a world where media is global, social, ubiquitous and cheap. In a world of media where the former audience are now increasingly full participants. In that world, media is less and less often about crafting a single message to be consumed by individuals and is more and more often a way of creating an environment for convening and supporting groups. And the choice we face, and I mean anybody who has a message they want to have heard anywhere in the world, isn’t whether that’s the media environment we want to operate in – that’s the media environment we’ve got. The question we all face now is how do we make the best use of this medium, even though it means changing the way we’ve always done it.

When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.

The quote above is from Clay Shirky’s recent essay “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable”, which takes an uncompromising look at the future of newspapers and journalism. With things getting to crisis point for newspapers in the US and in the UK, Dirk Singer has helpfully put together a timely report on the future of print and what it means for brands:

Dirk’s view is an accurate reflection of the current reality (even if obviously pitched from on offline PR perspective), especially on slide 21 where he says:

Online exposure is not second best
online outperforms print on reach and credibility

However, as Clay postulates, newspapers as we currently understand them may not exist on or offline in just a few years from now. And by then, social media will be even more pervasive.

The smart brands are preparing themselves for that future by learning about and experimenting in social media right here in the present.

SXSW Interactive: debate, discussion, frenetic networking, Twitter saturation, internet celebs, and happy chaos as technology and culture intersected in Austin, Texas.

At SXSW, as Mike Butcher noted in TechCrunch UK, “everybody knows your Twitter name”, and Twitter was essential to find anyone or anything.

On literally thousands of laptops and iPhones, everyone seemed to have their Twitter app of choice (mostly Tweetdeck from my observations) running constantly. In fact the vast swarms of geeks with iPhones overloaded the AT&T network until complaints prompted them to add network capacity.

The #sxsw hashtag became useless, so Digital Mission attendees kept track of each other using #digitalmission. At the unofficial “unpanel” we spontaneously convened, we “crowd sauced” the hashtag #kebab, with a live Twitter backchannel projected on screen.

Six to Start (who picked up a couple of awards for We Tell Stories – congrats guys!) ran an excellent panel on ARG’s and bringing TV to the web with the BBC, which also projected a Twitter backchannel, though this was overshadowed by Clay Shirky asking one of the first questions.

Twitter monetisation became an ongoing topic/joke amongst panel members from start to finish, with Guy Kawasaki opening the closing keynote interview by asking “free” advocate and Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson what he would do if he were Twitter. Anderson was long on philosophy, short on detail: “How do you create the version of the product that people will pay for without crippling the base product?… Charge companies somehow, and build from there.”

Some of the more interesting points came in the session afterwards, moderated by Doc Searls. Anderson observed that “catalysing and curating conversation is a big part of my job. My card says Editor-in-Chief but I’m really a Community Manager.”

The irrepressible Gary Vaynerchuk was equal parts entertaining and inspiring, and although it felt more like therapy than a keynote, I agree with everything he said.

Of the more practical sessions, Kathy Sierra and Cliff Atkinson impressed in Presenting Straight to the Brain. Learning how to “seduce the brain” involves recognising that our brains are wired from caveman days, and  are usually in epic battle with our minds. In Designing for the Wisdom of Crowds, Flickr and Threadless were looked at in depth, as great examples of successful crowdsourcing businesses.

The Mobile Social Networking panel was, bizarrely, missing anyone from Fire Eagle, and seemed to get distracted by definitions and privacy issues until Martin May from Brightkite announced that “Monetisation is kind of boring,” and finally started talking about mobile social networking!

Despite my plans the most interesting conversations have been serendipitous. It’s amazing who you bump into randomly in the hallways and parties – here are a few snaps of some of the people I hung out with, bumped into or tracked down via Twitter…

After some great meetings in the San Francisco Bay Area, including a visit to Silicon Valley, it’s time to head to Austin, Texas, for SXSW Interactive.

There are too many sessions I’m hoping to attend to list here, but the I’m especially looking forward to the panels on Making Whuffie: Raising Social Capital in Online Communities, Social Patterns and Antipatterns, Curiosity Marketing and Digital Urbanites. Bruce Sterlng and Clay Shirky should also be interesting.

We Are Social is attending as a member of the UK Trade & Investment’s Digital Mission to SXSW, so you will find me at the Great British Breakfast, and Britbash. I’m looking forward to the 32bit party which our friends at Get Satisfaction are co-hosting with Scott Beale. The Bigg Digg Shindigg looks promising, as does the The TechSet Meets The Rat Pack party.

I wasn’t in London when techfluff.tv came to record us, so I’m hoping to catch up with them somewhere in Austin, possibly at the Digital Mission stand in the tradeshow area, or during the SXSW Block Party.

I may try to rendezvous with the RVIP Lounge, “a karaoke party on wheels,” and I’ll will also be keeping an eye out for the hat, though Running w/ SXSWissors could be a bit dangerous after a few drinks.

Perhaps optimistically I’m hoping to shoot some pool with Chris Brogan at Pool 2.0 so if anyone’s up for a game, please get in touch.

Here’s the Upcoming list of events that I am working, though I’m obviously not going to get to them all, and the number of SXSW scheduling tools I’ve come across is impressive, if confusing. The best advice seems to be to go with the flow a bit, so I’m hoping for tips and updates from the likes of @sxswguide, @sxswparty, @sxswtwits, and the @digitalmission crew.

I’ll be posting images to my flickr stream as often as possible (experimenting with Tarpipes to get things auto-tagged and auto-tweeted) to keep you jealous entertained.

And if you can’t make it along to #swsw, you could always join the #notatsxsw crew on Twitter.

Nathan
@deliciousmedia