SXSW and social media. A match made in interactive-hipster heaven.

While browsing through the lineup for the 2008 SXSW Music Festival, something occurred to me. While I volunteer for the music portion, and am interested in the film portion as well, there is a very important facet of the conference I vastly overlook, the interactive festival. Sure, it doesn't offer the drawing tactics of famous musicians in a commonplace setting, or actors attending star-studded premieres. But just because the interactive fest isn't the most glamorous of venues, doesn't mean it lacks in interest and crowd pleasing offerings.

I work the music panels at the fest, and thought there might be some decent interactive panels as well. As it turns out, the interactive portion of the festival boasts significantly more for professionals. A list of panels by category shows 17 on Social Media alone. One of the keynote speakers is Mark Zuckerburg, founder of hugely popular networking site Facebook. One of the panels that I found particularly interesting, as well as incredible applicable to our class, is entitled "Harnessing the Power of Social Networking on Your Intranet". Led by Bill Cava, Chief Technology Officer for Ektron, the panel focuses on how social networking can make your company's intranet a collaborative tool, for creation and delivery of business documents. Social networking, in this capacity, can be used as a tool to provide feedback between employees and to assure consistency of message.