Intelligent, pithy and extremely articulate, you got the feeling you were consuming a lifetimes work boiled down to 40 minutes – healthy, nutricious, enough to bite on and not overcooked.

The men that followed on the other hand (sorry boys, but the women really won this one) were dry, process oriented and basically dull.

I’ve never seen the kind of exodus the crowd treated Evan Williams to.  5,000 people crammed in and well over half left, leaving a dispiriting empty looking conference hall by the time they wrapped up.  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20000486-52.html

And Daniel Elk the next day wasn’t much better.  The interviewer and the content kept people there, but as performance goes it was a damp squib.

That these men lack charisma isn’t the main problem. The problem is they’re the current poster children for our collective ambitions for the web.  Twitter is great – a happy accident with openness at it’s heart that’s had the (mostly unintended) consequence of doing social good.  And so is Spotify.  But do we really need another way of consuming music when so many exist already?  Is that the best we can aim for?  The problem is of celebrating these (agreed, technologically and business wise brilliant) achievements as the only zeitgeist.   We need to resist the kind of circle jerk group-think that just produces imitations and copies rather than really creative solutions to unsolved problems.

Thanks to Bruce Sterling for bringing us back – http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/17/bruce-sterlings-sxsw.html

Nicely handled by Ian Hogarth (CEO Songkick) all alone which made a refreshing change from the endless panel format.

Basically, the internet has brought fans more choice, made it easier for unsigned acts to build a fanbase and saved the music industry by stimulating the rise in sales for live events.  Interestingly (my favourite insight from the session), as ticket sales have gone steadily up in the last decade, the proportion of sales from top selling artists has markedly declined – meaning what the internet has really enabled is support for the wierd and wonderful, a much more diverse music culture which we used to feel was strangled in the old days when major labels were in the ascendency.

So we know the obvious sites – ticketmaster, eventbrite, myspace – but for new artists and unsigned acts with limited resources, there’s a crazy confusion of new tools coming out all the time.  So which ones work?  Which to choose?

On the demand side (ie bands can attract support, build their fan base and show promoters how popular they are to get gigs) there’s tools to help you find gigs – Songkick itself, but also Pollstar – sites like Eventful where fans can demand gigs and bands can build up a head of steam by building sign up (which works for all events, not just music and can applied to say, touring theatre) – and sites where artists/promoters can find and choose their optimal venue, send a request to play there, and make the case by getting their fans to lobby – eg. Gigmaven, which is only available in NY so far, but one to follow and surely London will be soon if it gets take up.

And for the really smart there’s Next Big Sound - a data tracking analytics site where you can track how your fans engage with you online, across all social media.  How many plays you’re getting, who’s mentioning you and when, numbers of plays, views, comments, which you can also compare with other bands, and use to show venue owners and festival promoters why you should be on the bill.

Then there’s selling tickets direct to your fans – either by promoting your own events (which most bands hate, but this makes it easier) or by supplementing what the venue is doing for you by flogging your own ticket allocation (sometimes the key to getting a gig in the first place). Being in control gives you better data (you know who’s bought and you have their address) and better margins.  Check out Ticketfly, Topspin (a retail channel you can embed in your own site), and Crowdsurge.

And then you’ve got to sell it.  Tools that aggregate mentions across blogs and social media and give you tips to up your twitter score like Hype Machine and Sonicliving.

The music industry is (like with many things) leading the way in the concept of social commerce - fans want to follow their bands, they want to belong. To make it nowadays, ambitious bands can do this for themselves and a plethora of tools are there – it’s more about being judicious about which to use, resisting the temptation to migrate to the next new spangly thing to come out, and putting the time in.

The UK has one of the brightest and most significant creative industries economies in the world – contributing nearly £60bn a year into the UK economy, about 7.3% of the whole.  To put it in context, that’s twice as much value as tourism and about as big as the financial services sector was at its peak.

The creativity, expression and ideas that underpin the creative economy in the UK comes from the hundreds and thousands of artists making, showing and performing all over the country.  4,500 gigs happen in the UK every night, arts and cultural festivals spring up in every town, home grown digital and internet content is created in people’s houses up and down the country.

This wealth of creativity is represented by the people on this trip, who are off to Texas to drink in all that’s happening on the frontiers of digital.  The trip is about learning what’s going on in the rest of the world as well as connecting with each other.  And it’s about making the links between individual artists, the cultural industries that produce and show the work, and the creative industries beyond.

Inside conference centre

Reflecting back on the UK creatives trip to SXSWi earlier this year, and the things that seems to have impacted most on people who went were the network that was created between the UK group, the opportunity to almost breathe in all things interactive, and how useful it was to get away from day-to-day business at home.

12 people were selected by the Arts Council to go to SXSWi as the UK digital creatives delegation. The majority of the group who went (70%) were producers and half the group artists – some seeing themselves as both. The group being fairly evenly balanced between the two made for a good mix. 90% of the group had not been to SXSWi before.

The top reasons for wanting to come on the trip embraced the artistic and the commercial.

For some it was to develop the artistic opportunities of digital and interactive, to “find like minded digital content makers” and to learn more about developments for both creating and presenting work. People wanted to learn more about interactive production, to see great examples of interactive work, and be stimulated with new ideas.

For others, sights were set on getting market intelligence, exploring commercial developments and checking out the competition. Networking and promoting were also a big reason for making the trip, and to raise the profile of the organisations we represented with influential people in the US. Many of us were looking to make links and contacts and to use the trip to publicise and market our work.

Not really knowing what to expect, we met up in London before the trip, to hear from others who had been before. It was clear that we needed to do something unique to break through the noise and bring attention to ourselves, and we agreed to develop a group game, through which we could promote ourselves individually and collectively. The Hat Game was the result – a game involving a GSPS fitted hat and an online map that tracked where the hat was at any one time. The game was to find the hat, challenge the wearer and keep it for as long as possible. The person holding on to the hat for the longest wins. The Hat Game gave us a brand – the traditional British bowler – showed off the technical and creative skills of the makers, and gave us an ‘umbrella’ under which to organise the group.

There is more about the resulting Hat Game throughout the blog, including links to the coverage the game received and pictures and videos from the game itself.

We also decided we a) needed to hone our pitches and b) find out more about what we each did, and so arranged another meet-up to group pitch. This was really useful, allowed us to promote each other better, and was the beginning of a better understanding that has led to subsequent collaborations.

So, how did we do?

Commerical:

The Hat Game got some attention at the event, and gave us something to talk to people about, and organise around. The hat was chased around Austin for 2 days, played by the public as well as event delegates, and made a small ripple in the big lake of activity that was SXSWi. But it was online and in promotion at home that it really made impact, being picked up by the Guardian and the BBC.

The group was very focused on promotion and using SXSWi for its’ commercial potential, which we prepared for through the Hat Game and pre-pitching our pitches. On reflection, SXSWi wasn’t as much of a formal profile raising experience as we’d initially expected. The opportunities to promote were more in the one-to-one networking bars and parties and being introduced to people in the face of the aggressive – and generally very good – pitches coming thick and fast from our US counterparts.

50% of the group said they met more potential clients than they had expected to, although the other 50% did not at all. This suggests that the clients were there, but that they took finding, and it depended on how important or appropriate fishing for clients was for people. Most of us were more interested in taking in the range of talks, demos, conversations, parties and content on offer than specifically there to reach clients or pitch something specific. A third of the group said they had met more potential funders and investors than they had expected, though the rest of the group felt not at all. Again, funders and investors were there, but formal opportunities to reach them were rare – more a case of finding out where they were and schmoozing at a party or going up to them after their sessions.

The commercial links were there at SXSWi, but to make the most of them required that focus. For most of the group the trip was a voyage of discovery, to understand the landscape better and to meet people. Commercial opportunities for pitching projects, finding clients, funders and investors perhaps needs a second trip, and a concerted effort, plus a particular commercial need, which not all of us had. There is an opportunity here for the Arts Council or other UK public bodies such as UKTI, to be more proactive in creating opportunities for UK artists and producers to show their wares.

As the UK presence at SXSWi builds, creative ways of showcasing UK artists could be found – by working directly with artists and producers on how this could be done. On the whole, there was a noticeable lack of good quality work at SXSWi. Future trips could build on the Hat Game experience and, with more support, could provide inventive ways of showcasing UK interactive art and commercial products, and encourage collaborations between UK artists.

Networking:

Most people in the group gave the relationships that were built between other members of the group as the most beneficial thing about the trip.

“Spending time with people who I knew, and developing ideas.”

Networking was the undoubted main benefit of being at SXSWi. 40% of the group extended their network more than they had expected, plus 40% who did this exceptionally so. Clearly this was a winner and the main gain to be had from funding subsequent trips. The potential of a SXSWi alumni growing – artists and producers who have been on the funded trip before alongside newbies – increases the network amongst UK artists. The Arts Council should consider how it could create a good environment for this – for example by block booking a hotel and offering a good rate to UK delegates not on the official funded trip, to encourage links – as well as pre-festival get-togethers in the UK.

Networking with international contacts was a clear second benefit of the trip. Being out and about, meeting people, chance encounters.

As Dan Efegan, Director of Aardman’s new online unit put it, “just as I headed home I bumped into the Creative Director of Fallow in Tokyo…SXSW has so many people piled in here, meeting people is easy.”

These are the kinds of contacts it can take ages to develop without one-to-one contact. Everyone who is anyone in interactive was there at SXSWi and so speeded up the kinds of contacts that UK creatives were making – invaluable to business.

The group made contacts old and new. Best moments were described:

“Meeting a group of hackers/artists from New York/Montreal which is already leading into a collaborative project.”

“The other great opportunity for me was re-connecting with a group of artists/web geeks that I was close to a few years back in the early videoblogging scene. Tweets and emails are fine but it was so much stronger to meet with (and some for the first time) these old virtual buddies.”

60% of the group said that the networking was valuable, 20% that it was exceptional. The majority of the group made between 6-10 good contacts, with 20% making 10+.

Contacts made were both UK and international, and of a high level.

“Microsoft – we’ve now got an e-mail to discuss Silverlight as a potential platform.”

“Tracy Fullerton, who runs the EA Games Innovation Lab at USC…great to find out about what she does.”

“Brian Hickman – works at the University of Ohio – developing an archive for music, looking to develop links between Home Of Metal and Brians project.”

“Josh Klein – His work on creative commissioning and empowering the writer are fascinating and I’d like to see ways I can share this with poets in the UK.”

“Met developers from the Go Game and could be useful in understanding a lucrative business model for game-based corporate fundraising.”

“I met an artist from Montreal called Emilie Grenier, she makes soundwalks (like me) but has an interest in embedded computing and working with wearable objects…We are now working together on a soundwalk for the iPhone with distribution through the itunes app store…also being worked on by Mobile Pie who were part of the UKTI mission to SXSW”

“Met Peter Whybrow, Director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA. Was invited to meet up next time in LA. Will definitely do that. He is interested in consumption and how this affects people.”

SXSWi provided a fruitful environment to make contacts, have conversations, build ideas and network. This was incredibly beneficial for people spread across the UK who hadn’t connected with each other’s work before. Again, it was other people in the group who were cited as amongst the best contacts that had been made – reiterating that the networking between the group was perhaps the most beneficial part of the trip as a whole.

The Arts Council could consider how it could sustain and build this network across the UK. Artists working in the kind of clusters like I-Shed provides in Bristol have this cross-fertilisation, which could be built on by a post SXSWi UK network.

The comparisons with others work which the SXSWi trip enabled were an important measure of people’s own work, which is sometimes difficult to get perspective on. On the whole the comparisons with work in the US were very positive for UK artists. More cross-fertilisation across the UK would extend this kind of comparison and stimulate quality work.

“At least as represented at SXSWi I didn’t feel we were missing out on much creatively in Huddersfield.”

“An affirmation that the work being done my peer group in the UK is actually really cutting edge.”

Artistic: What was learnt?

In terms of practical technology there was a shift throughout the trip. There was a mix in degrees of ability – ranging from around a third of the group who put themselves in the bracket of “expert – the work I’m developing is leading the way” to “proficient”, “a dabbler” and “an adopter”. 20% of the group put themselves in the “Follower – interested but I need to be shown” category at the beginning of the trip, but not by the end. By the end, 50% of the group had made it up to the “Dabbler – I can upload and I know how to make a blog” category (previously 20%). For all the hype about digital it’s often surprising how little people know. This total immersion in interactive-everything was great for getting stuck in. Less so for the developers amongst us, but significantly for the less technical, learning how to make a blog and getting to grips with Twitter were big gains.

Feedback is that SXSWi wasn’t the most inspiring place for new work. Ideas yes. How to market them, yes. But creating art pieces – less of that going on. Having said that, some of the artists in the group did create new work, and some showcased existing work, and some had seen work they wouldn’t have done otherwise. Overall feeling is there could be more of a focus on creating stuff at the festival – perhaps this is a gap the UK delegation could fill next time – and encourage on-the-spot collaborations with other artists and developers out there. An Arts Council funded (and marketed) ‘spontaneous’ installation, game or performance showcasing the best of UK interactive talent next year perhaps?

Collaborations this year? They happened. For some more than expected and for one person exceptionally. For 90% of the group though, having met someone they expect to collaborate with in the future happened more than expected or exceptionally so – so lots of meetings that threw up ideas and links with creators in the UK – most noticeably amongst each other, but also with international contacts.

Capsule and Germination have gone on to collaborate on an installation within Supersonic, Capsule’s annual music festival.

Simon Games and Nina Steiger from Soho Theatre look set to work together.

“We are really interested in working with dramaturges to develop performance and story in street games. The Soho theatre has a reputation for innovative, challenging work and Nina is a great ambassador for that. Enthusiastic, sceptical, entrepreneurial. We hope to do good stuff with her.” The possible commission is for a story game to accompany autumn production of Shraddha by Natasha Langridge.

Nina from Soho Theatre is also designing a new 6-part curriculum with Brad King on distributed narrative to be delivered by Soho and to feature bursaries for guest tutorials for sxsw collaborators.

And Andrew Wilson and Sarah Ellis from Apples and Snakes were in discussion immediately after SXSWi.

“Had a very enjoyable and productive meeting with Sarah Ellis from Apples and Snakes when we got back to England…and I think we will…try a little trial project working together.”

This has turned into a poetry-related idea that they are testing at the Big Chill, playing with audience created work and involving the poetry robot!

Sarah Ellis is commissioning some online masterclasses to writers and performers on Apples and Snakes website My Place of Yours as part of their British Council partnership on South East Europe and will collaborate with some of the group on that.

Duncan Speakman and Nina Steiger have since worked together, Duncan making a soundwalk for Soho Theatre in Everything Must Go, which has also led (fairly directly he thinks) on to him being selected for the Vauxhall Collective 2009. Duncan is also teaching on Playwriting for the iPod Generation.

Soho Theatre has run a Co-commission with Apples and Snakes for a cross-media project for writers that uses social media and game mechanics to create a distributed narrative, investigating evolving ideas of authorship, identity and live performance in the digital space. Consultants on the project include Simon Games, Duncan Speakman, and Hazel Grian from our group as well as Brad King (SXSW) and Ken Eklund.

Soho Theatre also worked with Alex Fleetwood and Holly Gramazio of Hide & Seek to host a day-long workshop in social games design and its possible links with theatre which drew writers, producers and other practitioners. The event was followed by a Sandpit social games evening held throughout the building and neighborhood.

Session Content:

In terms of the content of the sessions themselves, opinion was varied, tinged with some disappointment that the content wasn’t better. Was it partly a cultural thing – that British ability to spot sales pitches masquerading as sessions a mile off and turning our noses up? There was definitely some of that, but also a sense of wanting more.

People found their own needles in the haystack.

“Most useful is probably the blend of all the iPhone Apps. They’ve helped us develop a strategy for our own iPhone development.”

Bruce Sterling was a hit, as was “Tangible Interactions in Urban Spaces” and “What we can Learn from Games” which drew the following comments:

“Fascinating and inspiring, questioning, provided different view points and not afraid of questions from themselves and the audience.”

“Talk about game design, learning theories, collective intelligence, transmedia entertainment, and the value of play in a participatory culture.”

“A progressive vision of how play and games can educate people for the world we live in – creative, collaborative, inventive, self-reliant. Inspiring and with serious, considered insight. The theory of what and why we do.”

Not something you get every day.

Improvements that people suggested:

“Very much a focus on marketing rather than artistic/creativity.”

“Deeper descriptions of specific work and more examples – tended to skim the surface – want to know more about how you make things and see into it – more intellectuals not just knowing how to turn a buck.”

“Too often it was like an echo chamber.”

There was also critique of the formats, with more interaction being needed to break up the panel formats.

Suggestions included:

“A blog or discussion space that allows for more conversation, more dissent, more dialogue.”

“More focus on audiences and creating a dialogue outside the conversation.”

(*Note to Self as a Producer of interactive technology based events.)

Since the trip in March, some of the group have submitted panel sessions for consideration for the 2010 event. This trip gave us confidence that UK artists and producers have a lot to add.

Session ideas include the ethics, design challenges and business potential of pervasive gaming, the quintessential 21st Century artform, how pervasive gaming could enter into the world of work and the barriers, open innovation across the boundaries between art and business, the future of collecting and how social technologies can ne a tool for change in community development.

A strong UK presence on next year’s platforms at SXSWi would act as a good legacy of this year’s trip.

Conclusions:

Going away together was good for learning and good for business.

Collaborations have happened since and good relationships have been formed which are continuing to work back home in the UK.

The trip raised the bar in terms of work being produced and the way it is marketing and promoted. In the main, the trip raised confidence in the quality of UK interactive art.

Future trips should include past alumni – the majority of this year’s attendees said they were likely to go again under their own steam. If there is another delegation in 2010 links should be made between them and this year’s group.

The Arts Council should proactively host pre-trip networking, and commission a work to showcase the group.

Link all the Arts Council delegates into it (the showcase, the wheeze) in a more explicit way.

Set up a base camp in a cool bar, maybe on South Congress – possibly hire/agree this with the bar and use it as a “fringe” venue. Emphasise the coolness of the UK stuff in comparison to the slightly “meh” American startup stuff. Invite independent US arts organisations as well as commercial contacts to the event beforehand. Distribute the invites to the group so they can add and invite their own contacts.

Pitching is key – any group going with the Arts Council should work on their pitches beforehand – it was great hearing from each other what we each did and are developing – it not only armed us with the information to pitch each other’s projects, but gave a snapshot of the digital/interactive work happening in the UK. It helped us to tell the bigger story that as British people we sometime find hard to tell, and that as lone artists and producers we’re often not equipped to.

Pick the group well – it needs to gel. This year was a good mixture of artists and producers and across disciplines. Having people from different regions in the UK also broke up the normal ‘circle jerk’ and encouraged work across regions post the event.

A first dinner/lunch or meeting out in Austin would help for orientation and for people to get to know each other, and how to work the event.

Book a cheaper hotel, and use the spare change to get platinum passes for all (earlybird purchases!) so delegates can mix in with the film festival talks and events as well.

As we prepare for the 2010 delegation to SXSW, those of us who took part in the first one reflect back on what the trip delivered.  As we met in a wet and wintery January with the new group of delegates who will head off to Texas for the 2010 trip, thoughts turned to experiences last year, and the collaborations that came about as a result.

Sarah Ellis from Apples and Snakes has been going great guns – her interest in digital, stimulated at SXSW, has meant an exploration for her, and projects that have involved the poets she works with in a range of digital experiments.

First is “London Poems”, in partnership with Andrew Wilson from Blink Media who was also on the trip, a three-year poetry text project working with audiences from all the London boroughs by 2012. The project invites the public through various forms of advertising (e.g. posters at bus stops, beer mats) to text poems about their city to a number.  This poem is then shared on a website and builds a body of work which is shared in a digital space.  Each poem will then be able to be shared with any member of the public who wishes to see what poems have been created in these spaces.  A map of London Poems will be built and extend the collaboration further by inviting performance poets to create work inspired by this poetry map, eventually creating an artist/audience collaboration.  It will be a large-scale event connected to the Olympics and also feed into a national performance poetry Olympics project for young people.

Second up, with Nina Steiger, Director of the Writer’s Center at Soho Theatre, is “Who Is Writer X”.  The project commissions a series of artists to take on the persona of Writer X and create a narrative through digital networks to see how audiences engage with interactive storytelling.

Thirdly, “My Place Or Yours”.  Sarah secured £5000 funding to research and develop a creative collaboration with the British Council, also in collaboration with Nina Steiger and the Soho Theatre.  An international project in creative labs in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia that ask artists to build ideas based on personalised maps and place.  A creative lab will then be run in the UK with artists to exchange ideas between these countries and share the work in a digital space.

Not only projects, but on the back of what she picked up at SXSWi, Sarah created a digital training programme for performance poets and invited practitioners such as Chris Unitt from Meshed Media to lead innovative masterclasses that built artist skills in working with technology and creating work.  So what was learnt trickles down.
Added to that, Soho Theatre commissioned Simon Games to develop a 3 week game to co-incide with it’s run of Sharadda – a love story between a gypsy girl and a council-estate boy, set against the displacement of the Hackney Romany settlement in East London as their camping grounds are redeveloped for the London Olympics.  The game, called “Drom”, explored the precarious life of the Romani, also known as Gypsies – the generations-old nomadic people which once moved through England and other parts of Europe but now find their way of life increasingly threatened by urban expansion and changing council laws.

The game’s two travellers caravaned through London’s streets, searching nightly for a safe place to park guided only by recommendations from the games’ online players, who made suggestions via email, Twitter or SMS. Players provided a location and a justification for their submission, but otherwise the travellers were utterly at the whim of the players.  Closest they got to the Theatre itself was Algate East.  Not bad.

A meeting of the group at the new Freeword Centre was in itself an example of the cross-fertilisation between artists and producers the SXSWi delegation produced – digital artists, gamers, theatre practitioners and musicians all meeting at the new home of literature and spoken word.  With all the members of the original delegation agreeing again the best part of the trip was getting to know and spending time with their counterparts from the UK.