The SXSW (South by South West) festival in Austin, Texas starts tomorrow, running for nine days and encompassing many forms of media making it the festival that leads the way in interaction over many platforms.
SXSW really show others what is possible when it comes to using social media, utilising Facebook and Twitter amongst many other platforms, to bring up-to-date information to delegates and those attending. You can also use your Facebook and Twitter accounts to connect with other services such as the (unofficial) guide to the event on sched.org.
The festival, of course, has an iPhone app and it looks great. With schedule and maps as the more basic functions, it also includes some special features for the badge holders including a card feature that allows you to send your contact details to other delegates and a messaging feature that allows the badge holders to communicate away from the festival’s own social network my.SXSW.
It would be great to see some of the UK festivals embrace these types of technology; fans love to interact and connect in every way possible and we at Poker PR can offer all the services to make this happen.
Yesterday’s Music 4.5 event in London featured many panels covering a wide collection of subjects relevant to the music industry. The aim of the event is to bring together the tech geeks and the music geeks, both innovators and creators, with the aim of inspiring a new creative discussion focusing on innovation, revenue and business model opportunities, disruptive technology and social content.
Panels included the TechCrunch pitches featuring 10 tech start-ups explaining what they do, who they are and why they are the future for music. These included two that Poker PR found very interesting:
Psonar a cloud-based music service that lets artists upload their music to its servers and the music is then accessible from anywhere you can connect to the internet. Other users can listen to 30 second clips of your music and can be sent to Amazon to buy it or can share recommendations over social media.
CloseCall Music ever wanted the track you have just heard live at a gig? Then this excellent bit of tech is for you. CloseCall Music allows fans to purchase music from an event on their mobile phone and collect it on a USB or CD as they leave the event. If some rights issues are addressed it could allow the music to be downloaded direct to your phone.
Both of these solutions have the ability to create revenue for the artists and where applicable, the labels, which we at Poker are sure will be greatly received by both.
As Facebook heads towards its sixth birthday next month, The Economist special report takes an in-depth look at social media.
One of the most interesting parts of this excellent article is the section on the future of social media. The future, it would seem, is mobile. Sharing is one of the main draws of current social media and this will continue in the future at every opportunity. We already update our status from our mobiles, but how about letting your friends see a picture of what you are about to buy, letting your sat-nav tell your loved ones you are heading home, or recording the TV program that all your friends have been talking about online?
Apps like Foursquare already allow us to share our favourite places and ideas of what to do in our cities, as we know, things move fast in this day and age so this extending sharing is only just around the corner. Poker is already looking into the upcoming technologies and how we can integrate them into our services.
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