1)  Get yourself some content strategy.  Kristina Halvorson from Brain Traffic defines content strategy as planning for the creation, aggregation, delivery and governance of useful, usable copy. Do you have an editorial calendar? Are you providing value to your audience? Are you offering a clear path for engagement? What do you want people to understand about you after reading / interacting with your content?

2) Twitter’s going to try and make itself more useful.

3) Green jobs are about to hit one of the biggest industries in the world. Sustainable filmmaking by the makers of the movie Greenlit highlighted people's resistance to make positive environmental change but also indicated huge opportunities for eco-consultants.

4a) There's an app for that. The future, full of tablets and smart phones, is all about lightweight, easy-to-use apps. (Check out Spotify for "the future of music delivery".)

And also  4b) many, many Americans don’t have access to the internet at home, don't have access to training, and can’t afford smart phones. Jessamyn West from the Vermont public library system and Jenny Engstrom from the New York City public library did a great job of keeping it real.

5) Jason Cranford Teague's talk on downloadable web fonts was enlightening, but ignored the elephant in the room: how fonts render from browser to browser. Expect more exciting changes to happen around web fonts, but don't expect miracles.

6) Tools augment real community. Tools augment real networks. Tools augment authentic content. People are looking more and more for groups they know and trust.  Luckily, you (environmental groups) have that in excess. Now, how are you engaging your world to get things done? How can great tools leverage what you already do so well?

7) Geolocation, geolocation, geolocation. It's popping up everywhere, and soon to be even more available to everyone with the advent of HTML5. Gowalla and Foursquare have set the stage, but new players are taking maps and  real-time geographic location identification to a whole new level.

8) From Happy Cog's "We F*cked Up: Exploring Failure Together": "Any outcome you don't like is your fault. Go forth and fail."

9) Check out awe.sm (links tracking and analytics for social media), Readability (makes websites more readable), Twittercounter (twitter stats), Chatroulette (scary) and PostRank.com (finds popular blogs) for fun on the web. Also, you should get your organization a Flip Video Camcorder. Quite easily the simplest piece of technology you will ever use with the biggest pay-off. Go. Get one.

10) “We’re basically networking while Rome burns” – Bruce Sterling, SXSW 2010.

 
                                       -- Sara Freedman and Veda Williams


SXSW started as a music festival in 1987, adding film and interactive in 1994. With record numbers at SXSW Interactive both last year and this year, the conference is a new favorite among the interactive community.