Reputation and Patterns at SXSW

Here’s my obligatory plug for my South by Southwest proposals. I’ve got two panels in contention at the cool-but-unwieldy Panel Picker, so I thought I’d provide some shortcuts here. A lot of folks feel that there are too many panels at SXSW and not enough solo presenters. I tend to agree, but I think the problem is really panels that are underprepared or have too many participants. After moderating a panel with five participants last year I’ve decided that that’s too many for a 45 or 50 minute slot. I think four (including moderator) is the max, and three or even two is probably ideal.
The first panel I’m proposing pertains to my ongoing book project (working title: Presence of Mind), on the subject of online/digital identity, reputation, attention, privacy, trust, and presence. Last year, my panel, Every Breath You Take (podcast, my slides) seemed to go over fairly well, despite the gawdawful 10 am but really 9 am because of daylight savings Sunday morning slot (you must recall that Saturday night – and, really, every other night – at SXSW involves a lot of drinking for most attendees.
I took to heart the positive and negative feedback and so the sequel this year will feature just three participants: myself, Ted Nadeau returning from last year, and Andrew Hinton, whose presentation on communities of practice at the IA Summit this year was such a huge success. We’re going to strive to go beyond the typical talking-head panel format and enage the audience in innovative ways. We’re also going to try to take the conversation past the grounwork-laying, high-level philosophizing of last year and hand the attendees some practical tools for building on what we’re tentatively calling the “human operating system.”
If this sounds appealing to you, please go vote for Online Reputation: And I *Do* Give a Damn about My Bad Reputation.
My second proposal draws on my experience running Yahoo!’s Design Pattern Library and moderating a mailing list for pattern authors. I’ve recruited Jenifer Tidwell, the leading figure in UI patterns; Austin Govella, who can talk about implementing a pattern library in a commerical context at Comcast; and James Reffel, also now at Yahoo!, who will share what he learned getting eBay’s pattern engine off the ground.
Luke Wrobleski’s talk on patterns at SXSW last year filled a large room and generated a lot of interest and I’m hoping to serve that same constituency by sharing practical experience and advice in our panel Design Patterns: the Devil’s in the Details, which we described this way:
> Patterns ground frameworks like Rails and Django drive libraries like Prototype, and enable rapid product development at companies big and small. But what happens when patterns go wrong? How do you know when a pattern is right? We’ll examine common issues facing groups who use design patterns and share our experiences at making sure patterns go right.
There are a lot of other great proposals. I kind of wish I could sort my existing votes into star order to remind myself of the ones I’ve already deemed must-sees, but here are a few I’ve been able to recall or find.
* [Agile User Experience – Bigger! Better! Faster! More](http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/123) – Austin Govella, Leisa Reichelt, Dan Harrelson, yo!
* [Roll Over Gutenberg, Tell McLuhan the News](http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/6) – George Kelly
* [The State of Professional Front-End Engineering](http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/146) – Nate Koechley (yes, a Yahoo guy, but this is a must-see, trust me)
* [The Future of Presence](http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/108) – Bryan Oberkirch
* [Redrum in the Rue Morgue: Collaboration in International Communities](http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/642) – Ana Boa-Ventura
* [Build a Site Search Widget](http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/477) – Kent Brewster (another Yahoo guy, but again this is not nepotism or logrolling – Kent is the real deal)
* [Social Network Coups: The Users are Revolting!](http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/232) – Annalee Newitz
* [Do I have to disappear to get anything done?](a href=”http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/274) – Ryan Freitas
* [English: Technology’s Universal Language](http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/481) – the always entertaining and enlightening Kevin Smockler
* [Stop Emailing and Be More Productive](http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/52) – Tantek Çelik
Hit me up in the comments if you’d like to recommend another panel or presenter as well.