I started the day at Boston’s Logan International Airport’s Terminal C discussing the upcoming SxSW (pronounced South-by-southwest) conference with a group of people that made our @JetBlue flight
worthy of the nickname “NerdBird1”.
The first discussion with a number of emerging tech people I focused on LBS, or Location Based Services: Something we can already see will be even bigger than last year’s SxSW conference.
The big question is will LBS, even with new rollouts from FourSquare, Gowalla, Where, SCVNGR and others be able to get enough usage to fully go main stream. Not just in use, but make sense for business.
Some companies, even small local companies see it already does make sense to offer discounts to the customers who are “checking in” and raising your visibly through social networks (and thus Google and other search engines as well).
I am also interested in seeing what is behind the “checkins”. What is the next big thing, and I expect to find it here at “South-by”.
As the SxSW film and music tracks help form portions of the entertainment industry, SxSW Interactive is the gateway to what will affect business a few years down the road. While many of the 600 sessions focus on the near and distant future, virtually all have takeaways for business today. More and more, it’s becoming not just a technological difference, but actual behavior and attitude differences with the masses not just in North America, but around the world.