The promise of Austin turning into Silicon Hills seemed optimistic even to a gullible college graduate, but I have to admit, it has pretty much come true exactly that way.  Stalwart tech hardware employers like Dell, AMD & Freescale spawned many of the entrepreneurs who went on to found & fund here in Austin launching companies like Bazaarvoice, HomeAway, & Spredfast to name a few.  And this success only attracted more like minds to the city.

Ogilvy doesn’t have a current physical office here and yet, you could say the whole city is our office.  We hold meetings at Shady Grove, Texas Honey Ham, learn about new companies at Dominican Joe’s and I can learn more about what is cracking in town at a barbecue or a shopping trip than I could in a month of conference calls.  Beyond the individuals who work for our company alone, we are part of a thriving community of like-minded social professionals who have chosen for one of a host of reasons to make Austin home.

In the words of Kate Neiderhoffer, Quality of life in Austin is simply higher than in the more fast-paced, cut-throat, nail-biting enclaves of the US. Austin is the perfect mix of intellect, athleticism, family-friendliness, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit. And like attracts like: this unique combination makes us the most ripe breeding ground for social business – thinkers and doers. You won’t believe the people you run into at Whole Foods headquarters… People often dream of moving to NYC. Living in today’s Austin makes me wonder whether people will soon dream of someday making it in Austin with the same tenacity.

The part that no one would could have predicted was the fact that beyond “tech”, Austin would attract and develop a huge amount of social business talent (maybe Silicon Hills was meant to become Social Hills).  I am proud to be part of the next phase of Austin’s growth and development into the World Social Business hub.  And I’m especially excited for the coming week – when the rest of the social practitioners from around the world join us for margaritas, inspiration, and a slice of the Austin experience at SXSW.  On behalf of all of us who have gone “all in” on social & Austin, Welcome Home.

This post part of a blog ring of social business leaders from around town, check the links below for the takes of:

Kathy Mandelstein, of IBM and Austin’s Social Media Club

Peter Kim, Dachis Group via Forrester

Aaron Strout, head of location based marketing for WCG and the “stroutmeister”

Greg “Chimoose” Matthews of WCG

“Turbo” Todd Watson of IBM

And brother Spike Jones, of Fleishman-Hillard

Content Creators Must Get Paid – If you braved the distraction of a fire alarm and came back into the building, you were privy to an educated man’s verbal smackdown the likes of which I had not previously seen in public – Marc Cuban vs. Boxee’s Avner Ronen. Cuban artfully beat the drum that pay tv is going to continue to dominate (and that cash is king –  jabbing at Boxee’s “revenue free” model again and again). Avner had a bit of a “home audience” advantage being surrounded by self-admitted geeks who don’t like paying for anything. But if stolen internet content wins – who will pay for great content to still be created? TV shows do not have the same tour-for-cash out that music artists have used to weather the a la carte iTunes model. Later speaker Ze Frank also mused this same dilemma – being unable to monetize his awesome web content, but unable to break into the Hollywood revenue model in a meaningful way. I have no idea what the future holds, but someone needs to get paid or the only shows being made will be for the least common denominator.

Publicizing Public Information is a Violation of Privacy – If you followed the tweetstream from Austin this weekend, you probably saw that the most substantive traffic from any session seemed to come from the very meaty presentation from MSFT-based social network researcher danah boyd (@zephoria). This is a talk that will be worth watching in its entirety (read the transcript here), but if I was struck by one takeaway it is the difference between “public” information – information that can be obtained in some way – and information that we want publicized. danah boyd strongly believes that taking something that someone has written on a public site – say a forum about travel – and using it an ad or republishing it on an aggregator – is a violation of the author’s privacy because it violates the social norms and reasonable assumptions under which the author originally shared. It was a great reminder to begin all digital strategies with the purpose of adding value to all audiences – readers and content creators alike.

QR Codes are Coming – Previously categorized as “big in Asia”, SXSW badges boasted QR codes that, with the addition of an “app for that”, allowed users to share their information with the capture of an encoded 2D barcode. The advent of this technology is just another reason to think about danahboyd’s talk and what you decide to keep private, public, or publicize in social media.

Geolocation is a Foregone Conclusion – While pre-SXSW discussion seemed to be dominated by “geolocation is the new Twitter” discussion, by the time we got to the event, it was simply accepted as a given and everyone was on to the next topic. The only discussion I did hear was a bit of debate between hometown fave Gowalla and Foursquare.

Career-wise, this move is part of Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence’s continued growth.  As we have added more digital strategists, teams and projects around the country, we have developed a need for someone to be able to move freely about the country to focus on the development of people and processes and I managed to bamboozle John Bell that I am just such a person.  As such, I am thrilled to continue with the team as the Head of Digital Strategy, North America.

And what does this mean for you?   If you live in Austin, it means I want to buy you a margarita.  If you’re coming to visit for SXSW, look me up.  If you are looking for an opportunity with 360 Digital Influence, it means you have come to the right place as my first priority is to add new talent to our ranks around the network.   What I hope it means for you as a reader of this little corner of the web is that there will be years to come of continued learning from a passionate WOMM practitioner working with an amazing team.

Co-Created Marketing: Embracing Your Customer Evangelists Online

Helping brands, associations, social change initiatives, and any other group of people with a purpose identify and embrace their evangelists is something about which I’ve learned a lot – through both successes and mistakes – and I would love the chance to share some of that live in person.

I am not sure what I could say about fellow panelists LinkedIn Chief Blogger Mario Sundar and Church of the Customer / Society for Word of Mouth‘s high priestess Jackie Huba that Mack did not say better here, so I will simply leave you with the info on the panel and a request for your vote. The Panel Picker will close August 29!

1. Go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/users/register
2. Fill out the form and submit it
3. Check your email and follow the verify link
4. Go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/2006
5. Give the idea 5 stars.
Hope to see you there.

After my bag was not delivered to my house at 11pm as promised last night, I checked the United Airlines bagtrack website and found the following super-helpful display. Yay technology.

Needless to say “N/A” is not an acceptable answer to my bag’s whereabouts, so I called United and spent a good 15+ minutes on the phone with them. Turns out, they can’t even confirm the bag is in Austin now – they think the barcode may have been ripped off. So, they asked for descriptions of a few unique items in contents. I suggested that identifying it by the bright yellow leather luggage tag might be easier, but I played along. Here’s what I gave them:

• Reproduction “RUN-DMC” vintage tee shirt, with label from Anonymous tees on Venice Beach
• Brown “Sports Racers” tee shirt (so that I would have been able to identify other Ze Frank fans at SXSW)
• Limited Edition Ed Hardy low top Converse sneakers

None of the above is technically valuable, but as I was detailing my requested “unique items”, I started getting angrier and angrier. I love that stuff and, because I work in a business formal office, this was my shot of enjoying wearing it in someplace other than my living room.

What I should have done is invited my colleague who made it to Austin to pick up the bag and take photos of a couple of the “unique items” in various places in Austin – Flat Stanley style. If I couldn’t go, at least my sneaks could have made it to Guero’s, the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue, and a few parties. Alas, next time.

In line at Customer Service, we bonded. Turns out we’re all in the digital biz – unsurprising given where the plane was headed – and all blog. It made me start thinking that instead of ranking customers randomly or based on status, should brands think about the risk of pissing off people with all manner of social media knowhow because of the risk they pose?

Case in point, I was packing my brand new Flipcam and interviewed my new friends from September Third, Capital Gig, and PBS.

When we discovered there was only 1 seat to get to Austin tonight (through Denver which is NOT on the way), we actually had a discussion as to which one of us should get it – that’s pretty bonded for 4 strangers, hence me borrowing from lost and titling this post the “United 4″. Long story short, I couldn’t get to Austin in time to make it worth the trip, so I spent the next 2 hours in 3 different lines: One line to get a free ticket & taxi voucher to get home, one line to get my trip refunded in full, and another line to try to get my bag (which went to Austin with Rohit) to be sent back to DC and hopefully delivered to my home later on tonight.

You could look at a planeful of blogging and vlogging geeks as a risk or an opportunity.

Half-empty perspective – if you do something assinine like overbook and then not make any effort to equalize the situation with volunteers, you are going to seriously piss off some very vocal people. Net? Make sure you don’t make anyone angry.

Half-full perspective – why not use the Austin flights as the chance to pilot new programs, put free copies of Wired in the seats, hold in-flight focus groups about service, play music, toss around a beach ball, pilot wireless, or do anything remarkable? Heck, you could do something groundbreaking like serving actual in-flight sustenance. If you do, these people will capture it and pass it on and reflect on you positively. They are predisposed to share.

But whatever you do, let them get on the freaking plane.

Note: Vlog superstar Adriana Gascoigne will now be taking my place co-hosting the core conversation 10 Easy Ways to Piss off a Blogger at SXSW on Sunday at 11:30. Check them out!