SXSW: Beyond the Blogosphere: How Online Talent is Being Developed Offline

March 10th, 2008 | by Brad King |

I’ll be moderating this panel today at 10 am, which means I won’t be live blogging it. However, I’ll be taking notes while I roam the audience, so expect an update soon after the panel concludes.

So I’m a little bit later on this than I had hoped, but the panel was wildly successful. It’s the first time in 15 years where I’ve had more people in the room at the end than in the beginning, which is due in large measure to my great panelists from CAA, CNN, Wine Library TV and Revision3.

We started with short statements from everyone, but it became clear that we weren’t going to have very much advice to offer them about making it because it all boils down to this: figure out what you want to do, create great content, engage your audience, market yourself in networks that are interested in what you do and love your work.

We turned the panel over to the crowd 15 minutes into the day and what happened next was pretty amazing. We had a steady stream of very informed questions from a crowd that was entirely focused on taking their content to the next level (whatever that level may be).

Here’s some ideas that came out of the discussion:

  1. Engage and love your fans and followers. Do not fight with them. They are the reason you do what you do;
  2. Collect every piece of information you can, and know that there will come a time to use it;
  3. Don’t do this for money until you are ready to actually make money;
  4. Television, radio and print publishing deals may not be the best way for you to make money;
  5. Nothing beats passion, so have it always;
  6. You will do this job 24/7 if you want to make it;
  7. Marketing still works best in person, so find ways to meet people in groups. They will be your biggest advocates;
  8. The lines of professional and amateur have blurred far more than most of us are aware;
  9. Business models haven’t been figured out, but you can sell a community to small advertisers. Break the mold. Do what you think is right.

One of the things that truly surprised me was the age range of the 120 or so people who showed up. We had people — well, I am not going guess ages — who had been working on their projects for decades and we had people who were just starting out.

Truly fun. I’ll have the podcast from this event in a few weeks.

Post a Comment