Hipsters, Tweeters and Talking Heads

South by Southwest Takes Over
This week the area surrounding our Austin headquarters has been invaded by a crowd of badge-wearing hipsters, musicians, tech-heads and other assorted media types thanks to the South by Southwest festival. SXSW is one of the largest conferences for music, technology and film, and it takes over Austin for two weeks or so every March. For the next six days, Austin will be on a natural high as artists and entrepreneurs from all over the world make their annual pilgrimage to our fair city. The interactive portion of the conference wraps up tomorrow, and the film segment goes until Saturday. But starting Wednesday, it will be all about the music, the most popular part of the festival. Last year more than 1,800 bands and individuals performed, and over 80 venues around downtown hosted the various acts.

I love this time of year in Austin. The creative energy, the innovation, the “fire in the belly” free thinking and capitalistic, entrepreneurial spirit is truly amazing. My blog does no justice to the sheer amount of creative energy floating around the city right now. It’s one of those circumstances where you just had to be there. I say all the time that if my parents weren’t so normal, I would have made a great hippie.

Company Culture and Talking Heads
Yours truly was honored to play a role in this year’s conference. I co-hosted a session on Sunday titled “Creating a Winning Company Culture.” In a packed house, Sam Decker (VP of Marketing for Bazaarvoice) and I waxed poetic on how to build a great corporate culture, a passion of mine that I enjoy sharing.

I was impressed by the number of young entrepreneurs there who are building innovative business models. My favorite question during the Q&A segment was from a young CEO who asked how a younger boss should manage older employees, especially in cases their performance is not up to par. What a great question. You can read some comments from the cloud about the session here (and I think we will have some on video at some point). You can also check out Thom Singer’s coverage of the event on his blog, Some Assembly Required.

Tweet Tweet!
I may be the last person alive to do this, but I’m finally being sucked into the world of social media. Candidly, I’m loving every minute of it. It turns out all of these new social networking tools have been great for my A.D.D. personality (I’m not so sure if my wife agrees, though).
In the spirit of going all in, I am now officially a Tweeter! Or is it Twitterer? You can find me/follow me/stalk me here @JasonABlack. Last Friday, my marketing “right arm” @CourtneyPowell signed me up for Twitter and told me to “get at it.” Somewhat reluctantly, I decided to just jump in feet first, and I can now report that I’m having a total blast connecting with other innovative minds from all over the country. I will be using this social app as more of a business tool and will try my best to “keep it clean.”

Here’s to Austin,Texas, entrepreneurs around the country, the power of social networking and my new friend Twitter! Thank you for making the next two weeks of my life full of so many distractions that I will have no time to worry about Bill Mahrer, Jim Kramer or any of the jokers in DC.

Rock out and keep it real!

-JB

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