SXSW

Please help me reprise the Digital Ethnorati Panel at SXSW next year; and in the process, bring outstanding African American, Asian American, Latino, Native American and other minority teenage technologists to one of the most important new media conferences in the United States.

Liza with Bianca and Samantha, two awesome ambassadors for the Digital Ethnorati

One of my accomplishments this year was to be able to put together a panel at the prestigious South by Southwest new media conference, discussing the rising influence and importance of african american, latino, asian and other minorities early adopters of digital, new media and mobile technologies.

In this panel I attempted to open a reframing of the digital divide by asking the question : If minorities are such profitable early adopters of digital, mobile and new media technologies, why is it that we're still treated as if we were technology illiterate?

For that matter, Mini Khanlon's talked about the accomplishments of The Level Playing Field Institute and her experience as an upper class Indian woman who understood the social privileges of many Asian Americans.

The second presentation was with Stephen Wilmarth, Bianca Velez and Samantha Perez of The Center for 21st Century Skills. This presentation was heartbreaking, as one of the students of the program had been deported to Brazil and was giving her part of the presentation through Skype.

A view from the corner of 3rd Street and San Jacinto, taken with my Motorola camera phone.

Selfbubble by Heather Clisby of ClizBiz

This is what you end up doing during the first hour at SXSW --you sort through all the schwag and crap. What's funny about this photograph is that it is one of at least 4 pics taken within an hour by passersby. People were whipping out cameras and cell phones to click me in my bubble of schwaggarific mess.

SXSW is all about the generalist influencers. There's a lot of tech, media and political conferences that litter event calendars but SXSW is the place to go for the people who are experts cross disciplines. So you'll have people with strong practices as technologists, desgins, mediaologists, enterpreneurs, activists. I honestly do not know of any other conference in the United States that has the quantity of influencers that SXSW has.

Deanna Zandt, Lynn D. Johnson, Robert Scoble, Elisa Camahort, Lisa Stone, Jory Des Jardin, Christopher Carfi, Thomas Van der Wal, George Kelly, Baratunde Thurston, Samhita Mukhopadhyay, Chris Norton, Nancy Scola, Rachel Krammer Bussel, Erica Mauter, Jason Tooney, Christian Crumlish, Noel Hidalgo, Mary Hodder, Min Jung Kim, Tony Pierce, Steve Garfield, Chris Pirillo ... and I know I am missing a lot of other people I personally know, but the coffee and the new daylight savings time are screwing up my short term memory.

Which brings me to the toy of choice for SXSW : TWITTER.

OMFG!

Talk about early adopters. It's hard for me to explain how addictive it is, but, just so you get a taste for it, keep this window open for about an hour. Make sure you refresh every 10-20 minutes.

Then you'll understand :