By James Lane

South By Southwest (SXSW) has just announced the launch of my.SXSW, the official social networking and scheduling tool for the 2009 conferences and festivals. Using my.SXSW, attendees can access the site to interact with one another, build their personalized conference schedules, join exclusive groups and form lasting relationships with other attendees. The social networking software was developed by SXSW and BDG, an industry-leading provider of a white-label conference social networking solution called The Social Collective. my.SXSW, powered by The Social Collective, represents a groundbreaking new way for SXSW attendees to enhance their offline conference experience through socializing online.

“We’ve always wanted to provide a space online for registrants to network before, during and after the ten days in March that they spend in Austin,” said Scott Wilcox, CTO of SXSW, Inc. “This year we teamed up with BDG to implement The Social Collective as my.SXSW, our new online registrant directory and social network. In addition to our collaboration with an outside team, we have tried to use the feedback we’ve received over the years to provide social networking opportunities for SXSW registrants. BDG and SXSW put a lot of thought into my.SXSW, resulting in a user experience we know will be a hit with our community.”

my.SXSW offers several new benefits to conference registrants, many of which are being introduced for the first time at SXSW 2009:

- Personalized and shareable event schedules
- Badge photo and avatar uploading and editing
- Rich media event pages with MP3 downloads, photos, band and speaker bios, etc.
- Seamless integration with Twitter, Flickr and Facebook
- Interest groups with integrated messaging
- Event/Schedule change notifications
- Social Networking (public profile pages, follow people and be followed)
- Private and public messaging on events, in groups and everywhere else
- Intuitive mobile device experience (to be launched just prior to the event)

For filmmakers looking for distribution, bands looking for producers, small businesses looking to develop their brands or digital creatives looking for new collaborators, my.SXSW provides a unique opportunity for people from all corners of the globe to get together and communicate before, after and during the event.

“We’re excited to see The Social Collective in use at SXSW,” said Chris Bucchere, CEO of BDG. “SXSW has come to be known as a trendsetting conference, not just for music and film, but for technology as well. The market for growing communities around conferences and events is just beginning to develop and of course SXSW is setting a great example of how to enhance people’s experience at their event using the right combination of web, e-mail, SMS and mobile tools.”

The Social Collective’s rich registration and schedule APIs enable seamless integration with the SXSW registrant and schedule data stores. As a result, there is no additional sign up or site registration needed. my.SXSW is open only to Film, Interactive, Music, Gold and Platinum SXSW registrants. Sign-in instructions will be sent via e-mail shortly after payment is confirmed and registration is processed by SXSW.

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MORE INFORMATION
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http://www.sxsw.com
http://www.thesocialcollective.com

This entry was posted on February 3, 2009 at 11:07 am and is filed under News, Technology News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.