This is the second article in a series on usability. Read the first article.

It was inevitable – my bracket has been decimated. But managing brackets in four different applications, I’ve learned that not only do I have no knowledge of college basketball, but also how to take Bracketology to a whole new level.

An NCAA tournament bracket needs tells you a lot in just a little bit of space. It needs to convey information about teams, regions, game details, and other news. And it needs to do it 64 times (65 if you count the play-in game).

So let’s set our monitors to 1024×768, and see how the final four perform.

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And we’re back!  After 5 jam-packed days at SXSW Interactive in Austin, the Beaconfire contingent is back in the office, catching up on email and trying to process everything we saw and learned.  In my case, what I learned was incredibly diverse – from the Beacon lounge to the panels to late-night conversations, from case studies to philosophical musings.  Some of these may become their own posts over the next few days, but I wanted to share some of the themes that emerged in my experience.  That’s one of the cool things about SXSW – everyone had a totally unique experience and learned different things.  Here are some of mine:

Non-profits love the web. This comes as no surprise to us, but I was impressed at how many non-profits and socially conscious companies were represented at SXSW.  We had a steady flow of these folks in the Beacon lounge, all of them happy to chat and tell you what they’re working on.  There was also a proliferation of panels on social change – where there were only one or two last year, I counted 8 on the schedule this year.  At lot of non-profits are still figuring out how to incorporate social media into their online activities, but these folks blew away any stereotypes about non-profits and technology, with some great examples of how we can use the web to change the world.  I hope that next year we put forth an even stronger presence!

SXSW loves Twitter. I can’t believe how prevalent Twitter was at this conference.  As a Twitter skeptic, I signed up for an account a couple days before, just to check it out, and I’m glad I did.  Nearly every panel had a Twitter hashtag, most speakers gave out their Twitter handles, and a surprising (to me) number of participants wore custom t-shirts with their handles written on them.  Twitter shared back-channels for the sessions, gave tips on the best parties, and facilitated meet-ups.  We contributed by tweeting away at the Beacon, and there was a lot of “IRL” chatter about how Twitter was going to change the web, from social networking to fundraising.  I think there was a bit of group-think going on at the conference – what seems “normal” to a large group of similarly-minded people may not be “normal” to the world at large, and Twitter is still in that category for me.  It’s intensely popular among the web elite, but plenty of people out there don’t use it, and that’s easy to forget at a big event like SXSW.  For my part, I’ll confess that I don’t get it.  (Phew.  I said it.)  I tried, honest I did.  I followed people I knew, and followed people who seemed interesting, but I found my Twitter feed repetitive and distracting.  While is was occasionally helpful or entertaining, most of the time it kept me looking down at my phone instead of up at the panelists or the people around me.  And while it came in handy for the conference, I’m not sure I’ll use it again until next year…

Crowds can be wise, but only if you help them. Crowd-sourcing on the web means basing your content and decisions on the input of your users.  Netflix uses it when they recommend movies to you based on the ratings of users with similar tastes.  And the New York Times does the same with their Most Emailed lists.  (SXSW even tried out a panel recommendation system on their site.)  This idea is both enticing and frightening for organizations.  In the past, I’ve heard two big concerns from organizations considering this sort of interaction mechanism: we’ll get bad input, and we’ll be obligated to do whatever the crowd says.  Not so!  (Unless your site is targeted by Stephen Colbert.)  In fact, you can, and should, curate your crowd-sourced data to make the best use of it.  Keep your goal in mind, be up front with your users about how you’ll use the data they give you, and make your data collection as simple and clean as possible.  At best, make sure that what’s in your best interest is also in your audience’s best interests.

Powerpoint presentations don’t have to suck. I actually went to a presentation about how to give good presentations – and as one might hope, it was a great presentation.  Did you know that bullet points are only marginally helpful in getting information through to your audience – and that they can’t process your text and listen to your narration at the same time?  To get our audiences to remember the information we present, we need to target it at the way the brain works.  Big, exciting visuals, meaningful animation, limited words, and strong narration are the keys.  I was reminded that the brain still has survival as its number one priority – if your presentation is exciting, maybe a little alarming, the brain will really tune in.  I don’t give a lot of powerpoint presentations, but it’s easy to see where these ideas could apply to the web.  We’re always trying to break up big paragraphs on web pages into bullet points, but if we really want to make an impact, maybe we need to push it further – cut out those bullets and toss in more engaging pictures?  This makes me think of a video I saw this week from Free Range Studios that uses no words, just animated images, to communicate some pretty strong ideas.

Social media is for grassroots activism. I talked with folks from a lot of non-profits, large and small, and some of the most exciting applications of social media that I heard about were focused on local or grassroots activism.  I met a local Austin group talking about building a social network for backyard farmers to compare notes.  I saw a demo of a CA-based non-profit connecting local chefs with local farmers, and letting them order produce online.  I often like to think about how the web is letting us connect with like-minded people around the world.  It’s nice to remember that it can also connect us with like-minded people in our own neighborhood.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…if you’ve ever painted your face your school colors, or stuck a pom-pom in your hair, you know what I’m talking about. It’s March Madness, baby! (Otherwise known NCAA Division I Basketball Chapmionship). And that means it’s bracket time.

This year my team (GW) did not make it into the tournament. Still, I’ve got my bracket ready, and the pools are awaiting my dominance. I have created and/or have been invited to participate in pools by enough people that I’m actually using four different systems. And putting together my bracket of winners turned out to be more frustrating than I thought. Some of the companies that put together these brackets are multi-million dollar conglomerate corporations. You’d think they should be able to get usability, right?

And thus was born…THE MARCH MADNESS OF USABILITY. I’ll compare some of the top tournament sites to see what usability lessons we can glean. The sites I’m using this year include Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, Facebook, and ESPN.

Today’s topic: Registering

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So sxsw is winding down, with its panels, power-geeks, and parties, and I have just one thing to say: Wow. THAT just rocked.

The Beacon, Lounge with a Conscience, probably saw upwards of 100 people stagger breathless and drained across it’s zen-like oasis’s threshold each day.

Some from non profits. Some from socially responsible companies. Some just people who could smell cool from a mile a way and wanted to be a part of it all. Either way, all were welcome, and the energy in the room was relaxing, energizing and exciting all at the same time.

Special thanks: Ali Cherry, Jo Miles, Michael Cervino for being Beaconfire All Stars; Susan Finkelpearl and Ross Nover for just being cool; Katie King, Anglela, and Wendy from Sxsw for just being AWESOME; Flip, Craig, Stephanie and Joe for letting me use you for hard manual labor; Bryce McCloud & Isle of Printing for loaning us the posters; and Renee Hamilton, Steven Johnson, The folks from Capital Area Food Bank of Texas, and the guys from OptInNow for being great partners; and to EVERYONE who came to hang with us these last 5 days to share their stories, challenges and solutions to every social media and tech scenario known to man.

Look for us next year, South By. The Beacon will keep on shining, just for you.

Today, at long last, The Beacon, Lounge with a conscience, opens to the sxsw-ing public. After months of planning, and 1.5 days of frenzied set up in Austin, we’re excited to share this unique collaboration space with non profit and socially conscious types (or anyone who wants to be one). We hope you will come hang out, meet up with people you only know from the twitterverse, answer our “Question of the day” and show off your overall fabulousity.

Come meet Beaconfire all-stars Michael Cervino, Ali Cherry, Jo Miles, Brad Lehman and yours truly at 1pm in room 19A, Austin Convention center. Follow our tweets on @thebeaconsxsw for daily updates and events.

Meet you at The Beacon!

More than any other conference I’ve ever been to, SXSW feels like it has it’s own social rulebook. The conference starts tomorrow and I’m pretty sure I’m the last of the 11,000 attendees to write a blog post or tweet about it. Since this is my first SXSW interactive, I’ve decided to try to decode this trend-setting event before I get there in the true spirit of my fellow conference-goers: the geekiest way I could think of.

As I was going through the 470+ sessions and parties listed on the site, some themes started to emerge. I noticed there are a lot of sessions on gaming, a bunch that address community and a few that talk about women and technology. But I’m only human so to find trends that I might not catch, I dumped all the sessions into excel, separated them by words and created a pivot table to do my own “tag cloud analysis” of SXSW 2009.  (Turns out Mike Rohde did an awesome tag cloud design based on the panel picker for the tote bag which is where this image came from). So here’s what I found by digging into the tag cloud:

1. There are two common denominators for SXSW: After dismissing filler words like “the” and “to,” two words emerged as the most popular: “your” and “web,” each with 34 appearances. Of course all conferences are tailored to their attendees, but SXSW in some ways sets the gold standard as one of the first to let people submit and vote on which sessions are offered (though it’s not quite that pure). It seems authentically about “you” (which appears 10 times in case you were wondering), though the only thing one person might have in common with another is that everyone cares about the web. Sessions address topics ranging from blogging to design to privacy to gaming. With such a variety to choose from – almost 100 sessions per day – attendees can really make it their own.
2. SXSW is a social community: Next to web and your, “social” appears 28 times in the titles of events at SXSW. This isn’t all that surprising really but what is somewhat surprising is how many words “social” modifies: social networking, social media, social good, social capital, social gamers. This is right up there with “community,” which in its various forms appears 13 times. At SXSW you can learn about measuring, mobilizing, building and managing strong social communities and join a dialogue about how they could “end racism” and are “killing the revolution,” as two sessions address. At the same time social describes more and more online sites and tools, community is being stretched too, making me wonder if both words will soon lose their meanings. It will be interesting to see how these words are used over the next few days.
3. Things are dying….or at least some think so: A shocking 8 sessions refer to death or dying. I sense a debate coming on. Is privacy dead? Friendship? Blogging? PR agencies? Print? There are sessions that either ask or declare that all those things are on their way out. What do you think? If you disagree, or would rather take a positive spin on SXSW, you might attend one of two sessions on books (so maybe print isn’t dead) or a session called “What does awesome sound like?”
4. You’ll leave knowing how to do something: Probably not unique to this conference, one of the most frequent words is “how” appearing 26 times, suggesting that in more than 1 in 20 sessions, someone is going to be teaching us an actionable skill. What kinds of tools or information are people looking for? Well, you can learn “how to fund a startup”, “how to protect your brand without being a jerk” and even (don’t tell your boss you went to this one) “how to leave your perfectly good job.” There are also a few sessions on Tips. I might check out “Tips for making ideas happen”
5. SXSW loves games, gaming and gamers (or they love SXSW): At least 14 sessions and 21 mentions of some iteration of the word suggest that games are being talked about from many angles: what we can learn from them, game programming, game research, game design, cinematic games, and the list goes on.
6. Startups and the recession actually work together: Speaking of learning how to do something, there’s a huge focus on entrepreneurs, startups, bootstrapping and freelancing (at least 14 mentions combined) even with 4 sessions that mention the economy or the recession. If this interests you, you might check out “What do I do with myself, now that the economy has collapsed?” or “How startups can take advantage of the recession”.
7. Creative session titles must win a special prize: We knew creativity mattered when we submitted a couple session topics, but it’s interesting to see which actually got picked. My favorite: “Reduce MySpace between waist & thighs so wiki live longer.” This is one of a few sessions focused on quality of life for web people, possibly another emerging trend? “Is being too ‘plugged in’ 24/7 destroying your health? There’s good news: web 2.0 technologies can help you optimize your fitness! Come learn and discuss.” Creative title and creative topic. I’m definitely interested to see what this has to offer.

By the way, if you’re at SXSW, please come by The Beacon Lounge that we are sponsoring!

If your organization is active on Facebook, you’re likely to be affected by some big changes they’re making to their Pages.  You may remember that last year, Facebook rolled out “new Facebook” to its users – a new interface with a different layout for homepages and profiles.  The new format emphasized the news feed and conversations, and introduced tabbed sections that resulted in cleaner, less cluttered profiles.

Facebook is now starting to roll out a similar update for Pages, the profile-equivalent for organizations and businesses.  (To summarize: profiles are intended specifically for individual people; pages are meant to be used by entities like businesses, non-profits, bands, etc.  Users can choose to become fans of pages they like, and receive updates from them.)  Pages are the main way that many non-profits maintain a presence on Facebook, and this new design means doing some rethinking about how best to use Facebook to reach your supporters.  Some of the most exciting updates affect how Pages can interact with their Fans – soon, your Page will be able to post status updates and share items in their fans’ news feeds, just like an individual user.  Overall, it makes Pages more viral – and don’t we all want to be more viral?

You can check out all the details at Inside Facebook.

What do these updates mean for organizations using the web for social change?  I think it means a lot of great new opportunities – and a new way of thinking about Facebook.  Learn more after the jump. (more…)

Michael Cervino was interviewed by Triplepundit for their “Philanthropy In Five” series. Read what he has to say about why we do what we do at Beaconfire, and what role philanthropy plays both in the work we do for our clients, as well as in our own business model.

By popular request, here is info about all the cool events in The Beacon during SxSW. Flyers will be available in the lounge for you to pick up so you don’t miss a second of the fun.

Also note there will be a featured organization in residence in The Beacon all day long sat-mon. Come lounge with a conscience with these featured non profits at The Beacon and find out how you can change the world!

Saturday March 14th
Lunch for a Cause
Blackbaud Internet Solutions is sponsoring lunch in The Beacon for people who donate their lunch money the Capitol Area Food Bank of Texas, a partner of Feeding America. If you can’t make it at lunchtime, come by their table anytime to help hungry Texas families.

Sunday March 15th
Entrepreneurs Ending Global Poverty
What if in one day, you could change the lives of hundreds in the poorest countries and help end poverty? OptINnow .orgwill be at The Beacon all day to show you how you can. Your Mission, Sxsw: Fund as many entrepreneurs as possible by 5pm!

Monday March 16th
SXSW Smiles
Operation Smile wants to know what makes YOU smile! Come by their table in The Beacon to find out how you can spread smiles around the world (and around sxsw), and be entered in a drawing for a one-of-a-kind gift. You can start smiling right now to get in the sxsw spirit!

In just over a week, the worlds hippest, smartest, network-iest people in technology will be converging upon Austin for South by Southwest interactive (known as SxSW-i to those in the know) and Beaconfire will be there in full force. Not only are we sponsoring THE coolest spot for non profits to hang out in (The Beacon – Lounge with a Conscience, Room 19A 4th floor) BUT you can meet the (in)famous Michael Cervino, Ali Cherry, Jo Miles, and yours truly (Eve Simon) there. What more can you ask for?

To get updates on all the cool things happening in The Beacon, including events from Blackbaud Internet solutions, Free Range Studios, NTEN, Operation Smile, Feeding America and Opportunity International, follow @TheBeaconsxsw on Twitter all week.

We hope to meet many of you in Austin next week, so please seek us out to say hi. For those not able to make the trip, we will be blogging between March 13-17, so hopefully you’ll feel like you’re there with us.

If you happened to be at ASAE’s Great Ideas Conference last week, I’m betting you’ll answer “Miami.”

Highlights included:

• Dan Roam’s opening keynote on visual thinking (watch the video here).
• The Social Media lab sessions.  The association community is finally getting it:  your members are going to flock to social media with or without you.  Get on the train!
• The Twitter back channel, courtesy of the #ideas09 hashtag.  Read the real-time feed to see how Twitter can extend the experience of your conferences to include people who can’t attend in person.
• Jamie Notter and Jeff De Cagna’s Leadership Lessons from 80’s Music session.  Jamie’s blogging in more detail about the lessons.
• The ability for anyone to download any of the session handouts for free.  Be sure to check out the handouts from Jason Della Rocca’s and my session on wikis – everything you ever wanted to know about wiki technology and its uses, plus a series of totally cool visual representations of the social media technology landscape.
• The YAP party at Purdy Lounge.  Not a member yet?  What are you waiting for?  It’s free and fun!  Join at yapstar.org.
• Patti Digh’s closing keynote on Life is a Verb (watch the video here).

For more on Great Ideas, check out the Great Ideas round up on ASAE’s blog, Acronym.