I’ve never considered rap and kickball an option as part of a networking event, but then again, I’ve never attended SXSW either. I’m surrounded by some of the brightest - and youngest - entrepreneurs and business owners in the world in Austin. This new crop of business owners brings an entirely different level of engagement to a conference. It’s not that these guys aren’t serious, they just interact with each other in different ways. Quite different than the formal, stuffy, executive conferences I’ve attended where golf and shopping were the off-site activities. 

Inside Saturday’s forum, developers from Foursquare and PayPal shared their views on how to incentivize web visitors to become power users. Points, contests, or in Foursquare’s case becoming “mayor”, are all ways they encourage communities to attract and retain their best web customers.  The ability to offer these power users access to early beta tests, advance information, input on design, anything that would make this group feel special, is the way to attract and retain a loyal community.

Outside the session, Foursquare armed their team with a box of low-tech chalk. The guys were busy drawing on the sidewalk encouraging attendees who crowded the lunch trucks, the SoBe tent, or who were lining up to take test rides in a new red Chevy convertible, to “check in” on Foursquare and let the world know of their real-time location.

This mixture of fun and serious business continues all day, every day here. It’s perhaps the most impressive characteristic of this group. Anil Dash, the guy behind Expert Labs government crowdsourcing  research in Washington D.C., announced he was headed to a spirited kickball game. He posted his plans on Twitter (@anildash), trying to lure competitors to the park for free tacos (at 10:30am) and fun. 

One of the keynotes was quirky Danah Boyd from Microsoft Research in New England. Dressed in gray and white striped socks and red laced boots, she regaled the hundreds in attendance with examples of recent privacy blunders on the web (Facebook and Google) suggesting “just because something is public, doesn’t mean we want it publicized.” Her final comment to developers, designers, and marketers was to make sure we are building a world we want to live in. During her presentation, two artists sketched enourmous artistic renderings of the speech, putting her ideas and thoughts into art, right there in front of us as we listened. If that isn’t creative enough, a rap artist is taking the ideas from each keynote and turning them into a musical rendition to be posted later this weekend.

Off site meet ups have been hosted by the likes of Mellow Johnny’s, the renowned local bike shop associated with Lance Armstrong. While shopping for top-notch cycling attire, attendees heard the CTO of Pixar, and Twitter execs, discuss how to leverage social media to create an effective, profitable, campaign. In the midst of all this, film hot-shots were being interviewed with the whirl of tires being aligned as the back drop.

Examples of this type of high energy interaction between the local community,  business professionals, young entrepreneurs, and event attendees takes place continuously in Austin. These guys have figured out that everyone engages in a different way. Whether it’s music, visual, face-to-face, podcasts, print or video you can find what sparks your creative engine at this event and learn from it. These are all ideas we should consider and act upon as we build and expand our own network in PA.