SXSW Interactive Festival Recap

March 23 2009, 8:09pm

OrgSync Team exhibiting at SXSWOrgSync’s first year at the SXSW Interactive Festival was a great success! We met many people interested in advancing technology in Higher Ed. Many shared our goal to accelerate student success through out of classroom involvement and innovative service learning. We also met many companies interested in partnering to help spread our services. Saturday was an exciting day, OrgSync CEO, Eric Fortenberry and Jeff Jackson, Director of Client Services and Leadership Development, were interviewed by Texas State professor Cindy Royal. They told the “OrgSync Story” and went on to discuss how our online hosted tools will help universities communicate better with their students and help students get engaged on campus. The interview can be seen here. Eric and Guy KawasakiThe Festival’s opening remarks were made by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. He emphasized the importance of a strong company culture and always working to make the customer service experience the best it can be. It was very interesting to see how similar the Zappos company culture and core values are to ours at OrgSync. We both understand the importance of customer service, flexibility and innovation to revolutionize our customer experience. It was very exciting to meet some of the nation’s most innovative and successful entrepreneurs. Team OrgSync had the pleasure of meeting Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg and Alex Albrecht co-host of Diggnation. As well as many other great entrepreneurs such as Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable, blogger Robert Scoble, and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki.
Later that day, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht hosted Diggnation live from Stubbs BBQ. The OrgSync Team got to watch the show from the VIP balcony alongside other entrepreneurs mentioned in Sarah Lacey’s book, Once You’re Lucky, Twice Your Good; a company favorite!
Nicole, Kevin Rose and EricEven more exciting was meeting John Schuman, Senior Worldwide Evangelist and Megan Stewart, Director Worldwide Higher Education for Adobe Systems. We discussed how we work with student organizations’ webmasters and how we’re interested in figuring out how to partner with Adobe so we can further provide student webmasters with the tools and experience they need to succeed.
One of the discussions held on Sunday consisted of a Higher Ed Panel focused on the challenges of the web in higher education. The panel discusses small budgets, and the generation gap between faculty and students as hindering the advancement of technology in the Higher Ed community. We were very pleased to see such a large audience working to bring advancements in technology to the classroom. Many agreed that students need to get involved more outside of the classroom to complement their academic studies and accelerate their success. We also tried to advance these discussions by sponsoring the 3rd annual SXSW Higher Ed MeetUp/ TweetUp at Buffalo Billiard’s. Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed attending and exhibiting at SXSW and are already excited about next year’s Interactive Festival.

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