Clearly, I’m learning! Normally I don’t do anything to plan for SXSW until a month or two before. This year, I’m turning over a new leaf!

Last year I submitted a panel about coworking with the help of Patrick Tanguay from Station-C Coworking in Montreal. The panel ended up taking the form of a core conversation, which ended up being a huge success! This year, my 3rd time to SXSW, I’ve managed to get myself involved with a BUNCH of panel submissions, rather than just one at the last minute. Here are a few I was involved with, either as a submitter, a panelist, a moderator, or a general supporter of the idea.

Before I ask you to vote (actually…after, since the title of this post kinda hinted at the call to action), I want to remind you that this support is HUGELY appreciated. There’s a number of reasons that I did not join the barrage of twitter requests, not the least of which is the fact that voting and commenting only counts as 30% of the placement of a panel. At the same time, I see the panel picker as more of an advertisement for our panel ideas, and your votes have a degree of influence over what makes it to the SXSW panel board’s field of vision.

Furthermore, I believe that the quality of SXSW does not come from the panels that are picked, it comes from how we pick the panels that we attend.

With all of THAT out of the way, PLEASE VOTE AND COMMENT ON THESE PANELS! 🙂

Do Well by Doing Good – Civic Entrepreneurship

Geoff DiMasi and myself

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1471

Working Alone Sucks: Join the Coworking Revolution.

Diverse representation from across the global coworking community.

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1292

Regional Whuffie Building: Attracting Innovation to Your City

Tony Bacigalupo, Geoff DiMasi + others

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1171

An Urban Plan for the .edu

Geoff DiMasi & Rick Banister

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1462

Social Influence: Empowering Your Customer

Panel proposal by Marcus Nelson. To include myself, Tony Hsieh from Zappos, Amy Muller from GetSatisfaction, Chris Brogan. This one’s going to be a firestorm, should NOT BE MISSED!!!

http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1381

Other Panels worth looking at (list will grow as I find more I like. Want me to look at yours? Leave it in the comments!):

Amy Hoy & Erik Kastner – Building Micro-apps for fun and profit

Finally, a bit of exciting news:

Tony Bacigalupo from New Work City and I have set forth with some preliminary planningon how to integrate coworking even deeper into the SXSW conference. For those who are familiar with the BlogHaus, we’re looking to riff from that idea and create a space conducive to doing. You know how SXSW is great for making connections and getting inspired. How many times, though, does that get followed through on? We hope to use coworking as the vehicle to guide those ideas into being materialized.

More on that as soon as we sort out some details. Stay tuned, Coworking is going to ROCK SXSW09!