Hung Truong: The Blog!

SXSW 2010: My Panel Moderator Experience

I got back from SXSW 2010 a few days ago, and I thought I would write a post about what it was like to moderate a panel while it’s fresh in my mind. As you may know, my panel submission, “Student Startups: Entrepreneurship in the University” was selected to be a real panel at SXSW 2010! From the time that I knew it was accepted, I sprung into action and got my panelists together. Ellen from Alight Learning, Ben from Olark (formerly Hab.la) and Rishi from Underground Printing.

While I did my research beforehand (I was a student entrepreneur myself, to begin with), I felt the need to cram some preparation a few days before the panel, too. I guess I should have gotten everything ready before the conference started, but I also wanted to get proper feedback from my panelists.

One way I prepared to moderate was by reading a few blog posts on the subject that were linked to from the Speaker FAQ. Most agree that one should not over-prepare the panelists. You want the discussion to happen during the panel itself and not before. In the hour before the panel, inside the green room, I had to sort of referee the panelists to avoid discussing too much. Most also agree that the moderator needs to do the most homework. I had to come up with the focus of my panel, questions to ask to reach that focus, and I had to be prepared to follow up with more questions depending on where the conversation went (which included asking questions to get the discussion back on track if it was going off on a tangent).

At first the panel was going to be about details: where to get money, what kind of corporate structure to use, etc. When I started thinking about the potential panel attendee, I realized that these questions would probably be really boring and unnecessary. I tried to frame my panel from the viewpoint of a college undergrad who just wants to get something started. I hoped that by the end of the panel, at least one person in the room would decide to give startups a try, or at least be excited enough by the idea to do more research into it.

My biggest worries were that no one would come, or that too many people would come. I also worried that people would be mean on the backchannel (as I have witnessed during other panels). I worried that I would not have enough questions to ask and that there would be a bunch of dead silence. Luckily, none of these things happened. The audience was a good size, I treated the audience with respect from the beginning and asked them to do the same on our hashtag, and my panelists were really interesting and led me to ask other followup questions. I don’t think there was much filler content at all.

Probably the only truly stressful part of the process was when Rishi called me the day before the panel and told me he couldn’t make it, by no fault of his own. I had to find a replacement panelist within less than 24 hours! Luckily, I am an entrepreneur at heart and rose to the challenge. I went to the trade show floor and started asking the startup-looking companies if their founder was there, and if so, if he/she had started a company while in school. I got incredibly lucky the first time I asked, at Tungle.me‘s booth. I ended up meeting Marc Gingras, a really awesome guy who ended up working out perfectly. Marc rounded out the panel as the guy who started a company during the dotcom boom. He also has experience being a VC and doing other startups after his first. I really can’t thank Marc enough for spending his time sitting on my panel and helping it become a great success.

My basic strategy during the panel was to break the ice by asking the audience to participate a bit first. I stole this from the App-Vertising panel I saw a few days before. I asked who in the audience were students, investors, entrepreneurs or educators. Next, I had my panel introduce themselves and then I introduced myself. I started with an easy question: “I am a student who wants to get into startups, what should I do?” From there I listened to the panelists and tried to anticipate where the discussion was heading. I had a few points I wanted to hit, so if I heard something that related to another topic, I segued into it. For example, I might’ve said “Ben, you mentioned finding your co-founders at a student group, did anyone else have a similar experience? If not, where did you find your co-founders?”

The backchannel on Twitter also provided a good source of questions. I’m really glad that people asked them because it kept the conversation relevant to what people wanted to know and it gave me a chance to save my questions for a more relevant time to ask them.

I haven’t gotten the official feedback on the panel yet, but I think that it was overall a success. Very few people left in the during the panel and many people were nice enough to come up and talk to me and the panelists afterward. I wish I could have talked to every single person to see if the panel was helpful, but I think they had to run to the keynote right after (and so did we)! I really hope that the panel inspired some people to take a chance and become an entrepreneur. I think that if one person became more inspired after hearing the panel, our mission was definitely accomplished.

While the process was a bit stressful and required a fair amount of work, I’d love to either moderate or participate in a panel again, someday. I’ve got to start thinking of panel ideas for SXSW 2011!

[Photo credit: Chris Norred]

SXSW 2010 Official Celebrity Sighting Namedropping Post!

I have lots of material to post from this year’s SXSW 2010 Interactive Festival. First thing’s first, though: I need to document all of the celebrities that I sighted and took pictures with!

The first celebrity of South By came fairly early. While leaving the Windows Phone party on Friday night, I ran into my old friend Pete Cashmore. I can call him my old friend because we used to be in that 9rules thing together and he wrote about Notecentric and MapsKrieg on his Mashable blog. I chatted him up a bit to see if he remembered me (he either did or was being nice). And he was pretty nice, too! He told me about the Mashable party at Buffalo Billiards (that I didn’t actually get a chance to go to). Then I had to run off because there was a free taco truck nearby and Pete was trying to get into the Speakeasy anyway.

New Hobby: Letterpress

Recently I’ve become really interested in letterpress. It’s basically a form of printing on a movable type machine that results in a print that’s sort of embossed as well. I recently bought a set of cards from Vince Letterpress:

Meaghan was really nice because she had originally sent me two blue cards and a yellow. I told her that I had intended to frame them as a set of three and she printed a red one and sent it to me for free. It was really good of her to do that.

I think the reason I like Letterpress is that it leaves a very tangible impression. The object itself is a representation of something that’s not quite 2d, but not quite 3d either. In an age of all things digital, when it’s so easy to reproduce something by printing it out on an inkjet or laser printer, it’s nice to have something that’s a bit more difficult to recreate. Sure, someone could scan the card and print it out, but there would be something lost in the translation from a physical object with physical properties to a digital representation back to a physical object.

I like that the printer works by smashing into the paper. It creates something that’s different every time. I like that you can touch the card and feel its texture. I like that you can see it from different angles in the light, and how it changes a bit. In the example above, I really like the colors.

So far my hobby consists of collecting letterpress’ed stuff. I’d really like to take a letterpress printing class some time. It seems like it’d be a good way to balance my love of new technology with some older-fashioned tech.

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture – Book Review

I recently picked up a copy of Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. As a self proclaimed cheapskate (I picked this book up from the library, after all!), I was very interested in the subject.

The Bird and The Bee – My New Favorite Band!

I have been getting really into this band called “The Bird and The Bee.” They are composed of Inara George and Greg Kurstin. I’m not sure which one is The Bird and which one is The Bee. Or if it’s just a band name. I bet they get asked that a lot. I’m guessing that Inara is the bee, because almost all bees (the worker ones) are female. Anyway, what was I writing about?

My music-listening tendencies have been pretty unfocused recently. I just kinda try out whatever music I hear about. The last artist I sorta latched onto was Ingrid Michaelson after seeing her in concert in Ann Arbor back in 2007. I listened to some Andrew Bird but didn’t get super into him or anything. The Bird and The Bee is the first band whose albums I am listening to over and over again, and getting really psyched about. I even bought their single to hear some new songs. How crazy is that!?

I will now recount how I first became acquainted with this band. I am not ashamed to admit this is a very “Stuff White People Like” story. I was at The Gap, trying on some clothes in the fitting room. Then I heard this song that sounded pretty neat. So I used Shazam to figure out what it was. It turns out it was “You’re a Cad.” This happened on November 29th, 2009 at exactly 1:51pm Pacific Time. Thanks for the extreme data accuracy, Shazam!

Anyway, I made a mental note to check out the band, after purchasing a cheap sweater. I actually don’t remember if I bought a sweater, but details make a story more interesting. I put a few of their albums on hold at the Seattle Public Library and loaded them onto my iPhone to listen to on my commute to work. The rest is history.

The Bird and The Bee is probably so interesting to me because they have such a unique sound. Their website describes them as a mix of “Brazilian Tropicalia, 60s psychedelic pop, and sparse electronic beats.” Inara has a wispy yet super-focused voice that really adds a lot to the complex arrangements.

To say that their “sound” truly defines them would be a disservice, though. In addition to a neat sound, their songs stand out because they’re really well composed. I think a lot of current alternative music focuses on the ambience, and not a whole lot on a coherent melody. The Bird and The Bee’s music not only contains some neat melodies, they also do some fun things like layering melodies on top of each other, making canon-ish things happen. Their songs actually start somewhere and build up to something. Maybe I’m just being a fanboy, but I really appreciate the songwriting skills of the duo.

At this point in the post, I should really just let you listen to their music. Here’s one of their songs along with a music video: Polite Dance Song. The concept of the song is wacky and the video fits it quite well.

They also have an awesome cover of How Deep is Your Love on the single that I got. Oh, and a wacky song about a weeaboo’s love for Japan.

The Bird and The Bee have a new album coming out, apparently a tribute album to Hall and Oates! I should probably just pre-order this as I’ve liked everything else they’ve put out so far.