Substance at SXSW

Every year, thousands of people converge on Austin, Texas for South by Southwest, a music, film and interactive festival. Next year it’s being held from March 13 – 22, 2009, with the interactive portion from March 13 – 17. We’re hoping to be a part of it. But to do that, we need your help.

We submitted a presentation idea titled, “Do Better or Don’t Bother: Making Digital Meaningful.” It covers a lot of the things we’ve learned about digital brand and interactive since we started Substance, our “anti-process” and how we work with our clients, and why it’s important to “make meaning.”

“People don’t want to be spoken at. They want direct relationships with the brands they believe in. It’s a conversation, and they hold the power to determine the fate of your brand. Making meaning is about doing what you say and saying what you do. This presentation explores the idea of making meaning in the digital world. It’s about the idea of always doing better.”

We’re really excited about the ideas for the presentation, but first we need your help. If you’d be so kind as to visit the SXSW Interactive Panel Picker (here’s a direct link to our presentation), register, and give our presentation a high star rating, we’d sincerely appreciate it (you have until August 29th to voice your opinion). And if there’s specific stuff you’d like us to cover in the presentation as it pertains to the session description, please leave it in the comments. Thanks in advance, and we hope to see you in Austin in 2009.

p.s. As a very special gift to all of you Portlanders, if we’re selected we’ll do a Pacific Northwest version of the presentation here in Portland for all our local friends who can’t make it down to Austin. How’s that for incentive to vote?