Every year in Austin, I’m always surprised to see how my colleagues are leveraging new web technologies to communicate. Every year seems to bring new innovative ways to converse with each other. I’ve outlined some thoughts throughout this article.

My first year at SXSW in 2005, I employed iChat and Rendevous to communicate with colleagues regardless of whether they were on my buddy list or not.

My second year at SXSW, seemed to be the year of Dodge Ball and texting like crazy. I got hit with almost $30 in text messaging overages, this year I upgraded my plan accordingly ahead of time.

This year the king is definitely Twitter with a mash up of DodgeBall. Each has it’s own strengths and weaknesses. Twitter is sometimes abused xxx: Just getting out of the shower (who cares?), but when utilized in the proper way, can be extremely useful to meet up with colleagues and friends.

Here are a couple of scenarios I’ve found that have worked well for me:

• Meals & Private Parties: When you’re looking for some place to get some grub or something to do at night and you don’t have definite plans. Camp on Twitter for a while. If someone broadcasts a plan that sounds appealing, it’s easy to directly message the person in your network without coming across as needy or obtrusive. Often, you meet a whole different group of people beyond your “click” which can be very rewarding.
• Fringe Colleagues: If you aren’t acquainted enough to have a colleagues phone number, Twitter is an excellent medium that is a bit more personal than IM. Direct texting, d username message is a great way to directly connect with someone in your personal network. Which is the equivalent of text messaging someone sans phone number
• Location: If you are broadcasting your location, Dodge Ball is the way to go. It has functionality that is very useful to let people know “where” you are. @foodie goodie is a good example of a typical Dodge Ball message. It is a great way to let your network know which venues you are bouncing around to at night and is particularly handy for conferences because your friends will not only receive your location, but DodgeBall is smart enough to know which location you are talking about and specifies address information as well. This is extremely helpful because it removes the whole mystery of where that venue is actually located in town. If Twitter implemented such a feature, I’m pretty sure Dodge Ball would vanish quickly from the Geek Niche.

Check out the Twitter FAQ for more details on commands.

Of course, everyone at SXSW for the most part is very technology oriented. We all have the latest whiz-bangs and tech products. The question is will it ever catch on to masses? These models also only work if the culture behind them is “open” and completely depends on the context of the network behind it. It progresses beyond “clicks” and social hierarchies. For example, do you remember that person in high school that would somehow find the party that was kept somewhat secretive and exclusive? If you Twitter, you’re broadcasting not only to people who you should know where you are, but also in some instances, to people who you don’t want to know. Invites are out the window, exclusivity is lost. There are some very lax privacy options you can set, but without further segmentation of your friend networks, this is impossible.

In closing, a lot of these tools break the boundaries between the virtual world of the internet and the physical world. I welcome this, though these services may just be a stepping stone towards more inter-operable services like loopt, as long as we can bridge the gap between carriers. What do you think about Twitter and Dodge Ball?

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