Photo by Todd V. Wolfson

Felicia Day: Monday Keynote

Actress, Web series producer, geek, and cupcake junkie Felicia Day spoke about her wildly successful Web series The Guild, her upcoming work on another Web series, Dragon Age: Redemption (based on the popular video game), as well as how gaming culture gets it right when it comes to storytelling in the contemporary media age and how TV and film folks must catch up if they want to remain viable. Hint: "People are not just 'metrics,'" she said, using the oft-used TV exec jargon.

In 1999, Day was a SXSW Interactive volunteer. Today, the University of Texas graduate with a degree in mathematics is an Internet success story. Yet, as breezily as she speaks, Day admits that it took an enormous DIY spirit to launch a Web series that she writes, performs, produces, and promotes. It was fans' word-of-mouth and Day's consistent respect for their time – and money – that built worldwide support. Donations of $5 and $10 a piece kept The Guild aloft in its first season. Sprint and Microsoft came forward to back it in its second and continue to do so in its fifth. But the hard work hasn't ended.

"There is no magic wand," she said.

Although she adopted social media early to promote The Guild, she also believes Internet communication is still not fully understood.

"When you tweet, it's like sending water through a colander," she said. But that doesn't mean it isn't valuable. On the contrary, Day believes engaging the audience via social media requires a more direct, ongoing, and personal touch.

"Your [online] campaign is not a booty call; it's a long-term relationship," she said. "It's the reversal of what you find on [TV]." While TV and film cast their nets wide, Day insists that the specificity of aiming at niche audiences – both in content and in audience interaction – is a better strategy. And because creation tools and the Internet are increasingly accessible, other success stories like Day's should be the norm.

"We're living in the Sundance of our time," she said. "The Internet is a beautiful place for expression." – Belinda Acosta

Read more and see a visual representation of Day's keynote talk online at austinchronicle.com/sxsw.

Photo by John Anderson

BattleDecks 2011

Some panels at SXSW are helped by drink. There aren't many where the "hurry-up" sound for a slide presentation is the judge's cocktail shaker. An Interactive Festival institution, BattleDecks does for technical presentations what American Idol does for guitar solos (i.e., not much) – and adds booze to the equation. Contest co-creator Erika Hall explained: "We get the most experienced, polished speakers to embarrass themselves in front of a crowd."

The rules are simple. Improvise a five-minute presentation out of 10 random Keynote slides, depicting anything from honey badgers to Kanye's Twitter feed. Points are awarded on originality, coherence, and sexual innuendo and, according to 2010 BattleDecks champion Josh Cagan, "Judges can, will, and possibly already have been bribed."

What's the point of competitive presentations? According to slide designer Mike Monteiro, "To see how close we can get to being asked never to come back." The images at BattleDecks 2011 played heavily on such memes as Charlie Sheen and the AOL layoffs, buttressing old favorites of font snobbery and Hitler jokes. Like the humor, the intended audience is broad. Montiero said, "I'm proud to say that there are zero slides about the Web industry this year." His advice to competitors was to let the oddball images speak for themselves and just charm the audience. That's how media strategist and blogger Anil Dash was cheered to victory in 2008. Monteiro said, "I realized after Anil's presentation that he had started telling me when to change slides, which I never do for anybody."

This year saw an upset win. While the competitors tackled contentious issues like keeping Sarah Palin off Etsy, the coveted crotch angel award went to an audience member. When one hopeful blanked on a Venn diagram of the intersection between cheese and anger, Austin-based designer Chris Hunter floored the judges with the elegant and timely heckle: "Wisconsin." – Richard Whittaker

Photo by John Anderson

Big Brother on the Big Screen

If only we could put Morgan Freeman in charge of national security.

That was one of the takeaways from Big Brother on the Big Screen, a panel looking at some seemingly far-fetched but altogether plausible surveillance capabilities, as depicted in the movies.

That said, some of the depictions were a little silly – like The Dark Knight's climactic deus ex sonar, mapping all of Gotham City via cell phone signals. "We can all trust Morgan Freeman," said Tim Edgar, from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, referring to Freeman's allowance for Batman to use the system once before destroying it. But back in the real world, "what happens when additional agencies want access to data" beyond its original, trusted collector?

Another more laughable clip was really anything but: a scene in The Simpsons Movie, where a robot funnels chatter from the on-the-lam Simpsons clan back to hundreds of drones at the NSA. "You don't need a room of people to do this anymore," said the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cindy Cohn, referring to the infamous AT&T "splitter box" announced by a whistleblower in 2006 that duplicates the data passing through its lines. That confluence between private and public realms was further underscored by Cohn, who said that outdated Supreme Court cases have created a "third-party doctrine" that takes a broad view of sharing private data with government snoops if it's already shared with a third party – precedent that doesn't really meld with our cloud-sourced present. It's another field that panel organizer Chris Conley of the ACLU of Northern California is addressing, calling on changes to electronic privacy laws that were drafted in 1986. "The law is always going to move slower than the technology we're gonna see this week," he said. – Wells Dunbar

Photo by Sandy Carson

We Can Has Cheez Sculpture?

Why not use SXSW to promote the release of a new cheese-flavored variety of Friskies brand cat food, and do so by displaying a 640-pound block of cheese that's been carved, by acclaimed cheese-carver Troy Landwehr of Wisconsin, into the shapes of famous Internet cats? And why not team up with Austin's own Short Bus Subs to provide free (and heavenly) grilled-cheese sammiches for Sunday brunch? This is what the chosen PR team must've asked themselves at some point, and followed it with the answer "Why not, indeed?"

Each Chronicle editor who let out a far-from-subvocal squee of delight upon reading the press release – and there were a few of us – agreed. But the reality of the situation – the cheese on the ground, if you will – didn't quite match up.

Note to self: 640 pounds of cheese is not as big as you think it's going to be; it's only about one-fourth the size of a Smart car. Note to Friskies PR: Sculptor Landwehr does excellent work, that's instantly obvious; but whoever let him (or urged him to) arrange the cats – Monorail Cat, Nora the Piano-Playing Cat, Toilet-Flushing Cat, and Standing Cat – in such a manner that thwarts the very essence of their memehood ....

Listen, people: Standing Cat is Standing Cat because he's standing in his iconic way; if he's standing some other way, if he's kind of leaning against a piano in a raffish (or whatever the intended effect was) pose, well, he's no longer Standing Cat, is he? No, he's not.

And Monorail Cat never looks to the side, goddamnit!

OMG, WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!