Tuesday, March 9, 2010

SXSW Tips: Twitter and South By

Don’t get overwhelmed by Twitter at SXSW! Twitter is basically the easiest way to keep in touch with your fellow SXSWers, but people at SXSW are a chatty bunch. I don’t know about you, but I’m hesitant about allowing Twitter to send my friends’ updates to my phone, given how many people I follow.

But if you do have SMS updates on, I recommend setting Twitter off during sleeping hours, say between 1 AM and 8 AM.

If you don’t have SMS updates on, you might also want to turn on direct message forwarding to SMS. Tell people to DM you if they want to arrange a meetup and you’ll receive their message as a text message. Simply reply back “D username” with your reply, to direct message them back.

I hope you all increased your SMS plans with your cellular provider already! Now would be a good time to call to either add a text messaging plan or increase your allotment.

You may also want to warn your Twitter friends that you’re going to SXSW, and that it’s OK to unsubscribe from you or snooze you for a little while.

Hint: if you’re on AT&T, dial *DATA# to see your remaining text messages for this billing cycle. You’ll get a text message back with your billing cycle date, data usage so far in this cycle, and text messages used so far.

I also recommend using some of the more advanced features of Twitter to stay on top of things.

You can change your notification preferences for specific people by clicking on the Device Settings icon next to their username. This way you can choose to only receive some people’s tweets via SMS.

Search for information in real time on search.twitter.com. Try plugging in event names, venue names, or panel names, if you’re curious what people are thinking at any given time.

I’ve also collated some interesting people on Twitter on my SXSW list.

And of course don’t forget to give out your username when you meet someone new, and get theirs in return!