sxsw: pt. 2

Honestly- I am not 100% where to pick up from the last one. I am just going to use the below images to give you some indication on what I did and why I cannot remember.

The morning after the first real night. 

Funny or Die party at Hotel Vegas. 

 Showing our veins at the GIRLS HBO party at Icen Hauers.

Hype Hotel party home of the Dorito Loco taco from Taco Bell. 

Anthony Bourdain during the sxsw interactive series. 

View from the Austin W during the Pandora JiWire Party.

Oh yes. I guess you could say I take the ol’ ‘work hard, play hard’ mentality to heart.

Now, back to what I went to Austin for...

Now, even though this sounds pretty straightforward, SoLoMo (#sxsmartpush), was not solely about the intersections of social, local and mobile. However disappointing that was there at least was a few interesting points raised. One daring prediction is that privacy concerns will soon enough be a worry of the past. Given the current cultural climate when it comes to sharing out information I feel like that could be true, but not with the current generation gap.

While walking down the street with one of my favorites, Aurora, we received a more than irresistible offer to download a new app called TabbedOut. Tabbed Out is a mobile payment app that allows you to open and tab out (see what they did there?) directly from your smartphone by syncing your credit card to your profile. Apparently, if we downloaded their app they would give us $5 credit if we spent $6. I did some math (get ready to be amazed) and realized that a carafe of mimosas were only $6 and if we used their offer of $5 off we could get a carafe of mimosas for $1. I then took the $1 carafe of mimosas and multiplied by 2 smart phones and got very happy very fast. Needless to say in second we downloaded the app and were sitting mighty happy. Not only were the mimosas delicious, but the app proved to be super handy during sxsw. Even if I forgot to tab out before leaving the bar, I was able to by closing out through the app in route to our next stop.

But back to my point about the generation gap. I was bragging about my latest discovery of Tabbed Out during the Pandor JiWire party to some, how do I say this, more matured agency partners and they were shocked that I so quickly synced my card to this app. For me the reward ($1 mimosas) was worth the ‘risk’ and I say ‘risk’ because let’s get real, these people trying to make some big dollars off my slight tinge of alcoholism are not going to take privacy lightly.

As a gen y’er I buy  things online and via mobile all the damn time. When Kate Spade sends me a ‘friends and family’ coupon, I hop on my iPad and buy, buy, buy! I do subscribe to the thought that privacy concerns will minimize over time, once the more cautious older generation begins to... well, “log-out”  and newer generations like mine are the majority.

It really comes down to the fact that newer generations don’t see mobile/online payments as a futuristic act, but as an act of necessity. Plus the reward whether it be convenience, cash, alcohol etc. has to be greater than the risk and we are a generation based upon rewards.