The Hub Istanbul was recently held in Karakoy. The next one will be in June, but I do not know the exact day.
The Hub is a social enterprise to inspire and support imaginative and enterprising initiatives for a better world. It is a global community of people from every profession, background and culture working at ‘new frontiers’ to tackle the world’s most pressing social, cultural and environmental challenges.
Hopefully, The Hub Istanbul will be officially opened in September 2011. Even in Oaxaca, the amazing city in Mexico, they have an office.
Follow them for the updates on Facebook.
“40 years old moms are the new hardcore gamers”. That is true, told by Manny Anekal in SXSW 2011, Zynga’s Global Director of Brand Advertising. Similar to the rest of the world, women spend most of the time playing Farmville in Turkey. Gaia, one of the most crowded social game in the world also has similar gamer profile to Farmville; %60 female, %40 male. Games have changed, they are social, easy, free and everyone wins.
Another important change in game trends is raising money for social goods. Farmville raised $3 million for Haiti with users’ donation. Location based social game SCVNGR follows the same strategy and is preferred by brands for social campaigns. As Seth Priebatsch pointed out, the founder of SCVNGR; decentralized leadership can solve global problems more quickly and efficiently and more importantly, that in game play, because for a moment, users are part of something bigger. Users are working really hard, they are having fun and they are invested.
I had no idea what Roflcon is until I saw them with Tim O’Reilly sitting in a conference room at SXSW 2011. They are so popular in USA, but for the ones who do not know them, Roflcon is a gathering of internet memes first took place at MIT, in 2008. They are exploring internet culture but what is different from the rest is they are talking about internet memes, how it is working. And, they are inviting the most famous memes and partying with them. They even booked a flight from Istanbul for Internet Mahir in 2010.
Bobiler.org editors might start a Roflcon thing. I think they are the only ones who can handle this kind of organization. We all got bored from Social Media Week, Webrazzi Summit kind stuff.
We called many works as crowdsourcing projects. Now, things are getting serious, the concept is in our lives more than ever. It might be the future of online labor, also has an effect on virtual goods.
The panel at SXSW 2011 will be examining the topic of crowdsourcing, the crowdsourced labor market, and the entrepreneurial and creative opportunities made possible by “human APIs. It seems very exciting, also having a chance to listen a Kickstarter employee, Fred Benenson.
Beginning from today, I will be writing about SXSW Interactive Festival. Yes, I am in Austin to attend.
I have recently discovered a website called The Bold Italic, a great hyperlocal project for San Franciscans. The website is developed by IDEO for Gannett, one of the largest media company in the United States.
As they describe it, their mission is to help people become better locals, equipping their members with rare local intel, backstory and potential adventures. Their writers are the Bold Locals, who are San Franciscans selected for their authenticity and their unique take on the city.
As a growing trend in cities, people are much more interested in discovering unknown destinations, activities, stores, restaurants as a result of being fed up with mass consumption. Like in old days, this is turning into supporting local merchants at the end.
The best thing I like about The Bold Italic is the way of telling story about local experiences; the real reason about why to go there from Bold Locals and the user friendly design for people to keep pieces of these backstories — a particular merchant, landmark, or product — in a personalized tab.
One of the best campaigns I have seen lately belongs to Eastpak. Referring to their “Built to Resist” motto, various characters are seen mentioning the product’s strong, tough and contrary standing on their campaign videos. All the videos reminded me Fantastic Film Festival at Austin. During the fest we were seeing the most absurd films from all around the world. As usual, one more time I ended up my entry with a referral to Austin.
At the SXSW 2010 Awards, Gowalla beat Foursquare in the mobile category. The reason might be Gowalla is using GPS data to confirm a person is actually at the stated place, whereas Foursquare does not.
Another most talked website is Cornify which had the People’s Choice Award. It generates a button you put on your blog and when the visitors click on it, it overlays pictures of unicorns over the website.
My favourite nominee was vark.com. This is a social networking website, where you can ask questions and get your answers immediately. I tried and got my answer in just two minutes. It may sound like ask.com but this website is definitely more user friendly, well designed and fast. As usual, Google saw the spark and acquired this website, which is not surprising.
Read More http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/03/sxsw-web-awards/#ixzz0lB8h1Oii
