2010 South by Southwest PanelPicker goes live

by Faith
on August 19th, 2009 | in Siri

South By Southwest today launched the 2010 Interactive PanelPicker. Users get a 30% say in what panels will be selected (there’s over 2K+ proposed topics this year). We submitted two panels. If you like our proposed topics, we’d appreciate if you’d vote for our panels so they will become part of SWSXi this year.

Here’s a brief overview of the panels we thought would be interesting:

• Idea 1: “Search: a Conversation with Someone You Trust,”
• Idea 2: “Software Agents and the Ethics of Assistant-ness.”

“Search: a Conversation with Someone You Trust” is an introduction to the concept of virtual personal assistants (i.e. VPA’S) and explores how the category will evolve, particularly as a new interaction paradigm for the Web. It also explores the many business opportunities inherent in VPA’S, particularly around Web services and API’s.

“Software Agents and the Ethics of Assistant-ness” takes a deeper dive into cultural issues relating to establishing and maintaining trust when interacting with virtual assistants. As we have said, we believe that in the next 5 years almost everyone who lives a connected lifestyle will delegate the details of their everyday tasks to intelligent assistants. Therein, developing trust between the user and the assistant is critical.

To vote for either of these panels, click on the link to the panel topic above and vote on the SWSX website.