Return from SXSW Interactive 2011
I am home after presenting for a second time at SXSW Interactive this week. This year, SXSW included a Health track which was a great addition to their programming, and of course, it made my annual trek even more meaningful. I was delighted to be able to attend more health panels this year and to meet up with more psychologists this year (in addition to long-time attendee, John Grohol, Psy.D., who has been my sole SXSW mental health pal for the past three years).
This year, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Susan Giurleo, Ph.D., who led a Core Conversation on Improving Mental Health Through Engaged Communities, and Pamela Rutledge, Ph.D., a media psychologist, who was on the panel Can the Internet Make Us Happy? (as an added perk, you can listen to the audio of this session on the link).
I had two complaints about the formatting of the programming (which I will frame in the form of wishes). First, I hope that future health track panels will not be segregated to a separate campus. This made it more difficult to cross-pollinate with attendees and dip into sessions from other disciplines without committing to a dash to a different venue. Second, I hope that we have larger rooms next year for the health track. I assume that there are many SXSW attendees who might be interested in checking out the health panels but running to different campuses made it somewhat prohibitive for some. It also seemed to assume we only wanted to meet amongst ourselves which may not be accurate.
My session was called Patients/Caregivers on Facebook: Establishing Boundaries Without Barriers. It was organized and moderated by Ed Bennett, Director of Web Strategy at University of Maryland Medical System. We had several fantastic panelists: Jen Dyer, MD, MPH from Ohio State University, Dana Lewis, Interactive Marketing Specialist, and Dan Goldman, who provides legal counsel at Mayo Clinic. I want to thank everyone who came out to see our session (at 9:30am on Daylight Savings Sunday, no less!) and who helped make it dynamic and engaging both in the room, and on twitter. I hope to see you all next year!
Susan Spaight posted a lovely summary of our presentation.
Dana also posted a great recap of the lively twitterfeed of our panel which I’ve embedded below. Please give it a moment to load.
Related posts about this year’s Health track at SXSW:
- Ed Bennett’s blog post about our session
- John Grohol’s summary of psychologists at SXSW this year
- Reed Smith’s post 3 Reasons SXSW Can Change Social Health
- #SXSWH, the SXSWi Health Tweet feed
- Pamela Rutledge’s wrap-up on Psychology Today
- Tracy DiMarino’s summary of our session on PR 20/20