Live Blogging: Uprising Tides (New Orleans SXSW Panel)

FYI: The Panel discussion reads from bottom to top

Follow the panel: @TiffanyStarnes @neworleanstech @dalamanna @cschultz @chrisboudy @tritico

Final: “Advice for building communities?”

Chris Boudy “hard work and do it for yourself” D Lamanna “Don’t be everything to everybody.” C Schultz” This is very replicable.This can happen in other places. You can build a viable tech community anywhere.”

Tiffany Starnes “don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Take leadership” Tritico: engage online and offline.

“So what is up for next year?” Two buses? More communities. Get shit done.

Matthew Tritico asks “how to not let things die down can we institutionalize these movements?” Chris Schultz – on Growth and Momentum references Robert Fogarty’s non profit evactueer.org that is funded by his own business that was inspired by the momentum of the tech community called Dear New Orleans. Tiffany Starnes points out that the passion we all have for our causes and movements is what drives the success of all our organizations that mushroomed around NetSquared. The state has recognized the Digital Movement in Louisiana by supporting economic development by supporting digital tax credits and is fostering the film industry and making Louisiana the 3rd largest location for the film industry after Hollywood and New York City.

Tiffany Starnes “Social Media Club NO will rise again!”

Damien Lamanna on Unintended Consequences from the successes of these events – trust the community. If there is a void, let them fill it with new groups and organizations. The community will support it.

Tiffany Starnes also coordinated TribeCon with Chris Schultz that also piggybacked the New Orleans Voodoo Festival that was extremely successful in strengthening the community. Document it all!

Chris Boudy “Take that momentum and use it to seize opportunities for your group” – Talking about the first ever IgniteNOLA event, that piggybacked the Webtrends conference.

Tiffany Starnes “Convince them and they will come” – sweet and succinct.

“Cost of all these events? Where does the money come from?” Damien Lamanna – we don’t fundraise all year long, but we do have sponsors who support NetSquared meetings and we are fortunate to have support of partnerships that support and back our cause. Chris Schultz – we do have leverage, we were able to mobilize communities utilizing twitter, and other social media tools.

Matthew Tritico asks, “Who is leading all these movements?” Chris Schultz explains that we don’t have a traditional top-down leadership structure. If anyone wants to start a movement, they can and they will have the support from everyone involved.

Chris Boudy – inspired to start neworleanstech.net to highlight tech events and other tech movements hyper-locally in New Orleans. There hasn’t been anything like this before in New Orleans.

Tiffany Starnes was inspired to start a New Olreans Social Media Club chapter due to the momentum from last year’s SXSW trip and the sense of community the NOLA group had. SMCNO 2.0 is about to get rolling too.

Damien Lamanna is breaking it down about how NetSquared flourished in New Orleans by using meetup.com and holding consistent meetings at the same bar every month and getting relevant speakers. Meeting in a bar really did help keep NetSquared strong in New Orleans, because well, it’s a drinking town, so it worked really well.

Chris Boudy – [not on the bus last year] “I was pissed!” He turned that into getting motivated to get involved in the NOLA community, Net2NO and get his ass on the bus this year. Not only did he get on the bus, but he’s rocking the panel. Go Chris!

Panel is talking about last year’s inaugural trip to SxSW, they raised $20,000 and chartered a bus to get 35 people from New Orleans to get to SxSW, to represent New Orleans’ presence at Austin.

Tiffany Starnes just lead the New Orleans Group in a cheer to get the crowd going. New Orleans knows how to get riled up and rowdy!

Here we are at the New Orleans Panel. Here at SXSW The Speakers are Tiffany Starnes, Chris Boudy, Damien Lamana, Chris Schultz and Moderated by Matthew Tritico

Testing my connection before the Live blogging begins.

We’ll be live blogging the NOLA panel starting at 3:30PM! Test, test, test