I’ve just returned from Austin and my head is swimming.  Reflecting on the last few days, it strikes me that the SXSW conference, at least the interactive portion, is a microcosm of what we see in the larger digital landscape. Both the public at large and the community of speakers, attendees, developers, start-ups and established companies are facing the same fragmented space, the same cacophony of options, experiences, tools, platforms, approaches inside which they hope to find hidden gold.

But this year it wasn’t an application or platform that stood out from the fray. It was the idea that thoughtful application of technology can actually improve people’s lives.

High scores and changing the world

Scvngr’s Seth Priebatsch says we’re moving beyond the social layer, and the next decade will see the addition of the gaming layer.  We’ve all watched as game mechanics (levels, high-scores, gamer rankings, badges) have leaked out of games into Location Based Services like FourSquare and now seem to be everywhere.

But both Seth and “Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World” author Jane McGonigal pointed out that it’s not just about the mechanics.  It’s about the behavior that makes those mechanics work. This mindset takes the game layer beyond a set of tools to more of an engagement philosophy based on core motivations like recognition, status and connections that can reinforce or even change behavior. How can framing a challenge make something that otherwise might feel like work, feel fun and rewarding?  How do ideas taken from levels, progress tracking, and comparing high scores shine a light in fields like education, community building and health?

Visualizing better health care

One of the sessions that was most inspiring to me was “Health Data Everywhere: Not a Drop to Link?” where a panel including leaders from Health2.0, PatientsLikeMe, ACOR, Google and Health & Human Services shared the kinds of insights that can be uncovered at the intersection of crowd-sourced individual and institutional data.  When this dynamic resource is put into context with well-designed visualization and tracking tools, patients and institutions can both benefit.  With PatientsLikeMe, for instance, people can track the progress of their symptoms, their medications and supplements, side effects and so on, and compare their progress (and challenges) to others like them.  The volume and specificity of data that comes out of this process not only helps patients set their own expectations and understand their options better, but also is a valuable resource for researchers.

It’s not about the tools, it’s about what you do with them

Both the gaming threads and ‘let’s do some good with technology’ threads had some themes in common.

-               Data isn’t just being collected in the back-end to drive marketing, but it’s being put into the hands of users as well to drive personal and collective benefit.

-               Social activity is evolving towards collaborative activity. We’ve seen the success of social shopping (Groupon, LivingSocial) and the buzz around group messaging but there were also interesting lessons to be learned from participatory storytelling and transmedia.

-               Multi-channel is becoming omni-channel, as the lines keep blurring between the digital space and ‘real world’ space. That said, with all the fragmentation many digital experiences are still a fair distance from becoming transparent.

So where’s it all going to go? For me, it breaks down into two camps.  There’s still that product development mindset in the space, trying to create tools, platforms and experiences that win on features.

Then there’s this other camp, one that’s looking beyond the technology and the tools themselves towards an idea, that digital experiences have the potential to help people grow, learn, connect and change.  This camp goes beyond the ‘who, what, where and how’ many companies cover to explore why. Personally, I think this mindset can be applied to any tool or experience, not just new technologies but the existing social, mobile and traditional platforms that haven’t really been mastered yet.   And to me, that’s inspiring.

- Dave Lewis, Group Director, Strategy at Organic