Vote Austin in the SXSW Panel Picker

The SXSW 2012 Panel Picker is about to close but we wanted to give the last call for your chance to Vote Austin. Here’s a list of known Austinites pitching talks in no certain order. If we missed yours, just tweet us a link.

Disambiguation: Embrace wrong answers & find truth

Austinites: Winnie Hsia, Dhruv Bansal, Flip Kromer • Vote

Where are all the coffee shops in my neighborhood? Seemingly easy questions can become complex when you consider ambiguity. This one sounds simple until you consider that folks may define “coffee shop” differently and the boundaries of your “neighborhood” differently. One person’s Central Austin, may be someone else’s South Dallas. How about instead of working too hard to define the parameters in an attempt to completely remove the ambiguity, we instead look at what people do, interact with and talk about. We can watch what people do and decide from there what a coffee shop is and where the boundaries of your neighborhood are. It might not be the “truth”, but it can be darn close. When we learn to embrace ambiguity, not only can we still find the answers to our questions, but we can also find answers to questions we hadn’t even thought to ask.

The State of Browser Developer Tools, 2011

Austinites: Kyle Simpson, Garann Means • Vote

Your browser is the most important program on your computer and until recently there were no built-in, industrial-strength tools available for debugging web pages. As web apps become more sophisticated, so do the debugging environments. Representatives of the major browsers discuss the similarities (and differences) between the tools and we look at how they address the needs of the 2012 developer: debugging Web Workers, tweaking CSS colors to perfection, remote debugging of mobile devices and all the other functions that make in-browser development as easy as falling off a console.log().

F*CK IT, WE’LL DO IT LIVE!!1!11! LIVE CODING

Austinites: Joe McCann • Vote

Warning: this could go terribly wrong or incredibly right. Two devs, one hour and the audiences ingenuity to write a fully functioning mobile/web app – LIVE CODING. Come witness the pain, joy, frustration and awkward silence while Joe McCann and Brian Leroux build a fully functioning mobile web application that leverages open source technologies and is hosted in the cloud. Tools to be used for this epic feat include: *Phonegap, *Node.js, *Express, *Stylus, *SimpleGeo, *YQL, *Rackspace Cloud Files, *Rackspace Cloud Servers, *HTML5 Boilerplate, *Zepto.js, and any other projects or libraries available on github.com. At the end, an app will be created out of thin air that will be publicly available and open sourced.

Twitter API innovation: how to compete with free

Austinites: Manton Reece, David Barnard • Vote

Drawing from the experience of shipping two unique Twitter apps, Tweet Library and Tweet Speaker, plus the Tweet Marker sync service, this session will share what it’s like to build a third-party Twitter app and how to get noticed in a crowded market. We’ll talk about the history of the Twitter API, changes to the third-party community, managing the design process, and specific technical tips for building on top of and extending the API. Find out what you can do to make the App Store work for your app, by effectively judging the market and innovating over the competition.

Naked Business – Honesty works

Austinites: Jason Cohen • Vote

Deceit infests business: salesmen deceive, PR spins, tech support deflects, marketers mislead, strategists out-wit, founders preen. Entrepreneurs mislead to seem big and stable; multi-nationals mislead to seem relatable and human. It’s the game. But what happens when you don’t play along? I’ve found something surprising after 12 years of building 4 companies from scratch: That honesty is more profitable than deceit. Not because it’s ethical (though it is), but because it’s more effective. Admitting my product’s shortcomings resulted in more sales, fewer returns, and happier customers. Straight-forward pricing made me more money selling both products and entire companies. Conceding my business’s limitations allowed me to take on powerful competitors as well as raise money. Revealing my fears and neuroses — both corporate and personal — resulted in customers who not only accept my flaws, but coerce their friends and social network to follow suit. Turns out that doing the right thing is just good business.

Time Bandits: The Next Revolution in Social

Austinites: Rene Pinnell • Vote

In the last decade, Facebook and other social networks have focused on mapping and documenting our existing relationships. The recent rise of Twitter and foursquare has transitioned the emphasis to what is happening right now in our lives and the lives of those around us. With the past and present of our lives established online, the next frontier is future-tense social networking. Learn from both established players as well as new startups exploring ways for users to share plans and facilitate real-world connections. Will these new location services enable intent-based marketing? Can they disrupt the advertising and marketing industries in tangible, long-lasting ways? We have brought together the brightest minds in mobile social networking to debate how future-tense social networking will revolutionize the way we live, shop, and play

Humanize the Web: Illustrating for Interactive

Austinites: Gerren Lamson, Reagan Ray • Vote

Custom illustrations, whether they are hand-drawn doodles or tightly-rendered vectors, give a warm and personal tone to the web. They can communicate complex stories in a single image, add substance and clarity to lengthy articles, and create a unique visual experience that reinforces the message of your brand online. However, the most important reasons to incorporate illustration work into web design are to foster curiosity in the viewer, encourage them to read your content, and excite them to participate in your cause. Despite the benefits of using illustrations in web design, there are also a few major challenges to consider, such as: file size and optimization, layout integration, visual complexity, hand-drawn type illegibility, cross-browser compatibility, and flexibility for responsive design. We’ll share practical ways in which you can address and overcome these pesky limitations. By using a sample project, we’ll share our secret illustration methods for interactive work – how we select an illustration style, sketch a page layout, draw the tasty visuals, and choose a plan for implementation. Through the sample project, we’ll sprinkle in our favorite techniques that have proven useful when integrating illustrated visuals with content for a more interesting, hand-crafted digital experience.

Get out there and vote for Austinites to speak at SXSW 2012.

PS: There’s also a good list of talks from other Austinites (mostly Dachis Group members) over at Austin Startup blog.