SXSW Panel Idea: Mashups – Noble Bootstrapping or Downright Stealing?
I checked SXSW today and noticed that the deadline for panel proposals is tonight. I originally wasn’t going to post anything, but I sat and thought for a bit about things I know enough about to propose/speak about at a conference. I remembered the whole craigslist incident and thought it would be interesting to propose a panel discussion about the state of mashups today.
In the past, mashups were held to a pretty high opinion. The proper mashup might be able to take two things and simplify a process to critical acclaim. I think in those days, mashups weren’t thought of as startups or businesses, just small tools that people could use. Flash forward to today and sites like Mapskrieg and Padmapper (and others like AirBnB) are being C&Ded for their terms of use violations. Something happened in the startup world that made mashups into a viable threat, which the bigger players did not approve of.
While the term “mashup” seems a bit archaic now, I think it would be interesting to revisit that term and see what it means today. Take some pioneers of mashing up and some new startups and get them talking about stuff.
In other news, it looks like the Panel Picker requires some kind of “visual resource” like a video or slideshow or something. I don’t see how my proposal could be improved by that (it’s pretty cut and dry) so I’ll probably just link to this blog post and insert a lot of unrelated pictures of things being mashed up. CC licensed, of course.