Photo by Roland

Trying to stay hyper-aware of what’s hot and what’s not in the technology world I am constantly keeping my eyes open for new and interesting tools, technology and trends that are emerging. One of the events that serves as a coming out party for technology and generally puts it through its paces is SXSW. If you have a general recollection of last years event one of the big news makers was Twitter. All of the people in the know were using the application to find out who was where and where things were happening.

I came across this years hot application accidentally when I was reading the Chris Brogan’s blog. He had posted about attending SXSW and even went so far as to publish a rough draft of his schedule via an application that I had never heard about previously: Sched.org. What caught my attention more than anything else was the simplicity and utility that the site/app offered. Being in the association world my mind immediately gravitated to how we could use it organizationally and how our members could leverage it as well for the 4 annual conferences we hold.

Well it seems like sched.org exceeded even my own wild optimism for the service. Wired Magazine just published an article on the service, it’s founders (Chirag Mehta and Taylor McKnight) and how it’s being used at SXSW. It’s a big hit. Beyond the obvious cool factor and making easy what is normally drudgery what I found most interesting is how the founders were able to exploit a pain point and create something that many others found useful as well. It’s interesting how innovation often takes place at the junction of inconvenience and inspiration.