In the spring of 2012, Glenn Platt and I, Co-Directors of the Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies, spoke at the premier conference focused on digital media: South-by-Southwest Interactive (SxSW) in Austin, Texas. We competed with some 3500 other proposals for a coveted presentation spot.

We led one of the “core conversations” entitled Brand as API: Connect Differently. The presentation considered the API as a new model for how brands build connection to users. Bringing insights from programming, experience design, and marketing, the strategic session explored this new model with detailed examples and presented a roadmap for re-thinking  brands in the context of a user-controlled API. Key questions included: How do we relate to brands? What is an API? How do brands speak to us? What can a brand do to connect? Who controls a brand? The presentation also led to the journal article that was later published by the International Digital Media and Arts Association.