SXSW was awesome -- and here are my keynote slides

Keynote speaker Jane McGonigal doing the Soulja Boy Dance
Originally uploaded by Natasha Lloyd.

I had the time of my life presenting at SXSW today. I was pretty nervous about the talk -- it was a keynote, so I really wanted to say something new and interesting and engaging for the awesome (and intimidating!) SXSW crowds. Plus, I was following on the heels of the High Drama of keynote #1 (including an audience revolt) and keynote #2 (including an on-stage marriage proposal), so the bar was set pretty high.

Somehow, it all went wonderfully well. I had such a fun time speaking as honestly and as openly as I ever had about why I make alternate realities. And I was able to include all of my super-favorite research behind my "game designer's perspective on the future of happiness", not to mention my admittedly strange analogy "games in 2008 are like soap in 1931" analogy.

Of course, what you really need to know about my talk is that oddly enough I wound up doing the soulja boy dance on stage at the end of my Q &A, which is a long story, and I'm still surprised I actually did that. Anyway, it's on youtube and flickr and a bunch of blogs and apparently was a highly twittered moment, all of which is pretty awesomely silly. I have to thank my twin sister Kelly for helping me learn it. She looks a lot better doing it than I do. ^_^

Here are my Slideshare slides for the talk: "SXSW 2008 Interactive Keynote: Alternate Realities - A Game Designer's Perspective on the Future of Happiness"

P.S. If you saw the talk, and if you're curious about the SF0 game mission that led to my learning the Soulja Boy dance, here's a link to our documentation the original Something Very Good mission!