Digitizing the Dish At SXSW

Every year, thousands of people submit panels for SXSW, the largest digital-interactive conference in the United States. I am excited to have the opportunity to have submitted a panel entitled: “Digitizing The Dish” along with Chow.com Vice President and GM Jane Goldman, CNET Executive Editor Molly Wood and Food Genius Co-founder Justin Massa. Please take a minute to read our description below. If you like what you’ve read, vote for us by September 1st here.

Description:

“One of our most basic needs is being taken care of by technology–what to eat. And it goes beyond simply going on to Yelp to find a good restaurant for dinner or “checking in” on Foursquare. As is often the case, we are beginning to be inundated with information that can impact our food choices. Information is coming not just from a basic Google Web search, but from Yelp, Twitter and even Facebook. How do we break down the walls between our different social graphs and find a decent restaurant or recipe? This panel will focus on how people are using technology to bring order to the stubbornly analog entities of recipes and restaurants in order to provide recommendations and information. Name, the ingredients, the measurements — all defy digitizing. But slowly people are figuring out how to tame this painfully unstructured data, and are creating cool new apps and services around it.”

Questions Answered:

• Where do you think the breakdown is between food and social media?
• Do you think Foursquare has actually made a difference in restaurant’s businesses?
• What do you think are some new and exciting opportunities in technology that can help out the food industry?
• How is all of this impacting the way people are writing about food?
• How important is trust in this discussion between social media and food?