They’re all part of a talk that Tim Meaney and I are giving at SXSW Interactive: The Revenge of Editorials. It’s scheduled for Friday, May 12 at 5pm. You can find all the details on the SXSW site.

We’re a Web shop, so it sort of goes without saying that we love the Web and we believe in the power of the Web. While the Web is borne out of technology, it is – in so many ways – a product of humans. It’s got it all. Intellectual discourse and low-brow ramblings. Pornography and pornography addiction support groups. We play games, do business, meet people, make friends and (virtually) kill enemies.

That said, many people don’t think very much of the Web. The constant buzz. The noisy layouts. The general lack of care into so much of what’s produced. It’s a messy place.

One of our biggest fears, and a key motivator for this talk, is that this frustration will lead people to move away from the Web. These other "places" (whether an App Store or some new-fangled digital magazine) are inviting, but they run counter to what’s made the Web so captivating today.

Our talk will focus on elevating experiences on the Web, rather than bussing people off to some sanitized "other place." We’ll view the Web through the lens of history and look ahead to how we – as content creators, designers and technologists – can do a better job of elevating the Web.

We know the Web will always have its darker corners. We just need to make sure that we create great new experiences inside the Web.

We hope you can join us. It’ll be Arc90′s first showing at SXSW and we’re really excited to be there. Our talk is part of a series on content strategy.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about the dreaded 1000+ unread items staring me down on Google reader. It’s a deflating feeling to constantly be confronted with so much stuff that I’m failing to catch up to. In reality, I don’t want all this stuff. I just want the good stuff. Of course, technologists react by trying to develop a vaccine that is part smart algorithm (see Techmeme) and/or part social tagging/voting/whatever (Digg and Delicious).

In other words, we want an electronic version of an editorial staff. Well, maybe what we really need is help from.hold onto your hats.other human beings. Maybe we need a way to establish a circle (or circles) of trusted people – friends, colleagues, higher-profile people we know that consistently suggest interesting things – and give them a way to help us cherry-pick the stuff worth focusing on.

The above is the premise behind our proposed panel for next year’s SXSW Interactive. It’s called The Revenge of Editorials. If you think it’s worthwhile, you can help make it a reality by voting it up (speaking of information overload, there are over 2,200 panel suggestions for SXSW).

Speaking of humans (and their inherent value), Behavior Design’s Chris Fahey has another interesting panel called The Human Interface (or: Products are People, Too!). It’s another panel I’d love to see become a reality. The brief pitch:

More and more, users are interacting with web sites and software on a conversational, physical, psychological, and emotional level — just like we’ve always interacted with other people. UX designers, then, must stop thinking about interfaces as dumb control panels and begin using technology to envision interfaces (literally!) as human beings.

Go humans!

Stay tuned to the Arc blog or follow us on Twitter (arc90 or kindlingapp) for updates about the next Arc event.

In short:
TONIGHT
7pm-9pm
747 3rd Avenue, 30th floor

Looking forward to seeing you all there!