A few of us were lucky enough to go to the South By Southwest Interactive Festival this month to learn about different technologies. What is SXSWi? Here’s what sxsw.com has to say:

An incubator of cutting-edge technologies, the SXSW Interactive Festival offers five days of captivating keynote presentations, panel sessions, book readings, meetups, workshops and core conversations that provide hands-on training as well as big-picture analysis. More to the point, coming to SXSW Interactive is a great way to recharge your creativity.

Recharge our creativity it did. The three of us who went can’t stop babbling about all the different ways we can better use the technology available to us for loveisrespect. We’re pumped to keep finding better ways to give you life-changing, relationship-making information.

We wanted to share some of the conferences highlights:

Nurturing A Young Online Community
We saw a panel led by young people about how to reach online users under the age of 25. This was of course especially relevant to us because that’s our core audience. It was led by two young bloggers. They reminded us to not control the community, but rather to direct the conversation and let our readers have a voice. We loved that reminder. We’ll always encourage you to comment on the bottom of all of our posts and contribute to our conversations on Facebook and Twitter.

We went to several panels about community building. We do view our readers as community members so we really wanted to make sure we are best serving you. We were reminded that a welcoming online environment is key, but that there should be recourse if someone exploits or misuses our community.

In other words, we have to serve as our own online bouncers. We want nothing more than for good participation and fun to happen here, but we need to make sure it stays safe and positive. So, to our many contributors who write to us here or elsewhere, we got your back.

The Benefits of Humor
We enjoyed learning about how beneficial humor can be in online writing. One panel encouraged that we use humor because people see funny things with a clear perspective. Humor can help break down barriers. If people don’t want to have a response to a topic, humor can be used to make people feel comfortable enough to talk about it.
Read more…

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Megan, a longtime loveisrespect advocate, was recently invited to “A Roundtable of Experts on Teen Dating Violence, Sexual Assault and Related Youth Violence” by Lynn Rosenthal, White House Advisor on Violence Against Women. She went to represent young advocates and to talk about how to reach teens and young adults with messages of healthy relationships.

We at the loveisrepect team are very proud of her and all of our peer advocates for the work they do on behalf of teens and young adults.

Check out this video to see what Megan has to say about her trip to the White House.

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This Valentine’s Day, share the love…and share the music! Martina McBride is teaming up with loveisrespect and Tickets-for-Charity to make some of the best seats in the house (and yes, we mean floor seats!) available to benefit loveisrespect for all dates on her Shine All Night Tour with Trace Adkins. Whether it’s your boyfriend, girlfriend, sister or best friend, here’s a great way to treat a loved one to an unforgettable performance with one of country music’s biggest stars! Visit Tickets-for-Charity to learn more and find fantastic seats in a city near you!

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