Austin “Live Music Capital of the World”, TX
How does one summarize the South by Southwest Conference (SXSW)? It is an incredibly packed lineup of interactive panels, films, and bands from all over the nation (and a few from beyond) packed into a normally mellow city Austin, the capital of Texas, USA. I was there to attend the SXSW Interactive Festival at the Austin Convention Center and stayed a bit longer to hear some music.
Again it’s hard to summarize even just the Interactive Festival because there were so many panels happening at the same time. I will highlight some but I encourage you to visit the video coverage of the interactive panels for yourself.
Much of the post-festival buzz is about the interview between journalist Sarah Lacy and the keynote speaker Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO. It seems the audience found her style of interviewing Zuckerberg flirty and condescending. Much of their dismay was expressed in realtime on Twitter.com, winner of the SXSW Best Blog Award in 2007. Speaking of awards, check out the 2008 Web Award Winners. World Without Oil, a real approach to change, won the Activism Award and MetaNotes, which I found truly innovative, won the Experimental Award.
Natalie Zee Drieu, Senior Editor for CRAFT Magazine
was an interesting panel I attended. It was an all women panel organized by
CRAFT Magazine. Professionals in technology, communications, fashion design and craft artists discussed the intersection of crafts and technology. It was interesting to hear these women speak about how DIY (Do It Yourself) culture of tech crafting, taking apart toys and other low tech devices and sewing them onto wearable fabrics, is informing the fashion industry and making way for new textile technology. And it was refreshing to see their inventions and feel tactile technology, pieces that I was able to touch and wear. You can
download the podcast for this session and then try some projects for yourself by following the “How To’s” on
the Craft blog.
In A Dream movie poster
Outside the Interactive Festival, you can
check out the films that premiered and played at SXSW including one of our fiscal sponsorees,
In A Dream directed by Jeremiah Zagar. The music coverage is not as easy to document because the bands played at many venues and clubs in Austin. But you can get
some video coverage, including a cool interview with Saul Williams, the multi-media artist encouraging us to reclaim our hybrid natures. And if you want to dig deeper and hear the
bands that were a part of SXSW visit their MySpace pages, the online playground for musicians today.
Comments
I love that you made the word “flirty” a link.
Posted on March 19, 2008 5:46 PM by Angela Tucker