The South by Southwest conference series descends on Austin every year, and never before has the Interactive element made as much noise as the rock n’ roll kids.
As the lone evangelist to attend, David Shadle summed up it up: “If one was to pickup the internet, give it a good shake and dump it out, the result would be SXSW – the largest gathering of people influencing the way people interact with technology, media and each other.”
The highlights include Ze Frank making an Elvis-esque appearance as the Web Awards MC, leading up to the last episode of The Show. The award for our jealousy award goes to Caesar, who had the distinct privilege of playing the new Queens of The Stone Age album and shared out the single to everyone who was packing a Zune.
Twitter was at SXSW, in the sort of way that locusts were in Egypt low these many years ago. The frequency of updates to the Twitter – SXSW 2007 page, combined with the influx of new users to the social communication service, was enough to grant it phenomenon status; Friends Swap Twitters, and Frustration says the Wall Street Journal.
The official SXSW coverage site has collections of short videos and MP3s of panel discussions that will get released over the next few months. If you only listen to one of these, make it Bruce Sterling’s SXSW Rant, as you’ll always get the most enlightening opinions from a, “Visionary in Residence.”
Nick White relayed the report from Greg Amrofell of the Windows Vista team, “Some people have asked why we wanted to go to SXSW. Apart from the obvious answer (that it's the most fun you can legally have in Texas), it's really the perfect place to showcase Windows Vista and its strengths in mobility and multimedia. Whatever you create and wherever your creativity takes you, Windows Vista makes it easier and more fun.”
Wired’s blog Listening Post has a great collection of musical coverage from the week, including their picks for the Best YouTube Videos of SXSW07.