Sunday, March 9, 2008

SXSW - Music, Film and Geeks - Look out Austin!

Austin Texas is a cool place.

Depending on your perspective, this week it gets a little cooler.

South By Southwest or SXSW, the music and media festival started Friday and runs a little over a week.

Billed as one of the largest music festivals in the United States, this year's SXSW has conquered more sectors of the blog world than ever already. Wherever you look, you see a post from, or about SXSW.

Many of the 'noted' bloggers are there and, of course, controversy is already started to cross the headlines with Business Week's Sarah Lacy facing a difficult interview and audience while attempting to interview the 'shy' founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.

Both had a 'vested interest' in the interview. Zuckerberg just appointed a new CEO to Facebook and Lacy has a book on Facebook coming out.

As a (proud) member of the Woodstock generation, looking back, it may have been cool to have Wi-Fi access 'on the lawn' back then?

One thing we can expect. Some very strange blog posts as the parties get into gear. "I apologize for that post, I was drunk ... ".

Did someone say Gawker? Underway tonight, the controversial NY - based Gawker Media party was attracting a lot more than geeks on Sunday night.

Will they wait 'til morning to post? We'll see :)

Here's a few references if you want to 'check-in' virtually on SXSWeek 2008:

The official website: sxsw.com
Twitter feed www.twitter.com/sxsw (and a whole bunch of 'unofficial feeds' as well)
Austin 360
Just possible hundreds (thousands?) of photos on Flickr here
A little more about the music (site from Australia) http://www.themusic.com.au/sxsw/
The Austin Chronicle (TX) SXSW Coverage

... and probably hundreds of film, music and, of course, tech news and geeky blogs...