AUSTIN, Texas – As the nerds packed up their DSLRs and laptops, the music contingent descended upon Austin, marking the end of SXSW Interactive. Day five meant for an interesting melange between music and interactive personalities which was marked in the tone of the events and panels. Music for mobile and the music/social media interaction were major topics discussed on the last and final day of SXSW Interactive.
Microsoft and SXSW host interactive award shows
The end of interactive was a day for awards and ceremonies as two major events took place; the 14th Annual Interactive Awards and Microsoft Corp.’s Accelerator Awards. The Interactive Awards honored geeks in categories like “Motion Graphics,” “Experiments,” and “Mobile.” Microsoft’s Accelerator Awards was designed as a contest to reward start-ups with advancements in social media, mobile applications and Web entertainment.
Journalists weigh in on WikiLeaks to discuss successes, failures
We could not have a technology festival without at least once mentioning Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Yesterday’s panel, “Wikileaks: the Website That Changed the World?” featured diplomat Carne Ross, The Guardian’s Ian Katza, The Arabist’s El Amrani, Vanity Fair’s Sarah Ellison and ProPublica’s Stephen Engelberg. The panel focused on how news organizations can deal with the sheer loads of information presented by WikiLeaks and whether perhaps news organizations were not the best people to decide which cables were worthy of public attention. The panelists also discussed the successes and failures of WikiLeaks and whether it could indeed be called journalism.
“Wikileaks is not only an extraordinary threat to governments but also to traditional media operations, to our common cultural assumption of how the press should work,” said Carne Ross.
SXSW Music and Interactive overlap, creating discussion around music and sound for mobile apps
Mobile lends itself perfectly to music consumption, mostly because listening to music is something we primarily do on-the-go. Between the Android store, iTunes and stores within Windows phones, mobile creates a whole new revenue stream for musicians and game developers in the music space.
“The technology that’s coming out is going to have a lot of influence on our culture, and on musicians. This drum app (that Vitarana built) is not professional level … yet. But these toys will influence the technology, and hopefully change the quality of the speakers … and eventually increase the quality,” said Adam Randall of Intuitive Rhythms.
Since music has such widespread appeal, it’s no doubt that musical applications on various smartphones has the potential to be a way to reach the masses a la Angry Birds.
Another layer of the music for mobile debate was the idea of leveraging social media and check-in based services to garner support and fans for smaller bands that don’t make the majority of their money from touring. For these bands, it’s all about the social interaction.
Bruce Sterling closes out SXSW Interactive festivities with a speech
Sterling began his speech by saying, “I’ve become a tradition at SXSW. Unless you’re sentimentalizing, which Austinites are known for, this SXSW is the best one in 25 years.”
When talking about the change he’s seen over the past 25 years, Sterling said, “SXSW looks like a new world – and not a meet-up for geeks – because it’s got women at it!”
Numbers from this week’s SXSW put paid attendance (which doesn’t include any of the media that was there) at 19,364, up from last year’s 14,251. The 36% growth rate contributed to some of the city’s crowding, but everyone seemed relatively content to stand in line and see what SXSW had to offer.
Festival director Hugh Forrest said that despite some logistical problems within the city (like bus problems), “Things generally worked very well.
When asked whether SXSW’s format would continue in 2012, Forrest said, “Barring the city doubling the convention center in size, there’s no way it won’t continue.”
Until next time, Austin!
