Austin Community News >> Austin South By Southwest (SXSW)

3/10/2007 AUSTIN, Texas -- The burgeoning city of Austin blows open its doors on Friday for its annual media convergence megafest. Over the next 10 days, this vibrant cultural blip in the heart of Texas will host tens of thousands in the first carbon-neutral incarnation of the 21-year-old South by Southwest. Yee-haw.

The three-pronged music, film and interactive components of the festival offer an endless panoply of panels, performances and parties that even New York and Los Angeles would be hard pressed to match. There are more than 150 panels, 200 films and 1,400 music acts at some 60 venues.

This year, SXSW is taking advantage of the growing trends of user-generated content. Conference organizers literally turned over panel selection to the community: Visitors to the SXSW website could vote on event topics and suggest speakers through an automated tool.

Interactive Festival event director Hugh Forrest, says SXSW "received incredible panel ideas" from the crowd. So much that "the bulk of programming for the 2007 event" came to them from website votes.

Of course, music is the big ticket at the event, and the Austin Convention Center, parking lots, parks and venues will be jam-packed with acts ranging from new sensations like Amy Winehouse and Cloud Cult to old standbys like the Buzzcocks and David Byrne.

But don't forget the interactive and film festivals, which attracts plenty of digital creatives and technology entrepreneurs, along with its share of geek celebs, from comedian and web designer Ze Frank to Sims creator Will Wright and Worldchanging's Alex Steffen. Google will host a panel about why XSLT is sexy, and Bruce Sterling gets to rant on stage about SXSW.

"SXSW is an interesting show for web developers since it brings the geeks out of the pure-geek conference circuit, and mixes them in with designers, filmmakers and musicians," says Marc Hedlund, founder of the internet banking site Wesabe and a panelist on "Barenaked App: The Figures Behind the Top Web Apps."

Normal fans -- who can't afford the A&R vacation lifestyle of many of the attendees or are otherwise unable to travel to south-central Texas -- can get a good dose of the festival online and through DIRECTV's eight hours of daily showcase programming (available on channel 101) during the music portion of the festival, running March 14 through 18. Independent television station ME TV (channel 15) offers impressive insight into the local music culture and will be streaming online content throughout SXSW.

Similarly, radio station KUT (90.5 FM) is the go-to source to hear the many local bands, and will be reporting extensively throughout. SXSW's web site offers a toolbox of useful online and mobile apps, best of which is a free 3.1-GB bitorrent download with singles from most of the participating bands.

(Contributed by Wired.com)