Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The Sweet Sound of SXSWi

It’s been one week since SXSW Interactive came to a close, and there are still two types of publishing people in the world:

1) Those who are counting the days until they can return next year
2) Those who think SXSWi is some kind of contagious eye disease

For those of you still stuck in the latter half, we’ve put together a few links to bring you up to speed. (And for those few type ones out there, a mini refresher course.)

What you need to know:

  • SXSWi began in 1994 as part of a film and multimedia conference (it’s been it’s own interactive thing since 1999, and in 2006 they added Screen Burn – a subset focusing on the gaming industry)

  • The festival covers everything from web development to on and offline marketing to internet theory to business management to design to social media to…

  • If you use a feed reader, you can subscribe to receive podcasts of the panels as they are posted here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SXSWpodcasts, or, if you don’t use a feed reader (another lecture, another time) check out the main site http://2008.sxsw.com/interactive/ for updates as they appear.

  • Save for a few SXSWi stalwarts in attendance (Will Schwalbe, ex-Hyperion and author of SEND, was back for the second year in a row, Little Brown’s New Media Marketing Manager, Scott diPerna clocked in his fourth year), the publishing community was notably absent

  • The only publisher with a booth at the trade show was McSweeney’s

  • B&N hosted the book signings at the SXSW bookstore

For more, check out the April issue of Publishing Trends on March 25th…
For PT’s coverage of SXSWi 2007, click here