Travel writer, publisher and Hawaiian shirt aficionado Phil Tripp will conduct a couple of seminars in August for Aussies considering attending SXSW Music.
The nights are for people thinking of heading to the music conference in Austin next March and give information about how to apply, what goes on and what you need to know before you get there.
Seminars are planned for Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Last Friday, the deadline for submitting ideas for the 2009 converence, the folks at SXSW Interactive received more than 700 panel proposals in one day alone. They’re still wading through all those under-the-wire submissions, plus the hundreds submitted beforehand. The Interactive “panel picker”, which will permit prospective attendees to vote on favorite panel ideas, is scheduled to go live on August 8.
SXSWclick, the itty-bitty online film festival from the folks at SXSW, has posted the finalists in the 2008 competition. There’s some fun and intriguing stuff here, and you can have your say by voting for your favorites (up to once daily) until July 27 in the Popularity Contest. Winners in all categories, including the Grand Jury prize, will be announced August 1.
Downtown Austin fine dining mainstay for more than 20 years and a favorite of many SXSW attendees and residents, Castle Hill Café will close at the end of this month. The owner cites rising costs and the changing nature of the surrounding neighborhood as reasons for the move.
But a new eatery is likely to arise in the comfy, intimate space:
...Daily is closing Castle Hill on June 28 and taking at least a month for a major makeover of the place before reopening the space at 1101 W. Fifth St. as Corazon, an interior Mexican restaurant with a full-service bar and lounge.
It’s a smidge later than we expected, but the folks at SXSW have opened up the panel submission process for the 2009 Interactive conference. A couple of important notes:
One change for the 2009 submission process is that individuals are limited to two (2) panel / presentation ideas—last year, we allowed people to send in three ideas each. Also, if you are submitting a panel proposal and your idea is accepted, then you will need to confirm all speakers by December 12 (or your session will be replaced by other programming).
Submission deadline is July 11, although organizers reserve the right to cut off entries before that date if they reach capacity, so submit early for best chances.
After his own experience on a panel at SXSW, blogger Rohit Bhargava offers some advice on how to speak at a conference without getting skewered on Twitter.
Do you have an idea for the perfect panel? Get your thoughts in order and prep for the first step in the Interactive conference panel submission process, which begins next week. From June 2 until July 11, panel topic and solo presentation submissions will be accepted at SXSW.com, then subjected to the democratic thunderdome of the “Panel Picker”, where former and prospective registrants choose their favorites. While not all panel programming is plucked from the Picker, it’ll be a big part of what goes down in the Convention Center next March.
Full details on the panel submission process are expected to be posted in the next few days. In the meantime, pop on your best brainstorming chapeau and e-mail with questions.
Our pals at Austinist tipped us to a new website for visitors to Austin from the Convention & Visitors Bureau. A lot of the info might be old hat to regular readers of the Baby (and the section about SXSW is...um, a bit spare), but there’s still plenty to discover.
For example, here’s a neat interactive map of Austin, with clickable overlays for amenities such as hiking and bike trails, parking, shopping, Dillo routes and more.
After a lawsuit by SXSW Inc. last week, a soon-to-open South Austin restaurant and performance venue will be changing its name from the planned “South by South First”.
The Austin American-Statesman reported that in a request for a temporary injunction on using the name, the festival and conference producer contended that the similarity of the name might “cause confusion with, or ... dilute the distinctive quality of South by Southwest’s marks.”
The owners of the new seafood and steak house have not announced a new moniker.
All those little cards you filled out after SXSW Interactive panel sessions this year? Somebody actually read them, and tallied the rankings. Now here are the results. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the keynote by game guru Jane McGonigal ranked highest of all, while the infamous “keynote interview” of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg by journalist Sarah Lacy hit the very bottom.
The latest e-mail from SXSW HQ contained this bit of news about a new program for the Interactive conference:
One of the improvements we will implement for the 2009 SXSW Interactive Festival is a panel mentor program. The idea here is that qualified members of the online community help facilitate communication between the SXSW staff and the many industry experts scheduled to speak at next year’s event. This program will require a significant investment of time and energy—and all panel mentors will be given a comp badge for their efforts.
If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, send an e-mail to for details; be sure the subject line of your e-mail is “SXSW Panel Mentor Program”.
Here’s a great short video interview with artist Moby at this year’s festival, including information about his effort to release free music for indie filmmakers on his site.
Moby at SXSW 2008 from Nadia M. on Vimeo.
Attention camera jockeys: Today is the official “call for entries” for SXSWclick, “a year-round initiative created to showcase short-form storytelling via mobile devices and the web”. In other words, it’s an online film festival of sorts, accepting entries in five categories: narrative shorts, documentary shorts, animation, music videos and our favorite category, “What the F*#!?”. (That’s, er, “what the film?!”.) Submissions must be no longer than 10 minutes and uploaded no later than June 13.
Check out last year’s winners and get all the info here to craft your submission for the fifth annual festival.
Matt Dentler, the director of the SXSW Film Festival since 2003, is moving on. As of May 1st, Matt will take up a new post as head of marketing and programming operations within the new Cinetic Rights Management unit at Cinetic Media. Though it will involve a move to New York, here’s hoping he’ll be back next year and able to actually enjoy himself for a few days in March.
Taking over for Matt will be Janet Pierson, a fellow board member from the Austin Film Society. Along with her husband John, she has more than 20 years of experience helping independent films find audiences. Janet and John and their children were the subjects of a film themselves in 2005’s Reel Paradise, in which they move to Fiji for a year to operate a cinema. Having seen that film, I would suggest that Janet Pierson is more than capable of handling a challenge. I look forward to seeing what next year’s festival will bring.
Congratulations and good luck to both Matt and Janet!
Aside from a ton of inspiration and memories of much great music, some folks returned home from SXSW with a little something extra: a pernicious flu bug. The not-medical-professionals at SXSW Scurvy are dedicated to tracking the epidemiology of the little virus that could and sharing remedies.
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