Music, Barbeque, and Digital: A recap of SXSW 2010 by Darren Herman

I was the lucky chef down in Austin, Texas during this year’s South By Southwest conference/festival/boondoggle. In between consuming massive amounts of barbeque at Iron Works and The Salt Lick (arguably the best in the US) with founders/CEOs of some of the hottest digital media companies like FourSquare, Twitter, and Mint/Quicken, I spent quite a bit of time at the actual conference in the different digital sessions ranging from real-time data thru the future of TV. While I won’t recap every little detail in this article, I’d like to point out some highlights:

· LBS: Location Based Services such as FourSquare or Gowalla are becoming increasingly popular. During SXSW, they were used less about where you actually were, but whom you were with. LBS plays not only into creating efficiencies in tracking/finding people, but with playing into the world of “status” as you can talk about how you are with.

· QR Codes: First off, QR codes are not new, though they may finally become popular in the near future here in the US. While very popular in Japan because the cellphones have QR readers installed, QR code adoption has lacked here in the US. In the SXSW schwag bag, there were plenty of QR codes from different companies and one of the most interesting companies were Stickybits, which essentially are barcodes on individual stickers that can be placed anywhere and when someone scans it with a QR reader, it delivers additional information. Another level of augmented reality.

· Privacy: With the web becoming increasingly real-time, privacy becomes an issue as there is no central body policing it. There was lots of talk about the privacy debate and whether or not there should be a central force governing. Think about Chatroulette, Facebook, and Google Buzz – how much is posted there that you do not want everyone reading? Danah Boyd from MSFT research talked about this and more. If you Google her name and “SXSW,” you’re bound to come across quite a few posts about her keynote.


All-in-all, SXSW was solid this year. Attendance was up 40% over last year for the Interactive portion which diluted the crowd (IMHO) but the who’s who was down there and had many productive conversations.