Geek Gestalt

AUSTIN, Texas--To players of alternate reality games (ARGs) like I Love Bees, Tombstone Hold 'em, A World without Oil and others, Jane McGonigal is a household name.

If the people at the International Olympics Committee, McDonald's, and worldwide brand experience firm AKQA have anything to say about it, the list of people who know McGonigal and her work will soon expand geometrically.

That's because she's the lead designer on The Lost Ring, a new ARG that launched earlier this month that is tied to this summer's Beijing Olympics and which McDonald's, AKQA and the IOC … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--After last year's explosive arrival on the geek scene at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) of Twitter, a lot of people wondered what technology might take the conference by storm this year.

Well, after three-and-a-half days of SXSWi, I'd say we have an uncontested winner.

Announcing the technology that more than anything else has governed how the thousands of attendees here are organizing themselves, finding out what their friends are up to, weighing in on the merits of keynote address interviewers and so much more.

Drum roll please.

It's Twitter. Again.

I have never seen anything … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Here's my secret: I cried during Frank Warren's keynote speech.

Of course, I wasn't alone. All around the ballroom where Warren, the founder of the PostSecret project, was giving Monday's South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) keynote address, people were misty-eyed. And for me, things he said throughout his talk had tears rolling down my face.

It's not surprising, though. For those unfamiliar with PostSecret, it's the project Warren has been doing for several years where he encourages the public to send him anonymous postcards with some sort of personal secret. Over the years, … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--According to Robert Scoble, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided to do an open Q-and-A this afternoon at South by Southwest Interactive.

This, of course, would be a follow-up to his Sunday keynote here, which went awry when the audience turned on his interviewer, journalist Sarah Lacy.

I don't have a lot of details, and apparently the open Q-and-A may be going on right now, though Scoble Twittered that he thought it would be at 4:30 p.m. local time.

But for Zuckerberg to make this move would surely go over huge here at SXSWi, where the talk … Read more

While CNET News.com reporter Caroline McCarthy and I have been busy writing up our many observations of the goings-on and happenings at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi), CNET TV, too, has had its journalistic eye on the event.

Click over to this CNET TV video of a panel on making a living through video blogging or this one on how motion is breathing new life into computing a la Guitar Hero.

See more stories in CNET News.com's coverage of SXSWi (click here).

AUSTIN, Texas--If journalist Sarah Lacy got some people riled up with the style of her keynote interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday, her Twitter response to criticism of her will not help calm things down.

As reported here and elsewhere earlier Sunday, Lacy interviewed Zuckerberg as the day's keynote at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) and in the process, saw the audience of thousands turn against her for a series of stylistic faux-pas.

I won't rehash all the details here, since you can read up on that in my previous story.

But as pointed out later … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Ugh. Talk about losing an audience.

During Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's keynote address Sunday here at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi), on-stage interviewer Sarah Lacy out-and-out bombed, becoming much more of the story than she should have been and having the capacity crowd turn on her over the course of the hour discussion.

"Other than rough interviews," an audience member asked Zuckerberg during a short Q&A session at the end of the keynote, "what are some of the biggest challenges Facebook faces?"

"Has this been a rough interview?" Lacy asked … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--As my colleague Caroline McCarthy pointed out earlier this morning, the parties at South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) this year are so overcrowded that waiting in line outside has become commonplace.

On Friday night, I tried to get into that evening's biggest party, the so-called Mix at Six. Along the way, several friends and I kept running into people heading away from it who were reporting that there was a long line outside. And indeed, when we got there, it looked like there was an hour-long wait just to get in.

Last night, I was on my way … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--In a lively discussion that focused on youth and collective intelligence, noted researchers and authors Steven Johnson and Henry Jenkins officially opened South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) on Saturday in the conference's first keynote address.

Johnson, a well-known journalist and author whose books include Emergence and Everything Bad is Good for You, and Jenkins, an MIT professor who has written books like The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture and Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, talked at length about their ideas related to how youth culture is changing in the face of rapidly … Read more