Excursions

AUSTIN, Texas--OK, there has got to be a better way to do this.

I arrived at the Austin Convention Center 45 minutes before the start of a talk on Friday afternoon that I was hoping to catch, "The Ecosystem of News" led by Outside.in founder Steven Johnson. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough time: the line-waiting time was clocking in at around an hour.

By the time I made it over to the room where Johnson's talk was being held, the room was full and no one else was being allowed in. There was no simulcast. (Luckily, … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--I'm in Austin for the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, finally. And I'm exhausted. Last night, some friends convinced me that it would be a good idea to watch the Syracuse-University of Connecticut basketball game on TV until the end, and if you read the sports section this morning, you'll know that it went into six overtimes. I was able to get, oh, three hours of sleep.

Apparently, "nerd bird" is SXSWi slang for an Austin-bound plane coming from a city like New York or San Francisco, where there would be plenty of geeks … Read more

This is part four of a four-part series. Here are part one (the launches), part two (the panels), and part three (the parties).

So there are just a few hours left before I have to head to the airport and hop a flight to Austin for this year's South by Southwest Interactive Festival, and I wanted to take up just one more blog post to talk about what the week's big trends are going to be. Remember last year when everyone kept asking, "So what's this year's Twitter?" and then it didn't happen? … Read more

This is part three of a four-part series. Here are part one and part two.

Surprise: Despite budget cuts and a general malaise about making a big, bubbly scene when loads of people in the tech industry are out of work or in danger of losing their jobs, there are still a ton of parties at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, which starts Friday in Austin, Texas. There will be fewer open bars for sure; nevertheless, rest assured that you'll still be able to find far more nightlife options than you could possibly want. They do refer to … Read more

This is part two of a four-part series. Here's part one.

If you've never been to the South by Southwest Interactive Festival--which runs Friday through Tuesday in Austin, Texas--you might get the impression that it's just a bunch of wild parties where people run around drinking margaritas and then snarfing down barbecue and tacos to temper the effect of the tequila so they can be lucid enough to put up the evening's photos on Flickr and Facebook.

Not quite.

There is, actually, an extensive and packed lineup of panels, keynotes, "salons," and "core … Read more

This is part one of a four-post series.

It was a sort of worlds-collide surprise when I heard recently from a few guys from my hometown whom I've known since college. They wanted to talk to me about this month's South by Southwest Interactive Festival, that annual everyone-goes-there digital culture bacchanalia in Austin, Texas, which runs from Friday through next Tuesday.

You see, these friends of mine had recently started working at a company called JagTag, which creates barcode-based marketing campaigns for clients like sports teams and apparel brands. They're hoping to spread the word about the … Read more

PUERTO MORELOS, Mexico--They kept their Twitter feeds quiet and their iPhone cameras dormant. Most of them didn't want their names to be used.

There was more than a little bit of paranoia in the air as the guests arrived at last weekend's Summit Series event, formally the Young World Leaders Summit--not the most modest of names. It was a gathering of about five dozen under-35 entrepreneurs and executives at a beachfront luxury resort outside the glitzy vacation city of Cancun. Among those present at the retreat, which was fully paid for by sponsors, were a handful of executives … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--There wasn't much time for Current Media, the cable news network co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, to recover from last week's election and its marathon live broadcast, infused with content from Digg, Twitter, and countless video bloggers.

On Friday, Gore was giving the final address of the Web 2.0 Summit, a few blocks to the west of Current's offices, at the Palace Hotel, and plenty of advertising and marketing types were in town for the occasion.

Since it's a media company partially dependent on ad and sponsorship revenues, Current seized the opportunity, … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--The central theme of former Vice President Al Gore's speech, concluding the Web 2.0 Summit on Friday afternoon, was electricity.

He spoke of "the electrifying redemption of America's revolutionary declaration that all human beings are created equal," as emphasized through Barack Obama's election victory on Tuesday, and how it "would not have been possible without the additional empowerment of individuals to use knowledge as a source of power that has come with the Internet."

Gore reiterated what so many people have said before--that the Obama campaign was a vindication for how … Read more