South by Southwest is a conference most people think of as a gathering of musicians and bands and the various denizens of the hipster music scene. However, it is also a well-known film festival and a revived interactive festival. Following the dot com bust the interactive portion of the festival was near death; companies no longer were willing to pay their employees to go to a conference/ party and small businesses were all but done and thus the whole industry sort of shrunk. However, as most of us now know, the dot com world is anything but a trend, instead it is the future, it is the now, and SXSW Interactive is it’s shining example of innovation and creative energy in one place for 5 quick days.
Academic concerns were the focus of a number of panels at the festival, with varied topics dealing with publishing, youth internet culture, the impact of wikipedia, and more.
