SXSW is Bigger - Bits and Pieces

It’s my first day of the conference, and it seemsclear that SXSW Interactive has arrived as a major meeting place for the tech world. Posted on Saturday Mar 12, 2011 3:50 PM by Mark Sullivan Tech nerds wearing cowboy boots and western shirts with snapbuttons. Waves and waves of Gen Y-ers from San Francisco. Skinny jeans. Chuck Taylors (old,worn). Tattoos. Vans. A sea of Macbooks. Just theoutside edge of real Texas heat. Orange conference badges all over town. The smell of barbeque. Margaritas that send you reeling off into the Austin night (they're made especially strong for first-time Austin visitors). Really friendly people from Texas. Days that seem toroll downhill toward nights of bands, bars, parties, and more barbeque -- nights that seem vaporize in a couple hours and then it's morning in Texas again. Pardon that bit of purpleprose, but I just wanted to give you a sense of what it's like here in Austin. The South by Southwest conference, once just a little music festival, has added a filmfestival and an Internet conference and has become, well, huge. Same thing happened toSundance in the film world. Today is the first (real) day of the conference, and I can already tell there are far more people here than last year. Hotels within 5 miles of downtown havebeen booked up for months. The Hilton had sold out of rooms for this week more than a year ago. I was lucky to get a room at all -- a pretty low-rent one at that, for which I paid a premium price. People are renting out their apartments here to conference-goers for as much as $3000 for a week.