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SxSW: Interactive, Film & Music Highlights

It has been a busy week in Austin, Texas. The SxSW Interactive, Film& Music conferences are finally over… with over 10,000 artists performing and God only knows how many registrants. The 2012 edition, as probably been one of the most successful conferences of the last years. As fun as it was it was, it was also filled with an insane amount of rain during the first couple of days, as well as some very annoying (and long) lines for most of the venues and events. Here’s a brief recap of the highlights of each portion.

The biggest buzz coming out of the Interactive portion of the conference was probably for “Highlights”, an iOS-based application that brings people together, based on their location and info from Facebook profile. This app let’s you know which of your friends or friend’s of friends are around the area or in the same place you are. In essence it is a very cool tool, if you can get past the privacy implications of being all the time in other people’s radars. It can certainly enhance someone’s dating life; as well as invade your personal space it the privacy settings are not improved.

Featured as a must for most attendees on the Film side was “Bernie”, a comedic crime drama that showcases the human and idiosyncratic elements of society. Based on a true story, “Bernie” centers on Bernhardt “Bernie” Tiede (Jack Black), a beloved local mortician with people skills to spare, who kills a local widow and then spends months trying to cover up her murder by pretending she’s had a minor stroke. When found out, the whole town rallies to Bernie’s defense. Not necessarily a cinematographer’s opus, this film provides a witty, lighthearted and entertaining moment to the viewer.

Highlights from the SXSW Music Conference portion included new band “Alabama Shakes”, a fiery quintet playing country-soul, ”Bruce Springsteen” as a key note speaker, Nacional Records‘ first showcase with some of the most buzzed about artists at the Festival (“Monsieur Perime”, “Astro” and “La Vida Boheme” ), first timers to the festival “Telebit” (Colombia) and “Vetusta Morla” (Spain); as well as the unforgettable performances by ”Lila Downs” , ”Jot Dog” and “Bomba Estereo”.

Austin is an amazing and vibrant city , also the home to some of the best all beed hot dogs in the world!…A great host to this conference and all it’s attendees.
The Interactive portion ran from March 9 to 13, the Film portion runs from March 9 to 17 and the Music portion runs from March 13 to 18.
Long lines, rain, sore feet, the truth is that we can’t wait until SxSW 2013….see ya then Austin!

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