If there’s one recurrent theme to SXSW 2006, it would be who the hell are all these people? The last time I was here, in 2003, there was a lot of hand-wringing about whether or not SXSW would survive. Now the halls are clogged with people, many of the panels are standing-room-only, and there are a ton of interesting new faces here. Apparently this wasn’t a slow growth over the two years I missed; most of my friends are looking around wide-eyed and exclaiming at the crowd.
There’s also a ton of new sponsors bouncing around with a bunch of freebies and swag, from the giant Adobe logo on the side of the SXSW goodie bag to the free Clif bars making the rounds (which, actually, are really pretty good try the chocolate brownie ones).
One downside, though, is a shortage of really cool panels. I know it’s the direct result of the constant bombardment of cool ideas that MIT levels at your head, but most of the panels I’ve attended so far are pretty dull. There was a keynote earlier today by Jason Kottke and Heather Armstrong that boiled down to the old, old litany of “people are saying mean things about my dog!” nonsense.
That said, there have been a few really kick-ass panels, like the Interactive/Film keynote today with Henry Rollins. That was amazing, and I grabbed some fantastic photos I’ll post to my Flickr account later. This was followed by Adam Greenfield’s Everyware talk which was the kind of intellectual a-ha crackle that I remembered from SXSWes years ago (I did grab a copy of his book a few minutes ago at the bookstore and had him sign it) and now I’m sitting in a panel with Jason Santa Maria, Shaun Inman and others as a “Design Eye for the List Guy” kind of thing, wherein their team redesigned Plazes, a location-based site that I enjoyed tinkering with last year, but I haven’t touched in a long time. This is very, very cool.
More notes as the days go on…

Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.

