SXSW Has "Blacks in Tech Meetup Tonight at the Carver"

I saw this on the SXSW website, and would you believe I've still not been to a SXSW!  Terrible me.  But I'm happy to report SXSW is hosting the "Blacks in Tech Meetup Tonight at the Carver" as the decription reads, "this event celebrates our ongoing effort to bring a more diverse lineup of panelists to SXSW Interactive. The Blacks in Technology Meetup is open to new media professionals as well as those who are hoping to break into this industry. In other words, no badge required to attend."

That's awesome and worth more commentary.  A great effort.  I'm happy to see this and wish I was there. 

Stephanie Agresta Shows Boobs at BlogHaus at SXSW By Scobble

Stephanie Agresta at BlogHaus at SXSW, originally uploaded by Robert Scoble.

Wow, now here's a picture you would not expect to see from a "tech" event, but it's here. Stephanie Agresta, whom I met last year, was at SXSW (South By Southwest) in Austin, when blogger Robert Scobble took this photo.

But Stephanie's more than this. She's a New York-based Internet Marketing Consultant with a great track record and solid clients.

Here's one of Stephanie's videos made at SXSW:

SXSW - Sara Lacy Of Business Week Gets Hammered for Softballing Mark Zuckerberg

Sara Lacy's being described as having given an interview of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that was "flirtatiously awful" at SXSW. I usually don't hear about such matters on the blogsphere from SXSW in the past, so this one must have been a real toilet-dweller of a talk.

I'll go over to my friends Owen Thomas and Paul Boutin at Valleywag for the ulitmate take on all of this, since both were there while I'm here in Oakland playing host to my Mom, who's visiting. Owen agrees with the reviewers regarding the audience's behavior. Paul, who can turn a phrase with the best of them, wrote "if you really hated yesterday's big event, Austin attendees, blame yourselves. SXSW only gave you exactly what you wanted: A chance to relive Spring Break and the senior prom, but with you and your self-styled "geek" friends as the popular kids."

So just what happened? You can see it here, along with the audience reactions:



Just eyeballing it, it seems that Lacy was doing more talking than listening. It's as if Mark was the spectator.

Here's Sara's explaination of what happened:



According to Sara, the questions were a product of discussion by her and Mark, but she's taking the fall. Tisk. Well, this will all blow over in a few days, especially since bigger news like New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's alledged involvement in a prostitution ring is holding the Monday Zeitgeist space.

SXSW - Austin, Texas Swings Digital Media South Away From SF Bay Area

Now, I've been to Austin and went to the University of Texas at Arlington just up the way between Dallas and Ft. Worth. Austin was always called "The Berkeley Of The South" but that was from the perspective of nutso Texas conservatives. Now, I think Austin should be seen as a national capital of digital media, or at least the presentation of it. Just look at SXSW.

South By Southwest has been going on since 1987, but since it added the film and interactive media festivals it's really taken off and now with the growth of digital media, it's growth is viral. Viral because it's a festival about content related for digital media, and digital media itself, and then it's reported about using, you guessed it, digital media. A unique convergence. Take a look at this video blog:



I increasingly get the idea that the excitement in digital media is as much in cities like Austin or New York as it is in the Bay Area. We've got nothing like SXSW and yet it's something perfectly Bay Area. I think the main problem here is the cost of living is driving away the creative people that feed the digital media community. What's more the problem is that the Bay Area leaders are too out of touch to see this as a crisis.

When more cities -- or maybe that one city like Austin -- starts luring Bay Area firms away, then they'll wake up. But California's lost a lot of movie production activity for the same reason, so maybe not.