‘Spring break for nerds’ to kick off in Austin
The smell of barbecue is in the air and talk about virtual reality, online privacy and the latest hot apps is on everyone’s minds. It’s time again for South by Southwest Interactive, an annual tech festival dubbed “spring break for nerds.”
The five-day festival, which kicks off Friday in Austin, is more freewheeling than other tech conferences like CES in Las Vegas and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. It’s where St. Bernards delivering Mophie smartphone chargers to festivalgoers — as the charger maker arranged last year — can garner as much buzz as the apps brought to fame there, including Foursquare in 2009 and Twitter in 2007.
“It’s an interesting place to see what types of things are bubbling up in technology,” said Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt, a service for people to rate new tech products. “It has this mixture or collision of technology and entertainment. When different types of minds and people are connecting together, new ideas come out.”
The festival has grown larger and more corporate over the years, with sponsors including McDonald’s and Samsung, but it still draws an eclectic crowd of movers and shakers in the tech industry each year.
This year’s sessions include one on a futuristic transportation system, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, which aims to move people in a capsule inside an enclosed tube track at 760 mph — faster than commercial airliners.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone will discuss the evolution of online search, while “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” director J.J. Abrams and “The Jinx” director Andrew Jarecki will tout Jarecki’s app for video editing and sharing, KnowMe.
Even President Barack Obama will make an appearance, the first for a U.S. president at the festival. He plans to talk about civic engagement with the editor in chief of The Texas Tribune, nonprofit news outlet based in Austin.
South by Southwest Interactive is part of the larger SXSW festival, which also features sections for movies, music and games over 10 days. The interactive conference drew 33,825 registrants from more than 80 countries last year; the combined festival had about 80,000.
Organizers drew criticism several months ago when, faced with threats, they canceled two panels on harassment in online video games. In response, the festival will hold a daylong “online harassment summit” on Saturday.