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Learning nothing at the SXSW Interactive tech conference

By Scott McCollum
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
March 11, 2002

For those of you who have never heard of the South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas; donÕt worry ø youÕre not missing anything. South By Southwest (shortened to the hip-looking ÒSXSWÓ semi-acronym) was supposed to be an anti-establishment film/music festival and conference. SXSW was put together as a forum for cruddy art films made by film students at the University of Texas. Pot-smoking white kids played funk music and panel discussions were held in an effort to show how corporate the entertainment industry had become. A little more than ten years later, the annual SXSW show and conference every March is now one of the biggest money-making industries in Austin, raking in a fortune from dozens of national corporate sponsorships, thousands of high-priced admission badges (ranging from $250-$775) and merchandise sales. Oh, lost irony of ironies!

SXSW Interactive is the high-tech arm of the festival that started last Friday. For your 250 bucks, you get to meander around the trade show floor (mostly Ònew mediaÓ dot-com bombs with no business plans looking for venture capital) or witness webpage programmers compete in the ÒIron Webmaster Showdown.Ó Just like the Japanese cult TV series ÒIron Chef,Ó two teams of web programmers take dull JPEGs and turn them into delicious web pages for a live audience. There will even be two Ònew mediaÓ professionals offering play-by-play analysis of the event! I donÕt know about you, but the very thought of sitting in a conference room watching someone code a webpage for an hour and a half while two Gen-XerÕs prattle on about Òthe purity of this teamÕs source code is top-notchÓ on a Sunday afternoon actually makes me long for the excitement of my Monday morning commute.

If Iron Webmaster is too much for you, slip into one of the keynote speeches by the left-wing tech gurus Larry Lessig (a Stanford law professor who runs the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF defends the hackers that break into your company and makes you out to be the bad guy by using the Òinformation wants to be freeÓ legal defense) and Bruce Sterling (one of the many ÒcyberpunkÓ sci-fi authors who trash the Ògreedy 80sÓ but saw nothing wrong with making their personal fortunes in the happy-go-lucky Clinton years). Lessig speaks out against copyright abuse and the stifling of on-line freedom of speech during his stop at SXSW. Sterling is right behind him to say: ÒRight on, brother!Ó Lessig view of Òcopyright abuseÓ caused him to rail against protecting the authors of digital books and thinks free speech protections on the Internet only applies to people he agrees with (Lessig has never publicly spoken out against the landmark Free Republic vs. the Washington Post/LA Times on-line free speech court case). Bruce Sterling, an author of copyrighted material and someone who youÕd think would be completely furious at a person who wants to permanently cut off SterlingÕs income source, said ÒI love that Lessig guy. Just knowing the truth is out there, it cheers me all up.Ó I had no idea that believing ÒThe X-FilesÓ is real was a prerequisite for being a SXSW keynote speaker. Gee whiz, no wonder I wasnÕt invited!

The list of narrow-minded technoleftists slithering around SXSW is long and boring, so IÕm just going to drop it. The only other SXSW Interactive event worth mentioning is the Sexiest Geek Alive beauty pageant. Originally conceived in 2000 by a web designer and marketing executive, the SGA pageant drew thousands of applicants and garnered good press (In the interest of full-disclosure, I must admit that I have a soft-spot for the guys that put together the SGA pageant because back in 2000 because they allowed me to contribute questions for the pageant. If one of the contestants is asked a question about explaining capitalism in the wake of the dot-com bombs, it was written by me). Sure, the people in the pageant are never going to win a real beauty pageant and would probably not even be someone youÕd want to be stuck in an elevator with for more than 30 seconds, but the SGA founders know that.

The SGA pageant is light-hearted, self-deprecating fun that had some rough edges in the past (the first pageant had technical problems to go with a stilted and unfunny emcee ø the second pageant went better technically and failed to connect to a broad audience). This year, the SGA team has invested a lot of time in event preparation along with clinching solid corporate sponsorship. Even though I think theyÕve had a serious lapse of judgment by hiring TechTVÕs smarmy Tom Green-clone, Martin Sargent as a Òcelebrity co-host,Ó the SGA 2K2 should be one of the only things at SXSW Interactive worth the high price of admission.

If youÕre looking for a quick way to blow $250 to find out that the ÒNew EconomyÓ is all hype, hurry down to SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. The SXSW promoters would love to have your money, suckers!

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