While ACM trawls for attendees at its various conferences by offering cost reductions to registrants (a first?), and other conference organizers worry about attendee numbers, the annual SXSW bash here in Austin seems to be flourishing. SXSW is not your typical conference. In fact, it’s three conferences in one really, if you want to spend the week here but many people pick and choose. Attendance for the interactive and film components are up 20% and today the music part kicks off with more than 2000 bands arriving. As one long-time attendee remarked to a colleague in line at one of the events, ‘today the geeks leave and the freaks arrive’. Take that, SIGCHI. Sadly, few academics seem to have discovered this event, not helped I suppose by it’s occurrence every year during Spring Break, but hey, it’s 80f here in Austin and the town is practically student-free for the week – better than any beach right now.
V.M Daniel Regents Professor of Information