TodayinAustin

1. BREATHE: in that sweet Texas air! Mmmm. 2. LODGINGS: Go check into your hotel as soon as possible. Drop your bags off. 3. REGISTER: Go stand in line at the Convention Center to get your badge as soon as possible (lines will get long, heinously long) and bring a pen or something to fill out the registration form. 4. GET THE BAG: Get the Big Bag of conference materials (this is heavy, and filled with swag), go back to the hotel, and empty it out. I usually take out the confer ...

Each year, SXSW strives to make connecting with the diverse level of attendees easier. This goal has lead to the integration of a Quick Response (QR) Code to each registrant badge. Working in conjunction with my.SXSW, our social networking platform, these special bar codes allow registrants to easily connect with one another. The codes will serve as a real life "follow me" button for my.SXSW on each registrant badge. While the possibilities of QR Codes are virtually limitless, they are espec ...

www.greenlit.orgIn this documentary-about-filmmaking, a cast and crew is tested when they try to “go green” during the production of their movie The River Why. Apparently good intentions and the hiring of an environmental consultant don’t guarantee success, and the well-meaning subjects of this doc soon find themselves caught up in an ethical and logistical quagmire illustrating the conflict between ideals and reality. Directed by Miranda Bailey (who served as executive producer of ...

Imagine a conference room full of people trying to listen to a panel with a quiet speaker. A touching story about life at Fray Cafe. A quiet acoustic performance in the back room of the Red Eyed Fly. And the person next to you is thumbing out an email and you can hear them typing every single character. Click. Click. Click, click, click. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, whoosh. Please turn off any extraneous notification sounds and keyboard clicks, or you’ll drive everyon ...

Straight from South By Headquarters, badge pickup begins Thursday, March 11 at 3pm and runs until 10:00pm for those of you arriving in the evening. Badge pickup re-opens Friday, March 12, at 9am. And, if you’ve been to SXSW before, note that badge pickup has now moved to the first floor of the Austin Convention Center. It is no longer up the escalators on the second floor. For easiest access, enter the ACC on Trinity St between 2nd St and 3rd St. rather than on 4th Street.

We have added lots of new elements to this year's SXSW Interactive Festival. And one of the most important additions to the lineup is expanded registration hours/badge pickup on Thursday, March 11. For 2010, check-in will begin at 3pm (and extend until 10pm). If you don't have a chance to pick up your badge on Thursday, March 11, then registration opens on Friday, March 12, at 9am. The first official programming for the 2010 SXSW Interactive Festival begins with a Book Reading in the Day Stage ...

Thursday March 11th at Ruta Maya Come out for a sxsw interactive pre party!! Lux Divon - http://luxdivon.com/ Bali Yaaah - http://www.myspace.com/baliyaaah Bernard Noir - http://www.myspace.com/bernardnoir Visuals will be done by Paul Baker come out for an evening of live electronic music mixed with traditional instruments. cosmic saxophone, big basses, guitars, drum machines, synths, computers, mind blowing visuals!!! show starts 9:00 pm come out early and don't miss a beat ...

How’s this for intimidating: The above screen grab is from Citizen Taco’s guide to SXSW eats, which doesn’t include every single place to eat in Austin, but rather the places the Austin blogger deems worthy enough to recommend. (He also wrote this where-to-eat during SXSW post over on Serious Eats.) The number of above-average meals you’ll eat in Austin during SXSW should hit double digits after just a few days, and and if you can’t find anywhere good to eat, you must be walking a ...

On February 27 of this year, President Barack Obama signed a one-year extension to the Patriot Act, allowing the government to use court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on people deemed terrorists. Whether you consider it an invasion of privacy or a good way to catch terrorist plots before they hatch, you have to admit that there’s a lot of information in the hands of the government today. What do they know about people? What do they know about...you? That’s one of t ...

SXSWMost folks come to South by Southwest Interactive to meet people, promote their business, drink a little bit and maybe even learn a thing or two. But for 32 young companies, SXSW Interactive represents a head-to-head competition to be the next big thing. Five local companies - four from Austin, one from Round Rock - are among the finalists in the second annual Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator competition, which takes place March 15-16. A sixth Austin company is an alternate. Are You Wat ...

Who hasn’t needed to get away from it all and spontaneously hit the open road with no plans, the top down, radio blasting, nowhere to be but…or, um okay, you’ve driven to grandma’s house for the holidays. But the point is, the countryside, with all its beauty, its pastoral charm, its…hey, what the hell is that, is that water tower painted like a watermelon? Yes, the open road and the small towns on it have their own unique and mysterious allure—after all, who does work in that D ...

www.happypoetmovie.comPaul Gordon is a filmmaker, actor and Austin resident whose film The Happy Poet will enjoy its world premiere this weekend at the 2010 SXSW film festival. The narrative feature tells the story of a poet and food cart vendor who is trying to make the world a better place in spite of various economic, romantic and hotdog-related obstacles. Gordon has been involved in the Austin film scene for several years, having been a part of Motorcycle, Gretchen and another of thi ...

Band names don’t come much more misleading than the Dandies. This quartet out of Lucerne, Switzerland — led by brothers Adrian and Eric Weber, 22 and 20 respectively — play raucous, sweat-soaked, party-ready rock ‘n’ roll that owes a hefty debt to the feel-good hijinks of the Strokes. The brothers Weber sing in English and, according to their bio, have “roots in Baltimore.” Their debut album, out later this year, was produced by none other than Austin’s own Chris “Frenchie� ...

Los Angeles pop rockers The 88 got a hero’s hand in finally making it to one of the big stages at this year’s South By Southwest Music Festival. The hand in question belongs to Ray Davies - the man behind stone-cold anthems such as “You Really Got Me,” “Lola” and “All Day And All of the Night” - who will feature the quartet as his backing band for the finale of his set at La Zona Rosa on Thursday night (March 18). The pairing came about when Davies, long a hero of the band, ...

If you thought 2009’s economic doldrums might result in a quieter, downsized SXSW — possibly, heaven forbid, with less free beer, free food and free music — then our recently updated, nearly 600-strong side parties list scoffs at you. Yes, you read that correctly — our searchable database of official and unofficial SXSW parties is now closing in on a mind-boggling 600 events. With that kind of scope it’s both impossible and ill-advised to recap everything here in the blog, but this w ...

New York City’s eclectic junkyard pop band Freelance Whales comes to SXSW with buzz aplenty, as their debut LP “Weathervanes” is about to drop like a ton of goose down. Their official showcase is 8 p.m. Friday March 19 at Galaxy Room, but you can catch them the day before at Yard Dog at 4:15 p.m. for the Schuba’s party. Chuck Criss answered our goofy questions. 1. This this your first time at SXSW? Second time to Austin, first time at SXSW. Don’t really know what to expect. 2. Wh ...

If you missed your chance to grab a SXSW wristband during February’s online sale, you’ll have another opportunity Saturday, March 13. That’s when another 500 of the bands will go on sale at Waterloo Records. Cost is $165, limit one per customer, and they have to be placed on your wrist on-site.

Photo by Jay Janner/AMERICAN-STATESMAN ATX Emerge, the annual showcase for Austin music that kicks off SXSW, has released its 2010 lineup, and it’s an impressive slate of the city’s best. The show goes down from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. Monday, March 15 at the Mohawk. Garage soul sensations and certified breakout Austin success story Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears headline, with other performers including the White White Lights, Brazos, Sunset and the Peligrosa All-Stars. The show celebrat ...

Prisoners at the Travis County Correctional Facility in Del Valle will get a taste of SXSW goodness next week, when politically active rockers Tom Morello and Billy Bragg pay a visit on Mar. 19. The concert, which is obviously closed to the public, is connected to the launch of the U.S. branch of Bragg’s Jail Guitar Doors charity that provides guitars to prisons as tools to help rehabilitate inmates. Launched in 2007 and named after a song by The Clash, Jail Guitar Doors uses benefit concert ...

THURSDAY 3/18 INSIDE 12 Glass Trees 1 John Biz 2 Frankie & The Zombeats 3 The Death Kings 4 The Hickoids 5 Silvering Denizens 6 Exene Cervenka OUTSIDE 12 Heather Duby 1 Vitamins 2 ETA 3 The Safes 4 Adrian and the Sickness 5 Spain Colored Orange 6 Peelander-Z 7 AV Okubo PORCH 230 Whisky Dick 330 Model U.N. 430 Shotgun Hustler 530 Carsick Cars 630 P. K. 14 FRIDAY March 19 INSIDE 1 Stay Home Lucy 2 Thee Royal Butchers 3 The Danvilles 4 The ...