Day 2 @SXSW

00:22 mareku 0 Comments

Typical SXSW pose

Lytro camera

We had a start-up competition this morning with companies like:
mystream (direct phone to phone streaming)
livestagemusic (online audience participation during live concerts)
distil.it (content protection against scraping)
newsIt (mobile crowd reporting platform)
Qukku (fan generated video advertising)
DADapp (3D private sharing)
VoteIt (collaborative online decision making)
RealEyes (interpretation of emotion of human faces)
GivePals (craigslist for student campuses)
Spots (cloud based SAP)
Gonnabe (social media - sharing what you will gonna do)
Storymix (automated video creation)
Recite (translating web content for dyslexic)
GoingAway (P-2-P ride sharing)
Sojolife (a new mynameisE)

Distil.it won - which we agree.
We got to play with the new Lytro camera - which takes "pictures" in such a way that you can re-focus later. That was cool - but it is definitely an early stage product. It looks and feels great but you cannot use it as your only camera still.

Happy Feet

13:50 mareku 0 Comments

With this new colored sox craze going on in the Internet world it was easy to see who was going to SXSW as well on our plane...

1st day @SXSW

00:17 mareku 0 Comments

Austin airport

Green Cards?!

Summer Veggie Rolls

Everyone is attached to its iPhone/iPad

People from all over the world

We started our SXSW adventure. There are more then 2400 speakers and about 25.000 attendees from around the globe present in Austin. On every given moment there are more then 20 different events you can choose from - so we have to "choose wisely"...
We are planning to have a closer look at start-ups (see what's new and hip) and to how brands should relate to the new (social) media. We also have some specific car-related sessions - in-car apps e.g.
The events take place in the big hotels and in the Austin Convention Center - so we will have to walk a lot going from one place to an other and the sessions start at 09:30 and last till 18:00... Quite a full program.
But first we had to pick up our badges - which was a long queue and a very traditional process where you had to fill in a green card, hand it over to one person, wait till your name was shouted out loud (that will be fun with 25.000 people), then go an other person etc. etc.  Anyway: we got through. Why not a simple iphone app you wonder? a propos: iPhone - it seems that no one here can do nothing for more then 10 seconds - at every break everyone takes his device at starts browsing. next to that you have the people who are biological attached to their FB and twitter feed and tweet/post all the time...

Do not ask how we got in Austin - the flight to hell

13:47 mareku 0 Comments

Hurray for KLM - taking us to London

We just arrived in Austin TX, but don't ask how we got here. It all started way back this morning at 06:15 when we try to check in our bags on the first leg of our trip to London. Something was wrong with Marijns ESTA and she had to re-apply. We had 15 minutes to do that with the ESTA terminal in the back of Schiphol. We couldn't make it - these ESTA terminals are a utter disaster (Windows - trackball with popup screens all over the place which you cannot close). We missed our flight and the bad news was that there was no other British Airways flight to get us in time to London and there was also no possibility to re-route the whole flight this week. All flights are packed with people attending the conference.
So we ran to KLM, bought tickets on their flight to London, finished somehow the ESTA and ran to the gate. In London we arrived at Terminal 4 where our next leg of the trip left at Terminal 5. With 30 minutes to spare we had to run against time (and odds). We picked up our luggage, took the train and arrived exhausted at the check-in counter: the flight was already closed. Fortunately we had a very good agent and he made a call and we were on! The downside: we had to run like hell through security and T5, take the shuttle to reach the gate.
The flight itself was great, except for the headwind which was causing the plane to have a delay of 2 hours to arrive in Dallas. We had missed our flight to Austin. Luckily because almost everybody on this flight had this problem, American made the wise decision to delay the Austin flight and after a crazy race at the Dallas Airport (waiving with special Yellow fast track cards and an extra security check) we made it in Austin. That is we did - our suitcases were still in Dallas...
They arrived a flight later and after an other hour in the Taxi cue we checked in in our Sheraton Hotel in Austin, where the restaurant just closed...
This SXSW better be awesome 

Go South! (by South West)

13:28 mareku 0 Comments

We are preparing to take off and visit SXSW this year in Austin - with 2400 speakers, 25000 participants and more parties then official events it should be awesome. Weather forecast is not so good however: rain, rain and a touch of... RAIN!

Ska (amazing) Danny åka till Azerbaijan?

14:46 mareku 0 Comments

Nu andra chansen tävling är slut vet vi vem är finalisterna på melodifestivalen. Ska Danny vinner med "Amazing"? Hans kläder är mycket snyggt men kan han också sjunger live bättre den förre gånger?