Austin Blogging, Podcasting – music, tv, radio, sports, sxsw, over 100 interviews with SXSW attendees and more post-SXSW interviews coming! Example interviews: Casey Mckinnon, Veronica Belmont, Cali Lewis, Lindsay Campbell, and over 100 more.
If you’ve never had the experience of sharing a few beers with Alex @baldman Jones (no, not *that* Alex Jones), you’re missing out on a great experience. This Alex Jones is the one that provides terrific leadership for Refresh Austin.
Alex Jones talks nonstop and 90% of what he says is very, very worthwhile. He’s a complete master of the Austin Tech scene and has complete devotion to the Refresh cause. He darts from topic to topic with lightning ease, Longhorns football, hulu, web design, high def tvs, movies, Arrested Development, 120 Hz vs. plasma. etc.
We met, Obama beer summit style, over brewskis at the newly relocated Gingerman Pub in the 4th Street district of Austin. The idea? Run a web contest to pick the last panel at SXSW. My idea? Eliminate an idea a week for the last ten weeks until only two panel suggestions are left standing, a la American Idol or So you think you can Dance?
The leadership coterie of Refresh pulled together a brilliant gameplan for the last panel in at SXSW, consisting of @pat_ramsey, @baldman, @markphillip and @durandigitalmedia. See my post on http://spring.net/blog for details on the feed structure you can use via Google alerts to keep up with progress on this project.
I told Alex he should podcast but he said he’s such a perfectionist he would end up spending big bucks on gear. But he’d make a great one, because the man has ideas and man can he talk.
I’m trying to get some momentum going for an Alex Jones vs. Alex Jones debate. The Conspiracy Theorist vs. the Refresher Geek. It would be awesome.
One thing for sure, Alex Jones is going to be glued to his plasma for Longhorns season, they’ve got a shot at it this year.
During the week of May 24 through May 31st AustinLifestyles.com, The Spring, BHI, and RegistrationAssistant are hosting a visitor from the Netherlands, Paul Geurts of MyNameisE.com. He is bringing the first prototypes of a social networking and business card connector to Austin, Texas. If you’re around Austin next week and want a demo, call Paul at 512–699–4000 or email terry at spring dot net.
My Name is E
The E device can be used at conventions, trade shows, and meetings, in metropolitian areas like Austin and on college campuses like the University of Texas. There are over 1.2 million conventions, trade shows and events in the US every year.
What is the E device? In its current incarnation, E is small white, sleek looking device much like an ipod nano or USB storage device. With E, you can share your contact information and social networks in one simple gesture.
Connector allows you to safely transfer an online business card and your set of social networks in a simple gesture like a fist pump or a high five. Tap two Connectors together and you’re connected. Synchonize Connector by using the built-in USB plug with your PC or Mac. It is ideal for networking at large events and conferences.
During the week that Paul Geurts is visiting Austin, we will be meeting with venture investors, potential partners, customers and forming a team to distribute and promote E throught the US and North America.
There is no setup with connector, it can be used immediately out of the box. It’s equipped with a lithium polymer battery which allows you to use it for 72 hours on a 2 hour charge. It holds two of your E Business Cards (one for personal and one for professional) and connects to RFID tags as well as other Connectors and iphones. It gives you intuitive feedback through LED lighting. The RFID tag feature opens it up the world of “choice based advertising” and integrates these connections in to your social network activity stream. It connects you to objects and to the environment as well as to people.
At the Austin American Statesman Texas Social Media Awards Michelle Greer won the big prize. I was one of the 23 2nd place winners. We knew something was up when they skipped Michelle in alphabetic order and had her up last. We were high fiving and joking with her that she had won. Michelle has an awesome attitude and is really in this social media arena to help humanity with her events like the twestival.
I took my video crew there and we were able to get interviews with 20 of the 24 winners. So you’ll be seeing those here soon and on AustinLifestyles.com along with at least 200 video interviews from SXSW with the likes of Felicia Day, Zadi Diaz, Cali Lewis (another Texas social media award finalists), Louis Gray, and a lot more. We got some good stuff.
How in the world did I get on the same list as Cali Lewis? I don’t know but it’s amazing to be on a list of the “top 25 Texas Social Networkers” with her and 23 other amazing people. To whoever nominated me, thank you! It’s an honor to be on the same list as all these incredible social networkers.
The list was pared down from 125 nominees. The actual awards show where all the award winners will get *trophies* is on March 15 from 6 to 9 pm at Ballet Austin, 501 W 3rd St, with tickets going for $15.00.
It’s a great list and I’m honored to be listed on it. Michelle Greer has been really helpful to me and I hope I’ve been helpful to her. She recently had the major role in pulling off the “Twestival” that raised 10 grand for world water causes. I had teh privilege of interviewing Cali Lewis as she breezed in and out of last year’s SXSW. Below is that interview with Cali.
Michael Cote made the list, he really was the person that got me going on twitter and his “DrunkandRetired” podcast rocks, it’s the best podcast coming out of Austin, Texas. Erica O’Grady is super, she really did an awesome job at the recent Mashable event in Austin and the Camp connected with it. Last summer I got to co-moderate a session with Connie Reece at the SEMforSMB conference and did an hour long video with her on Youtube and all over with her on social networking. Lani Rosales has given me a lot of great advice and she’s a riot. I hope to get to know all the other award winners better, they’re an awesome group of people.
AUSTIN, Texas (Feb 11, 2009) — OrgSync, Inc (OrgSync.com) is excited to announce its successful campaign to raise $1500 for Charity: Water using social media. On Tuesday, February 3, 2009, OrgSync’s team launched a social media campaign to raise awareness for the importance of clean, safe drinking water around the world. The team of 25 employees used Twitter, Facebook Newsfeeds and their company blog to rally the public behind the cause. OrgSync’s goal was to raise $1500 to donate to Charity: Water during the Austin Twestival event on February 12. Michelle Greer, well known Austin media figure and coordinator for Austin Twestival, says “Big problems like the lack of clean drinking water won’t get solved over night by the few. They will get solved by the many donating in bits and pieces towards a common goal. OrgSync pooled their resources and ended up being one of our top sponsors and I hope more companies follow this approach towards charitable giving.”
Over 175 cities around the world will be uniting on Thursday, February 12, 2009 to increase awareness and raise money for those in need of clean, safe drinking water. “This is a great cause and an opportunity to unite our Austin community with cities across the world to create social good. As a leader I am passionate about leveraging my understanding of social media to help create awareness and provide people the opportunity to give back,” said Fortenberry.
The OrgSync team was successful at meeting its goal of raising $1566 in 24 hours and is excited to contribute 100% of it to Charity: Water. Andrew Katz, Director of Community Relations feels, “It’s very important for our team to give back and get involved in the Austin Community. We feel that by being visibly active in the community, we can be positive role models for our students and clients to do the same!” OrgSync’s successful campaign proves how important online communication and networking is for increasing awareness and uniting individuals for a greater good.
About OrgSync OrgSync is a co-curricular management tool that helps colleges and universities communicate more effectively across their entire campus. OrgSync offers a hosted service that provides the tools needed by campuses to easily organize, assess, track, and manage students and student organizations. OrgSync is currently helping over 100 campuses manage their student co-curricular management, leadership development and communication needs. OrgSync is headquartered in Austin, TX with satellite offices in Dallas, TX, Miami, FL, and Tucson, AZ. For more information about OrgSync, visit OrgSync.com. To schedule an interview with CEO Eric Fortenberry, contact Nicole Andreas at (512) 238-8534 or nicole@orgsync.com.
More discussion with Dr DD Faye about the twestival.com on Feb 12 in Austin and around the world. One in six people worldwide lack adequate drinking water – 1.1 billion people – and twestival.com and Dr Faye are both part of the solution to providing clean drinking water to the world’s population.
By rallying together globally, under short timescales, for a single aim on the same day, the Twestival hopes to bring awareness to the global water crisis. Live Earth is the global video partner for Twestival events occuring next Thursday, February 12 in more than 185 cities worldwide to benefit charity: water. Scott Harrison of charity: water discusses Twestival below:
Click here for more on charity: water. For an entertaining, in-depth explanation of Twestival, watch the slideshow below:
Here’s the schedule of events for Twestival 2009 at Ace’s in Austin, TX on Feb 12 8:00 Meet and mingle 8:50 A word from sponsors 9:00 Twestival Sumo Smackdown (see video below) 10:00 Presentation by Glimmer of Hope, a non-profit that drills wells in Africa 10:45 Performance by T-Bird and the Breaks, one of Austin’s most highly regarded up-and-coming bands. This 11 piece band won accolades from both ACL’s “Sound and the Jury” Awards as well as the Austin Music Awards. They’ve sold out their past two shows and just released a new album. See video below.
A donation of just $10 can provide someone in Africa clean drinking water for 12 years. Collectively, we can initiate substantial change for developing nations. Here are are a variety of ways you can make this happen:
Twestival is going to be held around the world on Thursday, March 12. It is the biggest twitter festival ever and has been set up to support the billion plus people in the world without clean drinking water. It’s a fundamental cause that needs your support. The Austin event will be at Ace’s on 6th Street at 8 pm on March 12.
Twestival resources are downloadable below, for the media and websites to spread the word about the event and charity: water, where all proceeds are being donated.
Please use the tag #twestival in blogs and other social media, so we can find your posts more easily, which will be tracked on Delicious – head here to see the latest coverage and what global sources are saying
are the places to find rockband video with Veronica Belmont, Leah Culver, Casey Mckinnon and Bonnie Pierzina. It’s had the most play on youtube so far with over 2,400 views.
Casey McKinnon is an actress, producer and writer who was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. She has worked and appeared on three popular internet TV shows: Galacticast; A Comicbook Orange and Kitkast.Her work has been documented in The Hollywood Reporter, BBC News, Rolling Stone Magazine and The Guardian, among others. Her work on Galacticast has also garnered five Vloggie awards and three Parsec nominations.
McKinnon graduated from McGill University in East Asian Studies and worked as a diplomat’s assistant before founding new media production company 8Bit Brownies Inc. in November 2006 with her partner Rudy Jahchan. In addition to producing shows, she has also written articles on web video for the Guardian Unlimited.
This is the video I made at Cedar Street Courtyard. It took a while for the all girl band to get beyond technical difficulties with the Xbox and RockBand but once they did, they soared!
Lindsay Campbell did hundreds of episodes of the insanely popular Wallstrip and is now doing something totally new and different, a show about news and politics. We luckily catch her in an interview on day 1 of SXSW. There will be blog is Lindsay’s clip from sxsw which includes two cuts of austincasts Paul Terry Walhus talking about Matt Mullenwegg and “wholesome, family podcasts”. “MobLogic shamelessly pimps fellow bloggers in a pathetically transparent attempt to promote itself” it says on moblogic.tv’s episode page.
Veronica Belmont recently left CNET to join Jason Calacanis Mahalo Daily. She talks about some of her new shows and how she loves being in Austin (she doesn’t give too much away). She made the rounds of the trade show with her shooter. She made the scene at the 16bit party.
She is in a live rock band performance at the tumblr party. Leah Culver is on bass and Casey Mackinnon (Galacticast) is on vocals. Her blog is veronicabelmont.com
Casey McKinnon has assembled a super group of female talent to rock SXSW this year!
We got to interview the great Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.tv today and it may be the highlight of our SXSW. It will be hard to top in the next three days. Cali talks about how she got started in video podcasting and started building web sites at age 14. She discusses her “big trip” to 50 states in 50 weeks and I kid her about getting a Greyhound Scenicruiser on ebay. Like ijustine she is very hot on qik running on her Nokia N95 cell phone.
One of the brightest stars in tech podcasting, Zadi Diaz plays drums in a rock band competition at SXSW at the Cedar Street Courtyard on 4th Street in Austin, Texas.She was on the panel at SXSW called “Quit your day job and vblog”
This is the interview within an interview… inside the interview I did with ijustine is this interview done by Sherry Smith of the Hope Show. A veritable AustinCast – Hope Show – Austincast sandwich.
CC Chapman was wondering what to do with a few minutes between panels and parties at SXSW so I collared this podcast pioneer and got his impressions of the state of podcasting, SXSW and life at the San Francisco podcasting startup where he works. View the video interview here.
Techs brightest stars rock out at SXSW, watch this now. This should be subtitled “I fought the Xbox and the Xbox won”. After countless delays and xbox 360 misfires and recalibrations, the all star hottest and brightest women in tech band took the stage and rocked out to “I Fought the Law” at the Cedar Steet bar on 4th street in Austin.Meet her band … her new Rock Band
recommended: click on “full” to watch the above video, it’s designed to be big. Rachel Smith – New Media Consortium from Paul Walhus on Vimeo.Rachel S. Smith, living in Sonoma County, CA is the Vice President of New Media Consortium (NMC), Austin, Texas, an international consortium of more than 250 universities, colleges, museums, research centers, and technology companies. In this interview by austincast.com she talks about her first trip to the SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas, March 2008. She talks about Jane McGonigle (educational gaming being a big interest of hers), twitter, facebook, flickr, del.icio.us and diigo among other topics. And she talks about the conferences and events put on by the NMC.The Rachel Smith interview is also available on Itunes.
At SXSW, CC Chapman, and a panel on how to keep pumped up about SXSW are featured in the above and below videos. CC Chapman is a pioneer of podcasting and his current project is AdvanceGuard. Carla Borsoi is currently VP, Research & Analytics at Ask.com, leading a team dedicated to serving both the needs of the customer and the business, helping to make finely nuanced decisions to provide the best user experience within the need to achieve key business metrics. Kevin Smokler is a writer, entrepreneur, speaker and consultant based in San Francisco. He’s been tapping out thoughts online since 2001 (rss feed). Here’s the easiest way to get in touch with him. David Dylan Thomas delivers content to five different publications, not including his own blog: Filmcritic.com, Freewilliamsburg.com, Bigyawn.net, PAW Print, and Blogcritics.org. Today, Thomas continues to live, write, and film in Philadelphia. By day, he’s also the Coordinator of Multimedia Services at La Salle University. And Margo Grace, the “walk on” is an Austin, Texas designer and up and coming social networker.
In part 2 of our 4 part series, Robert Scoble treats a busload of SXSW folks to barbecue at the famed Hill Country Salt Lick restaurant near Wimberly, Texas. It’s an interesting assortment of webcelebs including Justin Ezarik “ijustine”, Irina Slutsky, Tim Ferris (“four hour workweek”), and others.
Aaron Marcus is President of Aaron Marcus and Associates, Inc. (AM+A). He was the first graphic designer involved with computer graphics in 1967. His firm has designed user interfaces and information visualization of desktop, mobile, and Web applications for 25 years. He lectures around the world, emphasizing cross-cultural communication.
Scroll down the blog to see my video of Zadi doing a mean drum roll at SXSW at the Cedar Street Courtyard. And don’t miss Zadi and Steve Woolf’s awesome mix epicfu site with a bunch of videos by springnet (wonder who that could be?)
Zadi Diaz is interviewing stars, musicians and interactive panelists at SXSW.
A couple of weeks ago an EPIC-FU episode was featured on the home page of YouTube thanks to the generous selection of their editors. Zadi expected to get a nice amount of views, but never expected the episode to move past 3 million views when all was said and done. In fact, the episode is still compiling about 10-20,000 views per day as of the time of this writing.
Paul Terry Walhus of austincast.com has a talk with Austin Aaron, Cesar Torres and other folks at the Innotech 2008 Convention in downtown Austin, on Thursday, October 16, 2008.
editors note - I turned this two track recording in to a one track job. So you can’t hear the interviewer but you can hear Willo throughout. Willo has agreed to a re-interview but in the meantime I think you’ll enjoy this one. – ptw
Willo O’Brien is an independent contractor, based in San Francisco, offering Custom Illustration and Web/Flash/Graphic Design. Austincast.com talks to her about her fab “tees”, social networking, how to get the most out of twitter, and flips through her photos of sxsw on flickr. Hear her answer to my query that Austin is “Bay Area rejects”; and lots of other surprises.
GeekAustin had their 8th annual party at Union Park on 6th street on Sept 30, 2008. Kimberlie Dykeman and Paul Terry Walhus did about a dozen interviews with people. Silona talks about her Transparent Federal Budget (very timely), and other interviewees included Rob Wheeler the film maker, Julie Gomoll the coworker startup, AustinAaron the realtor, Joel Hoskins, Mauricio Pena, Joe Holland, John West, Chris Lamprecht with indeed.com the job search site, and Blake Freeburg.
editors note - I turned this two track recording in to a one track job. So you can’t hear the interviewer but you can hear Willo throughout. Willo has agreed to a re-interview but in the meantime I think you’ll enjoy this one. – ptw