Day two at SXSW proved just as interesting as day one.
Angry Birds invades SXSW – Pigs flee in terror
Pigs were sent flying as plush, colorful birds went soaring across the room as the Alcatel Lucent booth was transformed into a real live battleground this afternoon, as angry bird fever (bird flu?) spread like wildfire.
Alcatel Lucent, which is luring developers into its suite not only with Angry Birds giveaways, but also a well stocked beer bar and food, certainly seemed to be having a successful day, with scores of developers lounging about, sitting on beanbags, coloring on walls, spouting API ideas and looking intelligent. Sort of like what kindergarten would look like for grown ups.
Speaking of pigs, gorged hipsters take to the streets for Nike run
Austin is all about the big portions of BBQ, but Nike – ever concerned about the health of young hipsters – sponsored a brisk sponsored run around the lake today, which mustered a good 50 people, huffing and puffing their way to a large lunch. The 4 mile group run around Lake Austin was hosted by the obviously very fit Caroline McCarthy of CNET and Emily Gannett from IRL Productions, starting out from the PepsiCo Playground inside the Austin Convention Center.
All participants were fueled up on Gatorade before, during and after, negating any calories burned off, no doubt, but like so many events at SXSW, it was all about showing up and being seen. Running. Looking cool. Because appearances matter.
These boots, errrr, running sneakers, were made for walking?
While running may have been the name of the Nike game this morning, it was the Klout Krib handing out the cool sneakers on the other side of the river, with the social media influence measurer going all out to make its VIPs feel special. Food and drinks (including Veev cocktails) were being served poolside and the 75 special influencers were getting special edition HeyDay Footwear. There was also a UserVoice Challenge Cab shuttling people to the event for free. For those who missed the challenge cab and its nifty prizes, there was also a limo for additional transport.
Big boys Pepsi and Foursquare partner to bring you Big Boi
If checking in on Foursquare isn’t enough for you, you may want to check out the real live version of the game near the Pepsi Max stand, where players can win themselves a fancy looking Foursquare shirt – just to add to their social cache. If you also check in on your mobile phone while you’re there you can pick up a “Foursquare with Foursquare” badge, apparently much coveted among the nerd community. We hear there are also a ton of other rare badges up for grabs at various SXSW locations this week, so keep your eyes – and phones – peeled.
One Pepsi/Foursquare check-in even got participants into exclusive Big Boi (think Outkast) concert on Monday night. If that’s not a real life reward, then we don’t know what is.
Hammering out of kinks needs to be done at SXSW
At SXSW it’s not weird to see the word “douchebag” in a panel title of two. “How not to be a Douchebag at SXSW,” and, “Help Save SXSW from Marketer Douchebaggery,” brought some levity to the conference but were there any real take aways?
Day two also had some interesting, if not totally packed out panels like, “Behind the Curtain: Secrets of Mobile Application Wizardry.”
Sitting on the floor with no way to hear the speaker in the form of Paul Gelb, VP of mobile practice at Razorfish, who would have provided a great lecture if the sound system had been properly tuned.
Another panel, “Semantically Yours: Dating Tips for the Semantic Web,” was geared towards intermediate-level web developers who want to semantically-enable their social applications through data aggregation.
