It’s that time of year again… time to haul out the lawn chairs, sunscreen and ear plugs, kiddies.  It’s music festival season.

Me (as a blond) and Kyle at Pitchfork Fest 08

But this year, don’t forget your iPhone. Web 2.0, social media, new media… musicians, concert venues, and music festivals are all jumping on the ‘interactive’ bandwagon.

As if crowd surfing wasn’t interactive enough.

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Filed under: Current Events, Design, Exhibitions, Horticulture, Marketing, New Media, Technology

A snapshot from Pepsi's real-time keyword swarm from SXSW

Take half of Twitter’s activity base, bring them together and you have SXSW.  This group of people are just some of the many that are driving what we will all know as the real-time web.  To the left you can see a screen shot I took this morning from a real-time keyword swarm driven by Twitter and SXSW attendees (compliments of Phil’s Pharmacy).

Twitter has been the source of many of these popups.  You can find a real-time evolving tag cloud of what’s popular right now, or if you are a finance junkie like me, get bleeding edge news and opinion on every stock in your portfolio.  Real-time updates on the real-time web anyone?  Finally, bring them all together on your desktop with TweetDeck.

Bringing it all together with TweetDeck

Facebook has jumped on the boat as well with the recent updates to user’s profile pages.  The emphasis has moved solely to the latest updates from your friends. Video sharing site UStream.tv has pushed the envelope by offering free streaming of live video to anyone.

Facebook's recent changes to promote real-time activity

Internet users are being groomed to have an expectation of receiving information as it is generated.  In an age where e-mail is the new snail mail, could a start-up with a decent semantics engine make Reuters tremble?

Filed under: Technology

We’ve not launched the perfect, complete site for European Design Since 1985: Shaping the Century. But we have launched a beautiful site, filled with information, and with weeks remaining before the exhibition opening, plenty of time to hit you with additional art content. Last year at SXSW, I heard the founders of I Can Has Cheezburger? discuss the way their site gained momentum, their approach to online marketing, and how they launch sites.

plenty more here

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Filed under: Exhibitions, New Media, Technology

It took days to get here including 2 flight cancellations, roughly 12 hours of airport lounging, an almost trip to Boston and a 4:00am wake up call. Is SXSW in Austin worth it? You better believe it.

I love Texas. I always have. So it’s good to be in Austin for SXSW. It’s my first visit but honestly, I’ve never been a big conference fan. I’ve always appreciated the opportunity for professional development, the chance to meet new colleagues and of course learn something new, but I must admit, they can be boring. Is SXSW boring? No way. Keep SXSW weird.

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Filed under: New Media, Travel

As hard as it is to believe, I have taken a whole 5 days in a row off! I am a notorious workaholic, so it is quite a miracle for me to voluntarily stay away for such a long stretch with no associated holiday in the immediate proximity.

But here I am, typing my post from home while watching the latest re-run of Family Guy. Two of my fellow nuggeteers are also out of the office at the SXSW conference in Austin.

I hope we all get an update tomorrow from Daniel’s next post. By the way, have you noticed a pattern yet? We have taken to blogging more regularly so that all of our dedicated readers can wait excitedly for their favorite IMA author’s post.

Back to the business at hand…On a tip from Noelle, I am working up a post centered around an article in the most recent Wired magazine, but in my mini-vacay state-of-mind I would prefer to keep this one more casual. So look for that next week.

This week I am looking for some perspective and spending some time selfishly trying on shoes and other similarly indulgent endeavors like surfing the web.

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Filed under: Musings, New Media