So here we are again - a contingent of around 30 digital and social media SME's from the West Midlands region about to hit SXSWi again. I'm pretty sure I'd be right in saying it's the strongest showing of any region in the UK, which is testament both to the strength of the region in this sector and the commitment of the support agencies - namely Advantage WM, UKTI and Screen WM, all of whom are more joined-up with support for international trade and inwards investment for creative industries SME's than ever before.
I'm going to try and be a bit more efficient about my blogging while I'm here than I usually am, but in the all-too-likely scenario that other work takes precedence, here's a few pointers for places to go to follow what's happening over here from a particular WM perspective :
Heart of Austin
Bringing together collected feeds, bogs, videos, Audioboos, interviews etc from the West Midlands contingent tagged with #wxwm . (Thanks to Advantage WM for supporting this and Aquila for putting the whole thing together and driving the content)
Follow me on Twitter
You know the drill. All West Midlands/SXSW related content should be tagged with #wxwm (which should also pull it into the Heart of Austin site), but generall sxsw stuff will be tagged with #sxsw)
SXSW iPhone App
This is pretty new so not sure how it's working yet ... looks interesting though. Includes film trailers and clips and, apparently, full length podcasts of panels from SXSWi
Evernote notes from sessions
I tend to use Evernote for everything. It is the memory that I do not naturally have. Last year, it was extraordinarily useful for making notes at panel discussions, events etc at SXSWi so - battery permitting - I will be using it again this time around. All my notes will be stored on Evernote, mainly for my own use, but being a sharing kinda guy I thought I'd make the notebook open and shared.
A few disclaimers here, though .....
- This is not a blog. These are live notes typed as people talk and with no regard for audience, so may be subject to numerous typos, appalling syntax and occasional incoherence
- If I find time, I may write up collected thoughts or refer to these notes for a more coherent, thoughtful blog post later
First notes on here are likely to be from the Game On: Funding Gaming Start-Ups In A Recession panel, today at 2pm. (That's 8pm, UK time).