SXSW Bound!

It is that time of year again, less than a week before SXSW. Every year we take the entire team down to Austin for what is our favorite conference of the year, SXSW Interactive. We are sure that SXSW needs no further explanation and anyone that knows nclud knows our love for the conference as well; it really is one of the best community (industry-wide) events every year. The entire nclud team will be down in Austin again this year, we are looking forward to some interesting panels and catching up over some great parties!

As our agency grows every year, so does the dynamic of our experience at SXSW. This year we have finally reached the ideal boutique agency size, six – the exact number of a SXSW bowling team. While we are not hosting this year's SXSW Bowling Extravaganza, we are proud to be a beer sponsor this year; so make sure you find the nclud table and grab a drink. The bowling event is one of the best community-related events and it is very special to us, so we are happy to be a sponsor and a continued supporter.

While the panels at SXSW are often said to be the tax right-off to the parties, there are some very interesting sessions this year. We tried to list some of the ones we are most looking forward to, but we all have such diversity in interest levels here at nclud that it became to long of a list. But back to the parties, we’ve been working on a little side project here that we hope you all will find extremely useful; HappyHour!

HappyHour! is an iPhone web application that helps you find the best parties at SXSW; it is sort of a hook-up between Upcoming and Twitter. Essentially it lists all of the parties (in a magnificently beautiful and optimized view) and lets you tell the world what party you are at as well as tell the world about that party. Applications such as Upcoming and Facebook let you tell what events you are going too, HappyHour! lets you tell what events you are at (isn’t that what we really care about anyway?). Check it out at HappyHour.org, we’ll do a formal introduction to HappyHour! tomorrow – that is sort when we are going “public” with it; even though the word seems to be out already.

Panels are great and parties are even better, but lets admit it, we all go to SXSW for the swag! There is so much swag, and of course we’re here to help contribute to the over-packing of your suitcase for the flight home. We’ll have plenty of nclud buttons as well as the ever-so-cute “CSS”, “HTML”, “JavaScript” front-end buttons. And we’ve also shipped down some of the infamous “Social Media Expert” t-shirts; we have a limited supply of sizes, so get them while you can.

The team flies out to Austin on Thursday morning and can probably be found late into the night around Buffalo Billiards (after a quick stop at Moonshine). Most of us are staying at the Hampton Inn; Dan always likes to be “different”. Part of the nclud Christmas bonus this year was a Nintendo DS with Mario Kart; so if you’re up for the challenge, we’ll be in the lobby geeking-it-out occasionally. Look forward to seeing everyone at SXSW this year!