SXSW Saturday and Sunday
Terry and I are enjoying our time here at the South by Southwest Interactive conference here in Austin. We’ve been to several diverse sessions from “TV: The next generation” to “Ajax or Flash”. This is definitely a geek fest like none other.
The oddest session that I’ve been to was “Ghost in the Machine: Spirituality Online” where the panelists represented Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Mormon religions. They seemed to spend the better part of an hour discussing how they believe people are willing to speak/share about spirituality online (apparently a new concept for some). They took questions from the crowd where a guy described himself as a “Reverend or Rabbi to the Odd Fellow in Second Life”. He basically went on to describe his experience in performing funerals in Second Life. Another lady was concerned that atheists do not have a good way to express their spirituality online which I thought was pretty funny. I can’t say that this session was productive but it was memorable.
The TV session was a discussion about the future of video delivery and content creation. A quick summary is that there will be a huge increase in niche content providers (like our churches) because the demand for that type of content is growing. One of the panelists felt that the convergence from web content to TV will happen relatively quickly in 2007.
Visit 
Keep Austin Weird! I used to live there.
Make sure you eat Rudy’s BBQ for lunch one day.
Get some Chuy’s for dinner.
We ate at Rudy’s last night. It was awesome! Definitely the best Texas BBQ I have ever had.
You don’t have to worry about Austin staying weird…it has a long way to go before it returns to normal :) It’s been great.
I agree that niche markets are going to be a trend in the media provider industry. In my opinion it’s a trend that will affect all areas of mass communications. Just look at the success of local papers over national papers in the past 10 years.
I, however, have to completely disagree with the convergence of web content and television. It’s not that I don’t think now is the time, I don’t think there will ever be a time. Online content is not going to converge with television content, it is going to continue to define itself and become it’s own medium. Look at the journalism arena to see what I’m talking about. “Newsok.com” is a convergence of the “Oklahoman” and News 9 but neither content provider has converged or changed that much. Online content will continue to become more main stream in our living rooms but I don’t think it will converge with or become television content soon, if ever.