Hugh Forrest, director of the festival, confirmed in a phone interview Wednesday figures we’d been hearing about attendance at Interactive. For the first time ever, the Interactive part of the festival has surpassed attendance of SXSW Music. Last year’s official tally of paid registration for Interactive (that is, everyone who had an Interactive badge or a Gold or Platinum badge that gave them access to the fest) was 10,741. Though Forrest says the fest doesn’t have an official head-count yet, the 40 percent increase we had previously reported will apparently stand. But that 40 percent is just for the Interactive portion of the 10,741, not the total number of Gold, Platinum and comped badges for the fest.

Make sense?

So, what sounded initially like an attendance figure that could have been as high as 15,037 will actually be closer to 12,000-13,000 for Interactive 2010, Forrest said.

“The growth rate is certainly a cause for concern,” Forrest said, “we’re gonna need to change things up significantly next year to even accommodate a growth rate that’s half that or less than that. These are significant challenges, but these are good challenges to have.”

Forrest said that he also believes that he’s been doing his job long enough to know this is cyclical; after years of swelling attendance during the late 90s, the festival contracted during the lean years after the dot-com bust. “Our cycle will be over soon enough and something else will grow,” he said

Organizers of the fest had estimated that the Film Festival was also growing this year, at a rate of about 25 percent over 2009. The music fest is expected to remain flat, but Forrest says the registration count for that part of the fest doesn’t include the many bands in town who don’t actually register with the festival. Including those non-registered out-of-towners, SXSW Music is still a bigger draw, Forrest said.

Last year, the Music fest had about 11,687 attendees or 13,165 including band registrations, according to the festival Web site.

The festival was blessed with four days of good weather before a downpour on Monday that crowded up some of the party venues with rooftops and kept people from far-flung panels in places like the Radisson Austin. Some panels and keynotes had long lines, but overall, Forrest said, “The response I’ve gotten so far has been very positive.”

However, “I’ve been through enough that often it takes a week or so to uncover the bigger problems that you didn’t know about,” he said.

Among the most popular topics at the festival were location-based services like Foursquare and Austin-based Gowalla, user and app-interface design for emerging devices like Apple’s iPad and social networking for business, which attracted a large crowd at the Hilton.

“We may have underestimated how crowded that would be. Traditional businesses are trying to figure out how to leverage this power of social networking,” Forrest said.

Forrest responded to a string of blog posts and Tweets, many of them from non-attendees, criticizing the fest for being one big booze-and-party event.

“There’s a lot of fun things to do at night and during the day and Austin’s a fun place. As the event has grown over the last few years, one of the reason it’s grown is people realize they can get real business done here. I hope that that message isn’t completely lost in all the Tweets about parties.”

Panelists: Stephanie Klein, blogger and author of “Straight Up and Dirty” and “Moose,” and Jennifer Lancaster, author of “Bitter is the New Black” and most recently “Pretty in Plaid”

The Gist: Creating a perfect balance personal and professional demands in today’s online age is nearly impossible. Or does it just boil down to how we look at it?

Takeaways: We all hear “work hard, play hard” but that just turns out to be hard, Klein said. Everyone says to find balance and moderation, but Klein says she gets nothing done if if everything is in moderation. “When I choose to work, I can’t help but feel like I’m choosing work over my children. And that sucks and I shouldn’t be feeling that way.”

We need to find a way to make peace with ourselves and our choices by acknowledging that perfection isn’t an attainable goal.

Making to-do lists and deadlines can help us stay on task instead of piddling time away on social networks or other distractions. If you give yourself a strict deadline, you manage to get it done, no matter how short the time is. It’s those times that we have the “whenever” attitude that we don’t get things done.

Use tools like the Pomodoro technique, which suggests working 25 minutes straight on one task and then giving yourself a five minute break.

Ask yourself: What do I want more of in my life and what do I want less of, and then find the courage to say no to what you don’t want more of.

Quote:

Klein: “Wishing takes the same amount of time as planning,” so if you don’t find joy in what you do, find something else to do.

Audience member: “Happy parents are good parents. I’m a lot happier when I’m with my daughter when I’m happy with myself.”

“You’ve got to find what your brand of balance is.” That could mean four-day work weeks, “silent Sundays” (where no Internet is allowed) or setting strict office hours.

Klein: “I strongly believe that I’m a good role model in teaching my children that I have my own passions and that they’re not the center of the universe.”

Date/time: 5 p.m., Tuesday

Panelists: David DeVore (DavidAfterDentist.com)

The gist: David DeVore, father of the boy (also named David) who became a viral Internet star from a video showing him drugged up after a dentist visit, spoke about how the famous video came to be. To date, the video has attracted 54 million page views and was the 2nd-most-viewed video on YouTube, behind Susan Boyle’s audition on “Britain’s Got Talent.” DeVore said he shot the video with a then-new camera and that the video took off very quickly, jumping from about 10,000 views to 3 million in a short time. DeVore showed the original video, family photos and some of the parodies that have been done based on “David After Dentist.” Nine-year-old David himself was not present at the panel, but he answered questions from his father on a video that was also shown. DeVore said that he wants to use money from the video to pay for his son’s college, but the family is also donating money to charity. Most revenue from the video comes from YouTube’s Partner ad program. The video was also licensed to a Vizio Super Bowl commercial (David Jr. did not appear in it — an actor was hired to recreate it).

Quotes: “Nothing has happened that we’ve been uncomfortable with. We’ve turned down some things, but overall it’s been a great experience.” — DeVore. “I got my teeth back!” — David, Jr. in a video for SXSW shot by his father. “It’s just one of those crazy things that happens in life.” — DeVore.

Takeaways: Not much, except that it’s impossible to determine why videos go viral. When they do, however, it can happen incredibly quickly and provide strong reactions, both positive and negative.

• Omar L. Gallaga

Speaker: Ian Hogarth (Songkick.com Inc.)

The Gist: A well-structured and executed look into the myriad ways online forces are changing the live music industry, from how shows are booked and promoted to how fans learn about concerts, buy tickets and remember or chronicle their experience. Hogarth started from the premise that there are five components to the live music industry - organization, ticketing, discovery, experience and remembrance - and broke each segment down before talking about companies like his own, Nextbigsound, StubHub, EventBrite and more are innovating in them. With live music representing a larger share of music industry revenues each year and growing in terms of real dollars, startups are crowding into the space at a rate of about one per week.

It really can’t be overstated how enlightening Hogarth’s talk was to anyone with any interest in seeing concerts, playing them or putting them on. Some of it was sobering - like the suggestion that an adjustment to real dollar demand prices for tickets would bring about withering change - but the session was a studied, easy to follow snapshot of how the Internet has transformed the live music industry and will continue to do so for a long time to come.

Quotes: “Going to a concert is one of the most tribal things there is, but even that is getting more interactive in ways like pictures being posted on Facebook while the show is still happening.”

“Part of me is glad that the basic experience of going to a concert hasn’t changed too much. Concerts, by their very nature, are unique events.”

Takeaways: Even though the field is crowded and continuing to grow - Hogarth discussed dozens of companies and their different roles during the talk - there are still opportunities for startups to make the concert experience better or make the industry more efficient on both ends. Also, if SXSW gives an award for best panel, the rest of the field is going to have to pull some Kobe Bryant-level game to top this one.

Launched in 2008 in Sweden, Spotify offers free accounts, which are supported with advertising, by invitation only. Anyone can gain access to the service by purchasing an ad-free premium subscription. The premium subscribers can also access the service from mobile accounts. Spotify has more than 350,000 premium users in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain, the countries where it is currently available, Ek said during the keynote.

Ek said that the premium subscription in the U.S. would most likely cost $10 per month. Licensing deals with publishers and record companies still need to be worked out before the service can launch here. “You have to strike deals with almost 5,000 different record companies and publishers, which is a huge task,” Ek said.

Unlike online music streaming services already available in the United States, such as Pandora and Last.fm, which allow users to choose artists and genres only, Spotify allows users to choose specific songs or albums. During his keynote, Ek demonstrated the application, which resembles Apple’s iTunes.

Users can create playlists of their favorite songs and share them with friends via e-mail or social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Ek said he thought that Americans would pay for the service, equating it to cable subscriptions. “It might take a while for consumers to get accustomed to it,” he said. Jonas Woost, a digital media consultant and former head of music for Last.fm, says that people will realize the value of access to music. “Paying and not owning is a strange idea, but now people are starting to realize that they don’t own the music but they get access to everything,” he said.

A similar online music service, MOG, launched during the Interactive conference. The service boasts more than 7 million songs and charges a subscription fee of $5 per month for computer access and $10 per month for mobile accounts.

Ek said Spotify has a different focus than potential competitors such as MOG and Pandora, which focus more on recommending music to users. “We’re all about simplicity and managing music, as opposed to music discovery,” Ek said.

The gist: Alix McAlpine started a Web site called “Sorry Mom, I Bang The Worst Dudes,” airing her own dirty laundry about bad relationships and dating mistakes as a self- deprecating joke. Turns out dirty laundry is a guilty pleasure. The site blew up overnight getting 2 million page views in the first few weeks. Soon she found herself with a barrage of user-submitted stories. A year later, the stories on the site fall into two basic categories bitter ex-girlfriend tales or drunken mistake stories. The stories, that often include thinly disguised pictures of the offending guys, are all anonymously submitted.

So is it therapy or revenge? Probably a little bit of both. McAlpine tries to keep a humorous tone to the site, but acknowledges there’s a certain level of vindictiveness to some of the stories. Nonetheless, for the women who submit stories, and the women who read the stories she feels like there’s a certain amount of cathartic release, knowing hundreds of other women make the same dating mistakes.

Quotes: “It’s 2010, there should be no slut shame.”

Takeaways: If you own the incriminating pictures and the stories you tell are true then you can’t be sued for Internet smack talking, regardless of the intimacy of details shared. However, if you say something on the Internet it is going to get back to the person you said it about. Odds are impulsive airing of dirt might lead to regret. A lot of sorry-mom stories are rescinded by the authors.

—Deborah Sengupta Stith

Panelists: Rachel Sklar from Mediaite/Charitini and Figment’s Jacob Lewis, former managing editor of The New Yorker

The Gist: The iPad could revolutionize magazines, but is this a reality or a struggling editor’s pipe dream?

Takeaways: From the perspective of a panel led by a media critic who has never worked in magazines and the former managing editor of a much-loved magazine not known for its technological innovation, the iPad alone won’t save the struggling magazine industry.

This flat, uninspired panel came a day after Wired’s design team gave SXSWers a peek at its tablet edition, which had an entire room of magazine and design lovers chattering with excitement about the tablet’s potential in the publishing world.

Sklar and Lewis has lots to say about how magazines have always operated — the big editorial budgets, their reliance on advertisers, the turnover of subscribers — but hardly any ideas about where the industry is going.

Even though there is only 10-15 percent overlap in Web traffic and magazine subscribers, most magazines still don’t embrace the Web. Most of them treat it as an afterthought. Very little time was dedicated to what magazines are doing right, either in print or online. The panelists mentioned that New York and The Atlantic are putting as much effort into the Web as in the print product, but didn’t give specifics. Wired’s work on the tablet edition got a passing mention.

What won’t change is that magazines are ad-selling companies. They sell eyeballs that will look at ads, and they create content to get people to flip from ad to ad.

The key to a magazine’s success in the future is treating their Web site, print magazine and mobile edition as a cohesive triangle, with each part offering something distinct to users. “Magazines need to figure out what else they can offer their consumers,” Lewis said, citing Lucky magazine’s e-commerce site.

There biggest unknown with the iPad isn’t whether consumers will use it but whether advertisers will, which will be a challenge because advertisers are going to want to see metrics, and Apple doesn’t give out consumer data. One bright spot is iTunes, which can sell 15,000 units a month, is a magazine’s biggest newsstand, which proves that people are willing to pay for mobile content.

Quotes:

Lewis: “All the parts of a magazine create an experience of reading a magazine, but when you move that online, you create a different experience.”

Sklar: “Magazines as a whole were really slow to care about the Web, particularly the high-end ones. The magazine culture doesn’t support the pace of the Web.”

Lewis: “Magazines aren’t losing subscribers, but they are losing advertisers.”

— Addie Broyles

Date/time: 3:30 p.m., Tuesday

Panelists: Corvida Raven (SheGeeks)

The gist: The issue of what happens to your digital assets — from your Facebook account to your “Second Life” avatar to your blog — is incredibly thorny and the legal implications are nowhere close to being resolved. Complicating things is that many of your online accounts or other digital property are not considered “digital assets” in the eyes of probate law in some areas. There are services available that can help you manage your digital data in the event of your death, but the issue even gets thorny when it comes to who will have access to that (for instance, giving family members access to sensitive e-mails). Different social networking and e-mail service companies have different rules for how they handle accounts after death. In the space of the conversation, very knowledgeable audience members offered their concerns, legal expertise and examples. Raven herself admitted she doesn’t have all the answers, but she wisely let the audience contribute and did not attempt to dominate the discussion.

Quotes: “Digital assets aren’t even considered real assets in some places” — Audience member. “I think my Twitter profile is VERY real.” — Raven, on whether Twitter accounts should be considered a digital asset. “I can’t get my OWN password back!” — Audience member on retrieving a loved one’s password on an online service. “The legal profession is trying to catch up to this.” — Audience member. “”If you’re cheating on your wife, there’s no way you want her to have access to your e-mail (after you die).” — Raven.

Takeaways: Everyone needs to think ahead about what will happen to their digital life when they’re gone and whether they’d be willing to pay to have those assets managed. The law is complicated and unresolved on many of these issues, but those in the room agreed that the next year or two might bring many changes on this front. A “Digital Death Day” will take place May 20 in Mountain View, Calif., to discuss these kinds of issues.

• Omar L. Gallaga

Panelist: Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains”

The Gist: In a hyper-connected world, incessant connectivity and input of information isn’t just stressing us out, it is rewiring our brains.

Takeaways: The Internet is changing our relationship with information and how our neurons connect. Without a break from being online, we don’t have a protected space for reflection, which is where we recharge and find balance. “There needs to be time for efficient data collection and for inefficient contemplation. The development of a well-rounded mind requires both.”

Just like when you learn to read, when you learn to multitask for 8 hours a day, your brain starts to rewire. We sense this change because when we are offline, we find it hard to concentrate and feel ourselves wanting to go online. “It’s not just a matter of logging off; this way of thinking stays with us.”

The Internet — specifically sites like Twitter — is very good at giving us rewards for constantly taking in information. We love to feel connected and if we feel that someone is having a conversation that we’re not a part of, we feel left out.

Quotes: “The problem today is that we’re losing the ability to strike a balance between those two very different states of mind. Our information management has always been personal, but it has gone from being manual (file cabinets, etc.) to more elaborate and automated. We look to the machines that exacerbate information overload to organize it for us.”

“Computers have put more information at our fingertips than we have ever had before in quantities well beyond what our brains can handle. Information overload has become a permanent affliction, and there’s no way to overcome it. “

“True enlightenment comes only through quietness.”

“With a book, there’s nothing else going on. The book shields us from distractions.”

— Addie Broyles

Speakers: Carly Kocurek (University of Texas at Austin), Chris Kohler (Wired.com), Karen Chu (PlayFirst Inc.), Matt Chandronait (Area 5 Media LLC), Philip Kollar, (Game Informer Magazine )

The Gist: Just like games themselves, coverage of video games and the gaming industry is evolving at a rapid pace with podcasts and video emerging as more common features to give fans more information and perspective on new releases, issues in the gaming world and morw. That development also offers more openness in the process, giving editors and writers a face and making them more of a conversationalist with readers/viewers and less of an all-knowing voice of authority. Also, mainstream media outlets (NewsWeek, USA Today) have moved into the field as gaming has become a larger cultural and economic force.

Quotes: From Chandronait: “The (gaming media) system has been manipulated by developers where everything is staggered in how it’s covered to produce the best results for a release. You can’t talk about the product without talking about the entire thing, and if we don’t we’ll never be able to move beyond a glorified Consumer Reports.”

Takeaways: The panel as a whole seemed to view the gaming media as healthy and useful, but said there are issues such as providing more enterprising coverage, writing about social issues (gender, race, etc.) and finding more ways to interact with users that have to be addressed in the near future to stay relevant.

Speakers: Carly Kocurek (University of Texas at Austin), Chris Kohler (Wired.com), Karen Chu (PlayFirst Inc.), Matt Chandronait (Area 5 Media LLC), Philip Kollar, (Game Informer Magazine )

The Gist: Just like games themselves, coverage of video games and the gaming industry is evolving at a rapid pace with podcasts and video emerging as more common features to give fans more information and perspective on new releases, issues in the gaming world and morw. That development also offers more openness in the process, giving editors and writers a face and making them more of a conversationalist with readers/viewers and less of an all-knowing voice of authority. Also, mainstream media outlets (NewsWeek, USA Today) have moved into the field as gaming has become a larger cultural and economic force.

Quotes: From Chandronait: “The (gaming media) system has been manipulated by developers where everything is staggered in how it’s covered to produce the best results for a release. You can’t talk about the product without talking about the entire thing, and if we don’t we’ll never be able to move beyond a glorified Consumer Reports.”

Takeaways: The panel as a whole seemed to view the gaming media as healthy and useful, but said there are issues such as providing more enterprising coverage, writing about social issues (gender, race, etc.) and finding more ways to interact with users that have to be addressed in the near future to stay relevant.

Speakers: Eliot Van Buskirk (Wired) interviewed Spotify founder Daniel Ek

The gist: Ek started by showing off Spotify, which is currently only available in Europe, to the audience. It is a lightweight application you can download to your PC or Mac. You can search by artist, song, year, etc. Users can make playlists, and can share lists or tracks with friends or on Twitter and Facebook. Ek said that the application’s speed is a big part of its appeal. He says that there will still be appeal for purchasing music. Social aspects of listening—friend recommending music to friends—help users browse the nearly 10 million tracks, but Ek said that they don’t want to be a social network. He also demonstrated the mobile application on an Android-powered Sony Ericcson phone. He was asked about when the U.S. launch was coming, and dodged the question, saying only that they are concentrating on developing the next generation.

Quotes: “Playlists are the new mixtape.” “Music that I really love, I tend to want to buy it.” “We want to be a platform that artists can use to reach out to an audience.” “There is no one business model for music.” “If people could legally listen to music on mobile devices, the music industry would be radically bigger.” “I think the music industry and the technology industry for the first time are quite aligned.” “Here you have to strike deals with almost 5,000 different publishers, which is a huge task.”

Takeaways: If and when it finally does launch in the United States, Spotify could have an enormous impact on the way we listen to music. With mobile access, it could mean that people stop owning or even possessing music, a “cloud” approach that would allow access to a far greater amount of artists than ever before.

Speakers:Anya Grundmann (NPR Music), Chris MacDonald (IndieFeed), John Hammond (The MuseBox), Christopher Weingarten (Rolling Stone)

The Gist: So the Internet has pretty much killed traditional journalism and the established music regime, so if you’re a music critic you’ve definitely seen better days. It wasn’t all moping, though, focusing a fair bit on how the role of music curation - presenting collections of worthwhile music to listeners rather than weighing in on everything under the sun - has sprouted as a much more important role for music fans. The main idea being that peer recommendation has become the dominant way people discover new music, with blogs and social media outlets as the main tools to facilitate sharing.

Quotes: From Grundmann: “We all believe, or at least enough of us believe, in the music we put on the air. If a record company comes to us to arrange some kind of preview we won’t put it up unless we believe in the music.”

From Weingarten: “Message board communities are where it’s at. It’s not about finding a blogger who’s just going to tell what they think is good and has the same taste as you. It’s about finding a group of people you can talk to and hash stuff out between them. It’s a group of people who’d go to Chili’s on a Friday night if they all lived in the same place.”

Takeaways: To truly have influence as a tastemaker these days, the key is to guide music fans to new music and giving them as many ways as possible to listen to music on their own. That doesn’t eliminate the role of criticism, but partners it with curation as an important role in influencing people.

Panelists: Evan Shapiro (IFC TV/Sundance Channel), Jake Dobkin (Gothamist.com), Marc Lieberman (The Onion), Harvey Smith (Arkane Studios)

The gist: The discussion starts on the topic of whether blogs, etc. are killing long-form content. The panelists wonder if Tweeting a collective experience (i.e. the Super Bowl) makes it more enjoyable. Like other panels, there is some talk about how content creators now also need to be community builders. Shapiro wonders if indie culture is being endangered by low/no pay scales. Lennon wonders if the limited interface of social media misrepresents us as individuals. Dobkin (of Gothamist) asserts that good content is the key to success. The final part of the panel is spent showing examples of independent work.

Quotes: “Is free on the web so good?” “To make a living as an independent content creator, you better have a backup plan.” -Lieberman “You don’t have to be a dedicated person to be a blogger.” “Human beings can’t be articulated or expressed in multiple choice questions” -Lennon (on Facebook) “Web 1.0 allowed much more self-expression than Web 2.0.” -Shapiro

Takeaways: While this was an interesting panel, it was hard to listen to a person from IFC, which promotes independent work but is by no means a small entity, or Sean Lennon, who had much more access than most, talk about the key to independent work.

Date/time: 12:30 p.m., Tuesday

Panelists: Hugh Forrest (director, SXSW Interactive), Shawn O’ Keefe (festival coordinator, SXSW Interactive)

The gist: In the very large Ballroom D where a panel on the digitally connected living room was scheduled (but was scrapped due to panelist cancellations), Forrest and O’Keefe gamely took questions from an audience of about a dozen. They addressed a question from me about Monday’s Twitter keynote on whether Umair Haque was the best choice of interviewer for Twitter CEO Evan Williams. Forrest said that Haque was Twitter’s choice of interviewer that they were most comfortable with and that there may not have been strong enough communication before the keynote between the festival and the keynote interviewer. “Some of our best keynotes have been people who have been a little off-topic and wouldn’t fit in your standard tech conference,” Forrest said. However, “…the keynote yesterday generated a lot of buzz and maybe didn’t live up to that buzz.” Forrest said that the interview format has worked well in the past, but that “It just didn’t click yesterday.” The interview format may not lend itself to doing as much preparation as a traditional keynote speech. He thinks that for high-profile keynotes, the festival may consider more strongly going to a solo, lecture-style format. The festival looks to conferences like TED in terms of documenting with videos the experiences and wants to do more of that and to better communicate with the public what they’re doing.

Quotes: “Don’t do what everyone else is doing. Do something completely different.” Forrest, on submitting suggestions to the SXSW Interactive Panel Picker. “Ultimately, SXSW has to take rsponsibility in terms of training interviewers better. We didn’t do that good a job with (2008 interviewer) Sarah Lacy and we didn’t do a good job with Umair yesterday.” — Forrest. “The most brilliant minds and the most amazing geeks aren’t always the best speakers. It’s a challenge for everybody. One big part of the event is bringing fresh blood.” — O’ Keefe. “To me the most interesting sessions there are the ones that are completely off-the-wall.” Forrest, on Panel Picker submissions. “Personally, I hate that. It is incredibly hard to keep speakers on track.” — Forrest, when asked if the festival could add live Twitter “back-channel” feeds as visuals in panels. “We don’t do a good job of sharing what we’re doing.” — O’ Keefe.

Takeaways: Panel Picker begins in june for next year’s festival. The festival is looking for more diverse, more unique panel ideas and also wants to work with non-profits and other organizations to do new and different things. One audience member described the festival as a good mix of “left-brain” and “right-brain event.” O’Keefe said he’s like to see a media library of people’s experiences at SXSW Interactive, including more video. He thinks the TED conference sets the bar for this. 63 percent of SXSW Interactive audience has iPhones.

• Omar L. Gallaga

Panelist: Seth Shapiro, New Amsterdam Media LLC

The gist: In the last decade, all hell has broken loose in the media business. The old broadcast paradigm of content creation and distribution with 4 minutes of advertising for each half hour of programming will not work on the Internet: Broadband; social media such as Facebook and Twitter; new pricing models; portability — all of these emerging technologies are confusing and terrifying to a broadcast network executive who hopes that their business model lasts long enough for them to reach retirement. Cable companies and other content providers must embrace the opportunities the Internet affords as a distribution platform and new advertising and monetization models (including subscriptions).

Quotes: “Every act of creation is an act of destruction,” Pablo Picasso. “Nobody knows anything,” William Goldman.

Takeaways: There will most certainly be more online video in the future but, as in the case of Viacom, which recently pulled two of its mot popular Comedy Central shows off of free, advertising-supported video site Hulu.com to make them available online exclusively at the network’s own site, that video will increasingly come from the networks themselves. Advertising online will increase as revenue models become more successful. Quantifiable social media measurements built around brands will be used as proof of success or failure. The user experience will improve as companies such as Apple continue to drive home the point that brand perception equals success. Real-time content, such as Twitter commentary, will continue to influence and be incorporated into the television experience. Finally, Internet content creators can learn from the successes and failures of television. For example, television writers are experts in the economy of words, whereas Internet content tends to be sprawling and unfocused.

As we discussed in today’s A1 Statesman story and yesterday’s blog post (video here), many people left the keynote early and many people I talked to after the keynote and at parties last night said they couldn’t follow the point of the keynote and weren’t getting anything useful out of the conversation. They also said they wanted more details about @Anywhere and that Williams and interviewer Umair Haque glossed over details.

But what I didn’t hear is how this might be a very good thing for South by Southwest Interactive. While organizers might be scratching their head wondering how a can’t-miss keynote misfired so badly, they should take heart in the fact that the mass walkout was a positive sign for this year’s fest.

What the walk-out means to me:

• Attendees value their time and weren’t going to tolerate having it wasted.
• Attendees know there’s much more going on at the fest, whether it was the trade show, side parties, blogging lounges or quick coffee meetings at the Hilton. There weren’t panels going on during the keynote, but if there had been, they would have filled up quickly.
• Attendees didn’t feel obligated to sit in their chair and suffer through a boring interview just because it was conducted with a huge tech celebrity.
• They knew they could read Tweets and blog posts, and see video later if something interesting happened after they left. Being physically present, especially when the room has gone stale, is not really necessary at a fest like SXSW Interactive.

Not to spin it too positively, but these signs give me hope for the state of SXSW Interactive. Yes, the choice of interviewer was a huge mistake, but we inadvertently got a sign that the people who attend the fest are getting savvier and finding much more to do at this rapidly expanding festival.

Panelists: John Tolva (IBM), Jen Masengarb (Chicago Architecture Foundation), Dustin Haisler (City of Manor), Assaf Biderman (MIT), Ben Berkowitz (SeeClickFix.com)

The gist: Cities and metropolitan spaces are increasingly becoming a platform for interactive design. The city is becoming part of the Internet—it’s a space constantly being monitored by embedded sensors. Interactive designers can use their skills to connect a city with its citizens. Open source government will improve life for everyone involved. Better communication between people and government will eliminate anxiety that stems from lack of knowledge about decisions that are made.

Quotes: “The city is layer upon layer of place-based and time-based meaning waiting to be peeled back” -John Tolva “ “Until our cities can talk to us, we need to figure out how to talk to them.” -Jen Masengarb “Innovation in government is something that game mechanics can be applied to…this is like our Foursquare for government” -Dustin Haisler

Takeaways: This was one of the few panels that spoke to affecting real-world change. Though it’s a much larger place, the City of Austin cnould learn a thing or two from Manor’s system of citizen engagement.

The gist: Music licensing in the United States is complicated. There are no set standards for copyright fees. All uses of licensed music need to be negotiated on a case by case basis. Also there’s no easy way to locate who owns rights to much content. Copyrights aren’t static, catalogs change hands, rights holders die, etc.

With new media there’s the additional challenge of asking labels and rights holders to use music in ways that have never been envisioned, karaoke iPhone or Facebook apps, artist t-shirts in virtual worlds, etc.

Quotes: “If I had created something that was really precious to me I wouldn’t want it in a fart app.” Joel Johnson

“It’s striking to me the way big media companies are still bewildered about these new technologies.” Adam Blumenthal

Takeaways: The best time to figure out the licensing for music in you project is at the beginning. When your Web site, game or film gets big that’s when the lawyers come knocking. While there are younger people within the rights holding organizations, who understand technology and are willing to negotiate reasonable fees for new media uses, sometimes you have to jump through hoops to get to them. —-Deborah Sengupta Stith

The gist: Music licensing in the United States is complicated. There are no set standards for copyright fees. All uses of licensed music need to be negotiated on a case by case basis. Also there’s no easy way to locate who owns rights to much content. Copyrights aren’t static, catalogs change hands, rights holders die, etc.

With new media there’s the additional challenge of asking labels and rights holders to use music in ways that have never been envisioned, karaoke iPhone or Facebook apps, artist t-shirts in virtual worlds, etc.

Quotes: “If I had created something that was really precious to me I wouldn’t want it in a fart app.” Joel Johnson

“It’s striking to me the way big media companies are still bewildered about these new technologies.” Adam Blumenthal

Takeaways: The best time to figure out the licensing for music in you project is at the beginning. When your Web site, game or film gets big that’s when the lawyers come knocking. While there are younger people who understand technology and are willing to negotiate reasonable fees for new media uses within the rights holding organizations sometimes you have to jump through hoops to get to them. —-Deborah Sengupta Stith

Some of today’s highlights, at the Austin Convention Center unless otherwise noted, include:

• “Your Online Identity After Death and Digital Wills,” which we previewed, is at 3:30 p.m. in 8A. Last year’s panel on this topic was said to be great.
• “Kids’ Online Video: Challenges and Success” which includes panelists from PBS and 4Kids is at 9:30 a.m. in Hilton H.
• “The Birth of Eye-Def Acting” with panelists from Ubisoft and AMD, is at 9:30 a.m. in Hilton K.
• “Can You Run a Serverless Business” with panelists from Yahoo, Amazon, Rackspace, Warner Music and GigaOm is at 11 a.m. in Hilton C.
• “Will Kiva Kill Your Nonprofit? Donations 2.0” includes panelists from Kiva, Amnesty International and Donors Choose, 11 a.m., 10AB.
• “Online Tastemakers: Death or Rebirth of Music Curation?” with panelists from Rolling Stone and NPR Music is at 11 a.m. in 12AB.
• Dustin Haisler of the City of Manor rubs shoulders with IBM and MIT big thinkers in “The City is a Platform” at 11 a.m. in Room 9ABC.
• “Making Sure The World Doesn’t Suck: How Independent Content Can Save The Media” includes panelists from The Onion, IFC and Gothamist.com, 12:30 p.m, in Room 18ABCD.
• “Swarming Plato’s Cave: Rethinking Digital Fantasies” features Henri Mazza of the Alamo Drafthouse and representatives from the Harry Ransom Center and the University of Texas, 12:30 p.m. in Ballroom B.
• “How to Save Journalism” (quick, tell us!) includes panelists from The Huffington Post, USA Today and Fark.com, 3:30 p.m. in Room C of the Hilton Austin.
• The viral video “David After Dentist” is discussed in a panel of the same name, 5 p.m. in Room H of the Hilton.
• Author and frequent SXSWi speaker Bruce Sterling closes out the panel programming with his annual peek into the future, 5 p.m. in Ballroom D.
• The closing party starts at 8 p.m., Mohawk, 912 Red River St.

The gist: Sixty percent of the top paid educational iPhone apps target preschoolers. Parents want apps that engage a child and keep them quiet for a period of time, but feel less guilty if games are educational. In PBS Kids field testing of literacy games in 3-7-year- olds early results show that certain games are actually producing vocabulary acquisition. There are certain usability limitations that have to be taken into account when developing apps for kids, for example, kids don’t understand how to tap and most preschoolers can’t read, so text instructions need to be accompanied by clear icons.

Quotes: “The gaming industry really needs to sit up, a DS game costs $29 while these games cost $.99.” —Nina Walia

Takeaways: In households where children live below the poverty line cell phones, but not necessarily smart phones are more prevalent than computers. PBS is working with several government and corporate and non-profit partners to explore educational initiatives that can be brought into the homes through mobile devices.

—Deborah Sengupta Stith

Panelists: Paul Miller (DJ Spooky), Derek Woodgate

The gist: Miller’s latest book, “Sound Unbound,” deals with music in the digital age. Spooky showed clips from a documentary about music sampling and talked about the history of the idea of sampling. Interesting moments included Millers talking about how Igor Stravinsky was arrested for reworking the national anthem and when he demonstrated his iPhone app, which allows users to sample their iTunes library.

Quotes: “I try to create a tension between content and context.” “People are kind of boring if you are a computer, I imagine” (in reference to artificial intelligence).

Takeaways Miller pushes the boundaries of what we can do with music and other media, and he’s great to hear talk. In regards to sampling, it seems that our legal system isn’t keeping pace with culture.

Panelist: James Milward, Secret Location

The gist: Trans-media experiences take a core product, such as a TV show, and expand it to run on a variety of platforms, including other technological platforms (cell phones, the Internet), live events, and all forms of advertising. Successful trans-media campaigns don’t simply take the same content and scale it across all of these platforms, they exploit and adopt the particular strengths of each platform to add value to the core product. The product is enhanced across multiple platforms and places to create a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.

Quotes: “Conversation, debate and feedback is the goal.” “Trans-media is inherently about creating culture.”

Takeaways: If your trans-media campaign is successful, users from the casual participants to hard-core fans will feel ownership of the property and evangelize it for you. Successful campaigns know what they are trying to achieve, have benchmarks for measuring success, know their audience and the genre they’re working in, involve knowledgeable talent and welcome passionate fans and advocates. Loyalty equals success. When you have people involved, they’re willing to support your product by purchasing merchandise, showing up at events, etc. Once you have obtained loyalty, you can imple ment monetization schemes for different platforms.