SFist at SXSW: Part Five -- Technoblogf**k
So what did we learn from South By Southwest? We learned to trust our baser instincts. You want stars, and we're doing our best to give them to you. But geek stars may be even more fleeting than those that you're used to. We are working with an entirely brand new medium here, and Moore's law applies socially almost as rigidly as it does in terms of semiconductor evolution.
Tonight we got to hang with our local A-list, which may be B-list as far as the major media mentions go. But we take heart when a BARBARian gets a mention in the Washington Post, and we get to drink somebody who has a byline in the New York Times under the table. Regardless of what the judge in Apple v. Does may have decided, we shall rock your media universe. If you thought that mainstream media would put up a fight, just take it into consideration that SFist has nearly twice as many contributors as the full-time writing staff at the Weekly and the Examiner combined. And a healthy percentage of their circulation, but we digress...
The attendance at SXSW was up over ten percent this year over last, and we'd like to think it's because SXSW represents the nexus between geek culture and the mainstream. Between Flickr and LiveJournal, we've seen an acceptance of free content generation go worldwide. We want to vomit when we hear the word "monetize," so we'd like to offer that instead people "organize." Wobblies to the core, we are.
In terms of journalism, a lot of our previous assumptions were reinforced. We're going to go with our baser instincts every time, and be "transparent" about it. The neutral voice is dead. Long live the filter! It's not like we don't have ethics and integrity -- while in Austin, we got a press release from the Phil Angelides campaign. Of course we ran a story on it, but little did we know they were buying ads at the same time. It could have been rather embarrassing. But SFist's staff, with whom we have a dangerously liberal trust, came up with a balanced piece.
So even though we haven't been whipped into shape by a personal trainer and styled for a spread in Lucky magazine, we soldier on, in the hopes of breaking the story that Gavin is gay. Or straight. We just want a definitive answer. Preferrably on video.