OneSpot @ SXSW - Day 2

March 14 2009, 11:39pm

Day 2 is done and has continued to meet (and in some cases exceed) expectations. For those of you who spent all day recovering from last night’s parties, here is what you missed:

The lounges this year are great, and much easier to find than last year. My favorite, though, has to be the Mashery Circus Mashimus lounge. It’s just fun to be there… the popcorn, coffee bar, and quirky t-shirts don’t hurt either. On the other hand, when I visited the Tech Set bloggers lounge, there were 20 or so people all with their noses in their laptops (it might have gotten more lively later, but when I went, that’s the way it was). If I wanted to try to talk to people busy typing away at their laptop, I might as well stay in the first floor hallways. It’s a shame, too, because their Rat Pack party last night was pretty decent.

Trade Show this year was well populated, despite the economy. What was surprising, though, was the number of film booths there were. In years past, major companies like Yahoo and Google would take up huge blocks of the floor, with very few film reps sprinkled in between. I think it’s great for the film folks because now there is actually a reason to enter the trade show other than free t-shirts and goodies.

Everyone knows the Zappos keynote was good. That’s because everyone was in that room or in one of the simulcast rooms. We apologize to the other panels during that time (I’m sure we’ll remember to check out your podcasts later…).

The travel blogging panel (#sxswtravel) had grab bags for each attendant ready on our chairs when we walked in. I felt like a Fashion Week attendee! The bag had better swag than the official interactive panel (did anyone else get the leather notepad. How sweet was that!) What made it even better was that the panel/discussion was really good. Made me want to start traveling and blogging about it myself!

I learned at the Entrepreneurs’ Lounge about a new live music search site that launched today: Turn2Live.com. It’s currently only Austin based, but the site has an interesting search engine that plays upon psychographics within genres. So you could search for pop and then use a Simon looking color wheel to select subsets like “quirky” or “sunny.” Not sure if it will beat Do512 and their music gurus, but you might check out their launch parties tomorrow, Sunday during interactive and Thursday during Music.

Parties, per usual, were lined around the block. You meet more people in the lines than you do inside (maybe because you can actually hear what other people are saying outside). On that note, someone next year needs to throw a vegetarian/vegan party. I have never seen so many sausage and beef tips trays in my life (and thank goodness for the powerbars in my purse (#4)).

That’s all for day 2. Keep following us on Twitter @OneSpot and grab our widget for the latest in SXSWi news!