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Opera at SXSW Interactive

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South by Southwest (SXSW) is one of the premier film, music, and media technology festivals in the US. The Interactive Festival runs from Friday, March 7th — Tuesday, March 11th. This will be Opera's second year at the event, and we've got big plans to show Austin what Opera is all about.

The purpose of this blog is to share our memories from the festival with you (:cheers:). Expect daily posts written by me (Lawmune) and a group of volunteers. We'll try to update (with photos) during the event itself so you know what's happening.

Take a look at the panel schedule, let us know what you want to hear about, and we'll see what we can do.

For now, we are busy setting things up, so coverage on Friday and Saturday will be limited, but we'll be in full swing starting on Sunday. We will definitely write about the following panels and events we're involved with:

  1. The Real Dragon: Understanding the Web and Digital Media in China
  2. Browser Wars: Deja Vu All Over Again?
  3. SXSW 2008 Geeks Love Bowling
  4. "Rock Bands Rock Opera"

Stay tuned!

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this blog belong to their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Opera Software or anyone else.)

(Special note: The artworks featured on this blog were created by My Opera members Oleg Melnychuk and Dustin Wilson)

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Podcast: Browser Wars: Deja Vu All Over Again?

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The browser wars panel podcast from SXSW 2008 is finally available. You can find it here: http://2008.sxsw.com/blogs/podcasts.php/2008/06/24/browser_wars_deja_vu_all_over_again

The panelists were:

Arun Ranganathan, System Architect
Chris Wilson, Platform Architect, Microsoft
Brendan Eich, CTO, firefox
Charles McCathieNevile, Chief of Standards, Opera

Here's a written summary of the panel: http://www.appscout.com/2008/03/sxsw_browser_wars_become_brows.php
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Podcast: The Real Dragon: Understanding the Web and Digital Media in China

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At SXSW 2008, one of the Opera-hosted panels was called "The Real Dragon: Understanding the Web and Digital Media in China". Last week, SXSW released the official recording of the talk on the following page: http://2008.sxsw.com/coverage/podcasts/

The panel featured:

Tatsuki Tomita Sr VP of Consumer Prod, Opera Software

Sage Brennan Dir of Research, Pacific Sun Investment Management

Michael Fisk VP of Worldwide Digital Mktg Strategy, Sony Pictures

Jason Yim Pres and Creative Dir, Trigger
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My personal wrap up of SXSW

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My colleague Erin Robbins wrote her report, as did Charles McCathieNevile, our Chief Standards Officer who spoke on this year's Browser Wars panel (which he discusses in his post). Check out the following articles:

It's a Wrap!
by Erin

South by... by Charles



Here are a few thoughts of my own:

There were so many different events, panels, tradeshow booths, and parties going on, all at the same time, there was no way to see and attend everything. As such, everyone's SXSW experience is different, which I think comes through when you read our various reports.

Once again, I'd like to thank our volunteers who joined us in Austin. Doing Opera-related work every day I was at SXSW meant that I didn't have the opportunity to attend any of the other panels, so I'm glad Phred, Jim, and John were able to blog about them for us. I hope you, the readers, were able to get a sense of SXSW Interactive's general vibe (though the party atmosphere is something that has to be experienced firsthand, I think).

I could write a hugely long post about everything we did at SXSW, but that would be tedious, so here are my personal highlights:


  • Giving away free coffee to SXSW Interactive attendees
  • Having an amazing booth with our logo projected on a wall, really huge for everyone to see
  • Having great stuff to give away to people visiting our booth (beer koozies, pins, stickers, and three styles of Opera shirts!)
  • Talking with a ton of people, and seeing them amazed by Opera's innovative, powerful, and time-saving features
  • Installing Opera Mini on people's phones, giving them full access to the real Web on the go
  • Meeting die-hard Opera fans (both new users and old timers who've been using Opera for years)
  • Meeting well-known My Opera members for the first time in person
  • Watching Charles make the Opera-faithful proud (and winning new users) at the Browser Wars panel
  • Helping to host the Rock Opera party, which had great bands and a really cool DJ
  • Hanging out with Opera staff coming to Austin from Mountain View, Los Angeles, Florida, Oslo, and England

More pictures can be found on our SXSW photo album here: SXSW 2008

Also, we've updated http://www.opera.com/rock/ with a summary of the Rock Opera party and more photos for your enjoyment.

Other links of interest:

SXSW: Browser Wars Become Browser Peace? Not Quite Rough transcript of the Browser Wars panel on AppScout

SxSW '08 Redux via Epistolary Rumination The post-panel blog post by Arun Ranganathan, who moderated the Browser Wars discussion

SXSW Podcasts The Browser Wars panel recording will most likely appear on that page eventually. The 2007 panel recording can be found here: Browser Wars Retrospective: Past, Present and Future Battlefields
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A Fistful of SXSW Reports

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Before I post my own report(s), here's a quick roundup of SXSW reports written by some of my colleagues:

SXSWi 2008 Saturday and Sunday: Of beer, education, bowling, and sleep deprivation by Chris Mills

The SXSWi 2008 finale - Monday to Wednesday by Chris Mills

Software All Saddled Up by Erin Robbins

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SXSW Film: Frontrunners

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After three days of panels, Jim suggested we take a break yesterday and go see one of the movies in the SXSW Film Festival. We ended up picking Frontrunners, a documentary about the Student Council elections at New York City's Stuyvesant High School, primarily because it was playing in the convention center during the afternoon. The choice turned out to be a good one; Frontrunners is a terrifically engaging film. It is funny and smart, and it features some of the most interesting high school students I've ever seen on the screen.

The film, which was directed by Caroline Suh and produced by Erika Frankel, follows three of Stuyvesant High's presidential candidates through the school's election process. Michael Zaytsev is laid-back and cool; his running mate Marta continually goads him to pay more attention to their campaign, but he refuses because he is confident they will win. Hannah Freiman, on the other hand, is an extrovert. She is captain of the cheerleading team and president of the student drama group (she had a role in Palindromes and a guest spot on Law & Order).

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SXSW Panel: Can Wii Learn? Using Wiimotes in E-Learning

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This panel was my final one for the conference, and it was also the most technical. The panel chair—Patrick Sanchez, a systems administrator for Enspire Learning—began by outlining the technical features of the Wiimote. Those features, which I'm certain are familiar to most readers of this blog, are: a motion sensor, IR sensor, speaker, rumble, Bluetooth, and a few LEDs. While the device has a lot of functionality—panelist Chris Pittman of RFD pointed out that unlike the Xbox 360 or PS3, the Wii is completely open and hackable—there have not yet been many eLearning applications for the Wii. As an example of how easy it is to program the device, Pittman walked through a simple drawing app written in the Opera JavaScript API, and much of the discussion dealt with what applications might be possible with the Wiimote.

During the introductions, panelist Brandon Carson of Sun described why he got into eLearning. According to him, when he started at Sun their education apps were of two types. On one extreme, the user was completely passive, just viewing materials (like videos). On the other, the user merely clicked through "slide-junk." After some research, he found that most of what they were doing wasn't working because it wasn't tied to performance or business outcomes.

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Eisner, Cuban, and Communism

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When I walked into the packed Michael Eisner interview, I thought it'd be cool. Little did I know (I need to read the program more carefully) that Mark Cuban would be interviewing him. Being a Dallas Mavericks fan, this was a nice surprise.

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SXSW Panel: Visualizing Sustainability

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This panel was less about games than the panel description made it seem. The most focused discussion of anything game-like was of virtual worlds, which—as Joel Greenberg of podaddies.com pointed out—are social spaces that don't have game like goals.

Instead the panelists were primarily interested in how visualizations can be used to create feedback loops that change people's behavior. As Greenberg and Dawn Danby of Aylanto argued, being able to "see" data impacts—and changes—the way we view reality. Jamais Cascio, the World-Builder-in-Chief of Open the Future, pointed out that mobile interfaces are a key part of this process, claiming that "Cell phones"—like AK-47s—"are inherently revolutionary."

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Rock Opera photos

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Here are some snapshots from the early hours of the Rock Opera party.

From outside Stubb's


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