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Marketplace Tech heads to SXSW

Molly Wood Mar 7, 2014

SXSW Interactive is in full swing in Austin, Texas. With five days packed full of panels, parties, and of course, tacos, it’s impossible to get to every can’t-miss event. Fear not: Marketplace Tech has you covered.

Throughout the festival, we’re speaking to some of the biggest names in tech. Check back regularly for interviews with everyone from Biz Stone, the co-creator and co-founder of Twitter, to Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of the re-booted television show “Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey” (read the preview to our interview here).

We’ll also be talking to some familiar tech faces like early Apple employee turned Silicon Valley superstar Guy Kawasaki, as well as people you might be surprised to find at SXSW Interactive. Neil Young, for example, will be in attendance to promote his new, high-quality music service called Pono.

This kind of cross pollination between the music, film, and interactive festivals is what gets SXSW co-founder Louis Black excited.

“We’ve really seen, in the last few years, that synergy taking place. The most number of registrants is at Interactive, but ultimately what they really want and need is content. So having Film the same time as Interactive, and having Music right after has led to these three events melding more and more into each other.”

In fact, Black sees this interaction between the three components of SXSW as essential to surival. 

“I’m a total film person, and the way the independent films are distributed has changed so dramatically in the last few years that the only way for film to thrive and grow into the next couple of decades…it’s got to be more and more and more technologically dependent.”

Black says this kind of synergy between the arts and technology is inherent to the city of Austin. Rather than viewing SXSW as an importing of cultural activity, he thinks of SXSW as a ten day “multiplier” for the musicians, filmmakers, and tech startups that call Texas home. 

So put on your cowboy boots, don your Google Glass, fill up your schedule with hard-to-believe panels, and head down south with Marketplace Tech.

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