SXSW Interactive is one of the most attended conferences of the year for tech and media types, with 30,000 conference participants flooding Austin. But in recent years, the cost of an official interactive badge has gone up considerably and many are attending unofficial SXSW parties and related events that do not require badges. For people who have never attended SXSWi, it’s good to go with a badge at least one year — the depth and breadth of content discussed across hundreds of panels and sessions can be as valuable and high quality as the networking you’ll do. However, it gets redundant year after year. In past years I’ve attended the music portion of SXSW as well — this is incredibly fun and far fewer people spend time in the actual convention center. Why would you with all the amazing day parties and live music showcases across sunny Austin? Here’s a shortlist of unofficial events that I’ve RSVP’d for this year. For more info and discovery of unofficial SXSW parties I recommend Sched.org, do512, and Unofficial SXSW Guide.

Want to meet up in Austin? I’ll be there from March 6-12. Hit me up!

FRIDAY March 7
*ff Venture Capital’s ff MASSIVE 2014 is in Austin featuring their portfolio companies, a slew of panels, two full days of activities, plenty of food and drink, and of course, three evening bashes. Friday/Sat/Sun 1-5 and at night.

FRIDAY NIGHT – Robert DeLong, Octopus Project
Empire Control Room & Garage (606 E 7th St, Austin, TX 78701)
RSVP @ http://ffmassive.com/

*NY Tech Meetup
Saturday 11-7 / afterpary 4-7 @
The North Door
502 Brushy Street
RSVP @ https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ny-tech-meetup-austin-2014-registration-10545268181

LA TECH CONNECT
Noon – 6pm at
508 Tequila/Pelons (8th & Red River, across from Stubbs – Grail on the patio)
RSVP: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/la-tech-connect-austin-tickets-7056577413

Wednesday

Chrome 11 benchmarks at 10 times the speed of previous versions and Google is ready to pronounce the death of the PC, as we know it. On June the Chromebook — a netbook with cloud-based applications built specifically for the enterprise and education — will hit the streets, with Samsung and Acer as partners. The Chromebooks will be available to businesses for $28 per user per month and to educational institutes for $20 per user per month. The Chromebooks, with 11.6-inch (Acer) or 12.1-inch HD displays (Samsung), will be available to consumers from $349 for the Acer to $429 (WiFi only) and $499 (3G) for the Samsung.

Also coming soon (live as of May 12) — the team that produced Arcade Fire’s The Wilderness Downtown interactive video will launch and even more interactive music video with integrated UGC built on top of the Danger Mouse with Daniele Luppi release titled Rome + Jack White (dropping May 17th, stream via NPR)

More cool GPL-based wizardry at chromeexperiments.com.

More on the Google Chromebook at google.com/chromebook.

See my photos from past years at SXSW

The trip began with an amazing takeoff directly into the fading sun over the Pacific. This would be the last time the sun set before Daylight Savings time kicked in. Got in to Austin and met up with Jory, provider of a fine crash pad for the duration of my stay. Then began a serious of meetups, events, and parties: All Hat III, which was a priceless opportunity to visit with many of the folks I most admire in the interactive space who happen to share a passion and commitment to do-gooding.

Here’s a photo Geoff Livingston took of his partners at Zoetica Media. I was standing right next to them. No really. You won’t see me in any of my photos posted here (and I’m not sure who hijacked my camera and interviewed Jonathan Grubb of RVIPLounge – see at bottom). But as always happens, the aftermath of SXSW will carry on to Facebook and Twitter and into another season of opportunity and new connections.

I created a truly ridiculous agenda of all things I RSVP’d for or intended to go to. It’s included at the bottom of this post to give you a taste of just how extensively big corporations and smaller startups catered to SXSW Interactive attendees this year.

Among the highlights was the CNN Grill, which took over a restaurant two blocks from the convention center and turned it into a CNN Disneyland with free food and drink service throughout the afternoon and late night for industry folk and others lucky enough to have a pass.

That’s Percy von Lipinski in the video above. I was seated at his table on my first visit to #CNNGrill soon after he was presented with an award for CNN iReporter Original Reporting Award and naturally, had to stick my flip cam in his face.

I did not have a SXSW Interactive badge this year as I had in the past since I failed to apply as press by the deadline. I thought, maybe I could take a year off (ha!). But the other special badges, VIP treatment, and access I was offered for taking such menial steps as RSVP-ing via Eventbrite more than made up for it.

CNN — they must be made of money — ensured that everyone would be happy with their grill (at other times known as MAX’s Wine Dive). Everything on the prepared-to-order menu (food and drink) was gratis and there was WiFi and two power strips at every table. But even the service and hosts were gracious — imported from NYC via Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group — and there were live performances throughout the day. I showed up at the perfect time (according to my particular tastes) and caught a 40 minute or so acoustic set from Wisconsin-based awesomeband Locksley, and then a set from The Civil Wars (see video above), who barely managed to get away from me and onto the next before I could – natch – stick my flip cam in their faces. The CNN Grill was apparently first conceived for the 2008 Democratic Convention in Denver. But man, what good buzz they built by hosting the mad swarms of geeks and mediaites at SXSW.

Video from the RVIPLounge below. I recommend checking out this one as well — from the inside (same night).

Click “show earlier events” and scroll up to view my March 13-17 agenda. Click on any event to expand details

That’s all I’ve got time for now with extra special thanks for making things happen to theMIX agency, SMC, Wine Library product and crew, The Force Agency (of which I’m now a card-carrying part of), Gowalla & Foursquare (I adore both equally but in comparison to the SXSW deluge of use checking in now feels relatively pointless), Nicole and all the great Summit Series rockers at dinner at Lambert’s. And as always, thank you Google for helping me to never get lost and for Android. Now I’m getting sentimental. Where’s my award already?

Below is the overbooked schedule of events that i’m interested in but won’t be able to make it to without cloning myself (via sched.org):

Your best bet, as per usual is to find me via twitter and/or brightkite.