Another day, another SxSW post from Chris
And so begins the last day of SXSW and despite the mist of my first hangover of the convention, the inspiration of yesterday’s sessions can still be felt. Although most of what I saw wasn’t strictly relevant to the agency, the foresight and depth of knowledge of Ray Kurzweil was staggering. You may not know this guy, but you will certainly have been effected by at least one of the technologies he’s responsible for. From inventing the flatbed scanner right through to the development of voice and text recognition software. When asked about his opinion of Apple’s Siri, he replied “well, first of all I’m very proud, since the technology behind it was originally developed by my company before being sold to Apple”.
‘We’re so lucky we can drink outside in Denmark’ – More from SxSW
Chris, clearly fit as a fiddle once more, sends another update from SxSW:
What a difference a day makes.
The sun came out yesterday afternoon and immediately SxSW kicked into overdrive. Suddenly all of the ad hoc activities surrounding the conference centres flourished. Foursquare’s real game of ‘foursquare’ (apparently it’s a playground ball game too) made more sense in the sunshine and beer flowed from every corporate outpost.
Undaunted at SXSW
Chris, ‘sick as a dog’ but soldiering on, sends word from SXSW Interactive:
Greetings from sunny Texas! Apparently, Austin has just experienced a dry spell lasting some months, resulting in severe brush fires, so unsurprisingly, the locals seem rather pleased with the torrential rain we’ve been having. Nevertheless, the festival spirit remains strong at SXSW. The really amazing thing about this event is the sheer size and scope of the thing. Yesterday you could get down and dirty with HTML 5 and responsive design or listen to Frank Abagnale, of Catch Me If You Can fame, talk about his barely believable life.
The big reshuffle
We’ve had a pretty massive reorganisation at the agency. As I write, most people’s possessions are in boxes, the walls have been revealed for the scarred messes they really are and wires and cables are splayed across floors like a writhing mass of snakes. But, undaunted, we carry on.
February in games
Here’s the latest batch of gaming news, compiled by Jef. You can also follow Advance_Gaming on Twitter, where you can keep up with all the latest gaming industry developments.
Ditching retail
Invested all your savings in a promising new Chinese digital disc manufacturer? Then we have some rather bad news for you, particularly if you’re selling your discs to the global gaming market.
According to TIGA (a UK game industry trade organization) 67% of UK game developers are ditching retail games. They are now focusing all their efforts on large-scale multiplayer online games and mobile and social gaming. And you don’t need discs for those.