Blog

Hello from sunny Austin, Texas! Actually,  it wasn't that sunny when we first arrived, which kept us Canadians from feeling too terribly out of place. But the atmosphere outside definitely did not put a damper on the festivities inside. The Overlay.TV booth (booth #317/416, in case you care to stop by) was rocking from opening hour on Saturday, March 14 all the way through to closing on Monday, March 16.  Lots of foot traffic with the most commonly asked question being "What do you do, exactly?" leading into literally hundreds of demos and that bright light of "ohhh, NOW I get it, can I get a card from you?" epiphany.  Hundreds of Overlay.TV stickers were branding every post and table at the conference, including at the Blogger Lounge and the Media Posts. And at the Block Party, SXSW Tradeshow Revellers even had their beer branded with Overlay.TV stickers - now that's creative marketing.

Overlay.TV was also an Honorable Mention in the Online Video category of the SXSW Accelerator event, which meant that not only did we get access to the event itself, we also had exposure in the brochure, on the t-shirts and with the attending media. Ben Watson, our ever-energetic VP of Marketing, spent hours there telling everyone about Overlay.TV and why we really should have won. Ben also spent significant time talking to various other media outlets, doing plenty of interviews about Overlay.TV at the booth and on podcasts - we'll send you the links once we have them.

Hundreds of interesting, thought provoking panels took place throughout the weekend, including from Guy Kawasaki, Tara Hunt, Eric Feng, Chris Anderson, Kathy Sierra, Zappos and plenty more, on subjects as diverse as Twitter for Marketers, iPhone development, creating Presentations that Speak Straight to the Brain, the Future of Social Networks... the list goes on and on, with the sheer number of options causing dilemmas for conference attendees every hour and a half  all day long.

Of course, what does it take to make a girl geek happy? LOLcats, of course! and when Ben Huh of I Can Has Cheezburger appeared on a panel along with the folks from Dooce, Passive Aggressive Notes, Stuff White People Like and the original Wonkette, he brought a few stuffed Happycats along with him for those fast of feet (and not afraid to throw their pregnant bellies around to gain an advantage) - view the results here. 

And of course - great parties went down all week, including the awesome Mix@Six sponsored by Social Media Group, the Guy/Girl party sponsored by Alltop and Kirtsy, the Blurb/Mashable party with live band karaoke,  the notorious 32Bit party and the last blast SXSW Closing Party sponsored by Media Temple. As any attendee at SXSW knows, the parties are where the "real" networking happens - the cards flow fast and furious over Miller Lite and free Texas BBQ.

More news, photos, and videos are coming from the gang at SXSW shortly - roll on Music!

Love,

Shannon, Faisal, Nadav, Kevin and Ben