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Me at the fest

Culmination!

I've been completely swamped for the last two or three weeks gearing up for this year's South by Southwest Interactive.

Now I'm here at a 10 a.m. Saturday morning panel at the Austin Convention Center grokkin' the knowledge. There are some amazingly cool people here.

The busy I mentioned has been a bunch of stories I'd been working on in advance of the festival.

Here's the list. There really are stories I've been really, really excited to write, so please check them out.

I had a front-page story that ran in today's (Saturday's) paper about the widening influence in music of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. This is a story my editor and I have been talking about since last year and it's awesome to finally see it in print. (And it was mentioned in the panel I'm watching right now. Sweet!)

I had another story in today's Life & Arts section about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. It's an essay-style piece and one I was fretting about, but I read it back over last night when it hit the Web and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Now I'm just hoping Zuckerberg won't punch me in the face if he sees me. Hey, he's a billionaire. Maybe I should want him to punch me in the face. Cha-ching!

A story that ran Thursday that gives an overview of the Interactive festival can be found here.

And I shot a bunch of videos of fest founder Hugh Forrest. Those are running this weekend, as well as daily videos from the fest and a ton of blog entries I'm writing with several other staffers.

I'm also posting frequent updates on Twitter.

There's this one video we shot earlier in the week where we just talk about our picks for the fest. I look like the sweatiest, greasiest meatball. Seriously. Just watching it makes me want to go hide in a closet. I'll be damned if I'm going to link to it directly, but you might find it if you go hunt. I'm the last of three people speaking in the video. Yegads, I need to be wiped down.

So, to wrap up: busy! But completely fun.

Rob is also coming to town, and that's awesome. It's just a really full week. On the one hand, I just want all this to be over so I can take a few days off and hang out with my baby, but since I'm here and I'm working, I'm going to try to enjoy it to the fullest. Besides, when else am I gonna get to stay out late and talk video games and geek stuff in bars?

posted by Omar G. at 10:29 AM

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