TopIdol’s Adventures at SXSW — Part Une

For the next few days, I’m lucky enough to be in Austin or the Interactive/Film portion of SXSW.

I got in yesterday afternoon and proceeded to take a disco nap which ended up last 5 hours. Ooops. Guess I needed sleep. Upon waking I met my awesome friend Stefanie/AdventureGirl at the Tweet House party before eventually ending up at the Driskill Hotel. Stef introduced me to some super cool people who work for both Twitter and Mashable. I even ended up meeting Pete Cashmore, Mashable’s founder and CEO. (Yeah, he does actually look like his avatar. Crazy, right?) I totally took a photo because yes, I am that big of a dork. (Oh, and b/c Unravel101 said he would be drooling if he was lucky enough to see him in the flesh.)

Speaking of Twitter…they are totally aware of the Justin Bieber/Moppet of Beelzebub. Ever wonder why Justin Bieber seems to only be a constant staple of the worldwide trending topics? You can check the US, the UK, individual cities, but no Bieber. Wonder why? It makes perfect sense. The Bieber Tweets mainly come from Brazil. This makes perfect sense, I have no idea why I never thought about it before. I then recalled SarahBeth telling me the Brazilian WordNerds, a group of David Cook fans, were always the first to post any information, news, concert videos, et al. So you put 2 + 2 together and…

Brazil is fast-emerging as the world’s next big power. They have a rapidly-growing population of more than 190 million. They are also some of the most voracious consumers of social media. Brazilian teenagers, in particular. Maybe the new key to superstardom is becoming big in Brazil?

Also at the Driskill was Lisa Bettany/MostlyLisa, who is a photographer/blogger/tv personality from Vancouver. When I got back to my hotel, I checked out her website. She got some pretty cool videos from the Olympics. I basically told her how insanely jealous I was she got to cover the Olympics. What I thought was really cool was that she only had partial access of sorts, so a lot of what she shot and reported on comes from more a spectator’s point if view than from someone in the pressbox. Lisa was also a HUGE Battlestar Galactica fan. BSG fans always get high marks in my book.

Why am I not at one of this morning’s workshops? Hmmm…perhaps because I am literally locked inside of my hotel room. Some kind of faceless LaQuinta employee(s) have been trying to free me from my 2-double bed/free HBO confines for well over 30 minutes now. My window does open, but sadly, its too high up to jump.

So I decided to blog. I’m hoping they eventually get me out of here. I would also like to take advantage of the free breakfast offered — they serve TEXAS-SHAPED WAFFLES. Its been nearly an hour since I first tried leaving.

Follow my adventures at SXSW via Twitter. I’ll pop on here when I can. At 4pm, I will hopefully be seeing the world premiere of the upcoming horror movie Wake. An old friend of mine, Henry Self, was the music supervisor on the film. (For those of you in Los Angeles, Henry is also one of the guys behind Slash Fiction.)

This is all contingent upon me being freed from my room, of course. I’m wondering if I should take a shower. I feel kind of dirty for all that name dropping. But is it acceptable when I’m talking about fabulous geeks?

Spread the word. Do it.