If you’re at the South By Southwest (SXSW) interactive festival this year and you haven’t had a chance to swing by the Circus Mashimus lounge, I suggest you do. It was a smash hit at last year’s SXSWi and I’m happy to see Mashery CEO Oren Michels and team are back at this year’s SXSWi.
The Circus Mashimus lounge is not only a great place to grab free coffee in the morning while you check your email, and then beer and popcorn in the afternoon; but it’s the place to be to talk mashups and visit with the Mashery team and its customers and sponsors to learn how to get more from your data by opening it up to developers.
Mashery offers customers a flexible, secure and effective way to manage their application programming interface (API) programs. Offering developers open APIs is an ongoing process from performance and security to registration and provisioning, so having a way to manage it all is critical to the success of an API developer program. And nowadays it’s all about the apps and giving information to customers in new and creative ways, and in the manner and places that they want it, so having an efficient API management platform, such as Mashery, can greatly contribute to the success of an API developer program.
Mashery has an impressive list of customers from Best Buy, Netflix and Etsy to CafePress, among many others. Best Buy, with its Best Buy Remix, and CafePress are sponsors of this year’s Circus Mashimus lounge, so swing by and grab a coffee or beer (depending on time of day) and check out the cool mashups being created by developers and how it’s all managed easily through Mashery.
The Circus Mashimus lounge is open from 9:30AM-6:00PM through tomorrow and is located on the first floor in room three near the Screenburn Arcade in the Austin Convention Center where SXSW is being held.
And check out Bubblicious Reporter Alison McNeill interviews with Oren Michels and Best Buy’s Michele Azar from last year’s Circus Mashimus at SXSWi 2009.
During SXSW, Social Media Club hosted Pool 2.0 at Buffalo Billiards. Attendees from the conference competed against each other throughout the night until there was only one team left standing. But as you’ll see, there was much more than pool to keep everyone entertained.
During SXSW, Richard Binhammer of Dell (RichardAtDell) organized the now infamous AllHat party along with David Armano, Hugh MacLeod, Mark Collier, Mark Drosos and yours truly.
Hundreds of geeks took the wagon trail over to Allens Boots where we shopped for hats, boots, and socialized in the aisles. Following the in store fun, the cavalry hit the outside patio of Gueros where we enjoyed mouth watering TexMex and memorable conversations.
When we peer into the looking glass into what truly made SXSW Interactive a unique and successful culmination of culture and real life networking, we see something very different and exceptional.
The real story is the human network and the Social Economy that fosters the conversations that serve as its currency – on and offline.
SXSW is about the emotional and psychological connection between people and our investment in the personal traits that others find irresistible.
Relationships….RELATIONSHIPS…count for everything here, and they’re measured by the mutually beneficial rewards that all parties experience over time. We invest in each other and harvest the fruits of our collaboration and interconnection.
Nothing was more evident of this than the Flashmob party that stormed the Driskill, forever becoming a part of the SXSW legacy.
After the Diggnation party, Erica O’Grady, Jeremiah Owyang, Charlene Li, Chad Catacchio, Francisco Dao, and I opted for the the elegant and stylish decor that adorned the Driskill lobby bar to regroup and plan our next adventure. What we had yet to realize, was that the evening at the Driskill would unfold into our next adventure.
Overcome with contentment and the prompt attention for service, we decided to Tweet our location while also personally texting some of our close friends to join us. Almost immediately, tweets were flying, “headed to the Driskill.” As each person arrived, they too would tweet, “At the Driskill, it’s incredible.” They cycle continued for the duration of the evening.
Soon, hundreds of people crowded the spacious lounge, the staff called for reinforcements, and we celebrated friendship and The Human Network together, creating one of the most memorable nights in SXSW history.
Digg hosted a live episode of Diggnation at Stubbs BBQ during SXSW Interactive with thousands of the show’s most ardent fans in attendance. It was simply mind blowing. The cult-like phenomenon that served as the undercurrent for our Geek culture is now broaching pop status. Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht represent a new genre of celebrity and if you don’t believe me, just ask any one of Kevin Rose’s 375,000 friends on Twitter.
