Speakers in the News »

10/07/05
DICK COSTOLO

SXSW alum Dick Costolo (pictured above) is part of a team of advisors for the online serialization of hackoff.com, an intriguing novel by Tom Evslin. The plot of the story focuses on the CEO of a tech company who is found dead from a bullet wound to the skull during the height of the dotcom boom. Costolo is the co-founder of Feedburner, which is handling RSS feeds for this innovative writing project. He spoke on the "New New Economy" panel at the 2005 SXSW Interactive Festival.

4:45pm CST | +

10/06/05
JASON CALACANIS

The heady days of the Internet are back, or so it seems with today's news that America Online has has agreed to purchase Weblogs Inc. for $25 million dollars. According to a story on Yahoo, "AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc., could announce the acquisition of New York-based Weblogs Inc. as early as Thursday, the source said. A spokesman for America Online declined to comment. Executives for Weblogs were unavailable to comment. The personal blog of Weblogs founder and Chief Executive Jason Calacanis said he was flying from New York to a San Francisco Web conference on Wednesday evening." Calacanis has been a frequent participant at the SXSW Interactive Festival, speaking on the "Blogging Versus Journalism" and the "How to Make $$$ With Online Ads" panels at the 2005 event.

4:46pm CST | +

10/05/05
PHILIP GLASS

Last night marked the New York debut of Orion, a new composition by Philip Glass. This piece was originally commissioned by the Cultural Olympiad 2004 and received its premiere performance in Athens in June 2004, just before the Olympic Games. Orion is just one more accomplishment in a whirlwind of activity that surrounds that world-renowned composer. In a recent interview with an Australian newspaper, Glass says that keeping a busy schedule is what keeps his art innovative: "That is a tremendous incentive. I have been constantly writing new music because I didn't want to play the same piece for the public again. Also, it acquaints the public directly with the composer. He is not some shadowy figure you never see. I am always there, talking about music and playing music." Glass served as a keynote speaker at the 1999 SXSW Interactive Festival.

4:47pm CST | +

10/04/05
ANA MARIE COX

Just when you think the weblog world is taking itself a little bit too seriously, someone like Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette puts everything into perspective. Speaking at a recent personal publishing panel sponsored by Conde Nast and Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Communications, she opined: "Blogging is ridiculously easy to do. My cat could do it. Most of all human endeavor — call it 99 percent — is crap. That also applies to blogs. Most of them [seem to be] written by cats, or about cats, or about knitting or militias." Cox, who served as the keynote interview at the 2005 SXSW Interactive Festival, also affirmed that the prevailing stereotype of bloggers spending all day in their pajamas was "mostly true, unfortunately."

4:48pm CST | +

10/03/05
TANTEK ÇELIK

Tantek Celik

Last week's Web Essentials 05 conference in Sydney, Australia brought together many of the Internet's most creative minds, including SXSW Interactive alums John Allsopp (one of the main organizers of the event), Douglas Bowman, Derek Featherstone, Kelly Goto, Molly Holzschlag, Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Veen. Also participating was Tantek Çelik (pictured above): a podcast of his "Microfomats: Evolving the Web" presentation is now available via the Web Essentials website. Çelik will be giving a similar version of this microformats talk at the Open Source Applications Foundation meeting on Tuesday in San Francisco (for more information on this free presentation, contact lisa at osafoundation dot org). He is also scheduled to cover this topic at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival.