The madness begins for sxsw as the entirety of downtown Austin is turned into a massive festival. The Festival is broken into three parts and the interactive section is going to start things off. So im going to run you through my experinces from badge pick up to the event completion hangover that is surely in my future. 

Since I was lucky enough to get a platinum badge i will be living and breathing all the events that occur across the week.The first thing I noticed was that having a badge in Austin right now means you get treated like a rockstar. I mean my badge came with drink passes for everyday of the week for whiskey, and 3 bags full of swag and events listings. And thats not all, in the first few hours of being at the convention center I was given 3 free shirts, a plethora of keychains, app, pins, buttons, energy drinks, and of course more booze. Walk down the street with a badge and people give you things! I got pulled into a party van for organic tequila and they just gave me margaritas and  sent me on my merry way. And If free stuff doesn't make you feel like a rockstar, how about access to vip events that you waltz into in front of lines of badgeless people. All in all, the experience is something i've never really felt before, but being a vip in austin for a day makes you walk on clouds. I know i technically paid for all of this... but If you dont think about that aspect, you feel like a-list. 

I am going into specifics of every event I attend but generally I'll talk about the open ended stuff that I've seen here. The first big thing is the screenburn arcade room. Since this is the interactive leg of the show, almost every game company in Austin is present here and showing off their latest and greatest games. We had early access to the new mortal Kombat game, Which looked gorgeous, but I've never been a fan of the controls. Tons of kids playing Marvel vs. Capcom 3 at the capcom booth. Which I enjoy but as a street fighter purist i dont like as much as the classic third strike. And all manner of indepent game developers. It was great talking to programmers and artists starting up companies. You could just tell they loved what they were doing and were excited to be showcasing. I'll go into further details about some of the indy games later in the week but screenburn is pretty sweet.

Im not much for the panels which mostly seemed aimed towards the hardcore, design and web geeks out there. I didnt want to spend my time listening to the "zen of the latest app" as much as i wanted to see as much as I could as quickly as possible. So I ran around the floor and visited every booth and talked to anybody interesting..with booze. All in all a great start tho. And Im really looking forward to the rest of the week. Be on the lookout for my reviews of all the indiviual events and experiences i have for sxsw and if your at the show come find me... and bring me a margarita!