How to Listen to SXSW Interactive Programming Recordings

South by Southwest, or SXSW as its known in the entertainment industry, hosts festivals for the film, music, videogame and interactive industries in Austin, Texas. Information about the hip panels of industry professionals, as well as podcasts and video feeds of associated events, are available online.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Bandwidth to stream audio and video feeds
• Current computer-based media player

See What SXSW Online Has to Offer

1. Locate the list of SXSW podcast feeds on the archived section of the SXSW website (see Resources below). SXSW programming is varied and engaging, so it really pays to take the time to see what recordings are available, as well as to check out the homepage for new leads, feeds, ideas and festivals.

2. Navigate among such offerings as Pete Townshend giving his view on the music industry in its current state, recordings of live music at SXSW's Austin festival and panel discussions at the interactive festival.

3. Enjoy feed streaming in a separate window right away. If this doesn't happen, you may need to shut down some programs or consider that you may have insufficient bandwidth to support streaming audio and video feeds.

4. Load QuickTime, Real Player or Macromedia Flash Player onto your computer if you don't already have the most recent version of one of these media players. SXSW offers media-rich podcasts and streaming feeds, and an older media player may not be able to handle the streaming content, resulting in patchy, disjointed play.

Listen to Interactive Programming Recordings

5. Find interactive-specific recordings of interest to you. SXSW uses "interactive" to refer to the increasing number of web-platform uses.

6. Check out what else SXSW has to offer in the way of media panel recordings and stage acts. You'll also find fresh voices in the industry talking about where they think the entertainment and media industry is headed, and what it needs to stay exciting.

Tips & Warnings

• SXSW has so many sub-websites that finding a feed that you wanted to listen to again may not be as easy as it seems. If anything really appeals to you, list that URL in your favorites list.
• As web offerings become more content-rich, offering more bells and whistles in the way of graphics and interactive links, you'll need to keep your computer loaded with software that will allow you to listen and view programming without glitches. Playing current offerings on a media player that is 2 years old will not give you the full, seamless experience that you can get by updating your system.
• The interactive festival is newer than the music and film festivals, so there may not be many archived panel discussions.

Resources

• Archived podcasts at SXSW.com