But while it might not yet have the popular allure of its sibling fests, SXSW Interactive is growing mightily as the Web evolves into a prime link between the changing film and music businesses. Indeed, while most of the major record companies have reduced their presence at this year's music fest, aggressive multimedia facilities (like Austin's Io Studios) are glad to pick up the check for an old-fashioned industry schmooze party. A booming city with a large and diverse tech community of its own, Austin was virtually made to order for an informal summit of the new media and its many representatives.

With dozens of booths manned by independent site designers, ambitious Internet startups, digital equipment manufacturers, game developers and progressive trade journals, the Interactive trade show hosts everyone from teen Web entrepreneurs to grizzled tech vets. In response to the growing demand for online news and information, sophisticated radio access, interactive TV, innovative music sites and even Internet-based book publishing, a great many of the companies at SXSW 2000 were on the lookout for prospective employees with technical skills to fill their ranks. This was great news for the many college students who attended SXSW Interactive merely to check out the latest digital innovations and came away with a much clearer (and more lucrative) picture of their employment future.

While industry perennials Apple and Dell showed off their latest advancements, the fest itself was more concerned with exploring the Internet's vast potential as opposed to examining new hardware innovations. A diverse number of online music distributors--including Liquid Audio, EMusic.com, The Orchard and Listen.com --made strong showings at the festival, looking for business while magnifying the need for new copyright and licensing laws in an interactive world. Unfortunately, the business-minded CEOs of influential Internet companies in attendance only pretended to deal with important issues like content on the Net or the state of the online music industry. Instead, bigwigs such as Michael O'Donnell of Salon and Michael Robertson of MP3.com took full advantage of designated panel discussions to blatantly market their own burgeoning companies.

Still, it was clear that the Internet community sees the SXSW Interactive conference as an important event where new ideas can be discussed and explored. Keynote speakers Macromedia CEO Rob Burgess, New York Times technology writer Denise Caruso and Global Business Network co-founder Stewart Brand all put an interesting spin on the thriving business at hand. Brand in particular was a cogent, thoughtful speaker who lectured on everything from the need for better archival storage of Web content to how the industry should take greater responsibility in creating a brighter future for the world. Brand contends that technology is outpacing civilization's ability to deal with its ramifications, and says the need to slow things down is greater than ever before.

Besides the uneven discussion panels and typical business activity in the trade show booths, the Interactive festival can perhaps best be appreciated on the Web itself. The SXSW 2000 Website Competition lauded political e-pub the Freedom Channel as the best new site and named the online home of Texas music favorites Café Noir the best band site. (Newcity.com affiliate Ironminds took the award for best current-events site.) With film, music, design, humor, Webcam and "none of the above" categories (to name only a few), SXSW Interactive is clearly focused on the Web as a primary source of energy, information, inspiration and money. Let's hope that some of the festival participants take Stewart Brand's advice and slow down a bit, or most of the innovations and creations showcased here will be completely forgotten by the time SXSW 2001 rolls around.

 For complete Newcity.com coverage of SXSW, click here.