Day 1 of SXSW Interactive is drawing to a close. Or, depending on your view of the week, it?s just beginning since it?s party time when the sun goes down in Austin. For team IE though, it?s all about spreading the excitement of our Internet Explorer 9 launch on Monday night ? and our party at Austin City Limits Live!
Today was about getting our feet wet at SXSW. As I mentioned yesterday, we had a couple of giveaways we kicked off to get the word out about IE9. So, join me in a pictorial journey through our first day in Austin!
First up ? getting our badges. I?m a veteran of a conference or two in my time, and I have to say after 25 years they pretty much have it down to a science. Getting there at 9:00 a.m. certainly didn?t hurt.
After that, we unleashed our secret weapon to demonstrate the beauty of being fast ? our IE9 Jet Pack teams. These teams are outside the convention center for the next few days, spreading the secret ingredient needed to stay fast at SXSW: Coffee in the morning, and Monster energy drink in the afternoon. If you?re down in Austin, watch for them on the streets through Monday. Come by and fill up with a free full serving of HTML5 (and caffeine).
Next we checked out the Microsoft lounge. On the 4th floor of the Austin Convention Center, it?s the place to check out Windows Phone 7, play some Kinect, test out the latest hardware, and of course try out a demo of IE9. We figured it was the perfect place for our two exclusive giveaways.
First up, our limited edition shirt of the day. We?ll be handing out a new shirt each day ? just follow us on Twitter to find the location. (And don?t worry if you?re not in Austin ? we?re saving a few extras and will figure out a way to give them out soon?)
Today?s shirt featured designs from Floweroscope, one of the rich HTML5 sites featured on www.beautyoftheweb.com, and a FWA featured site of the day.
It took about an hour before 150 shirts were gone. We can?t wait to find a new place to give these away tomorrow?will it be our Endless Mural shirt? Or Lost World?s Fairs? Or maybe Never Mind The Bullets. Decisions, decisions.
Later in the afternoon we did the big giveaway of the day ? the limited Fast Access passes to our Yeasayer, The Head and the Heart, and Fences concert and IE9 launch event on Monday night.
We?ve said it a few times now, just follow us on Twitter to get these. We had 25 to give out, and after sending out our location tweet they were gone in just as many minutes. Congratulations to the few who picked up passes today, and if you missed out, don?t worry ? three more days to get your Fast Access pass and skip the general admission line. I will say we won?t be back at the lounge tomorrow, so you?ll have to find us somewhere else?
That wraps things up for today. Tomorrow we?ll be back out again with more coffee and Monster, more shirts, and more passes to give away.
We?ll throw a panel in tomorrow as well. Sylvain Galineau from the IE team will be part of the panel on CSS implementation. Sylvain represents Microsoft on the CSS Working Group and will discuss everything you?ve ever wanted to know about CSS with peers from Mozilla, Google, and Opera. Have a question for Sylvain if you can?t be there in person? Post it in the blog comments and we?ll try to get an answer from Sylvain to one of your questions after the session.
Back tomorrow from Austin?
Kylie Bax Diora Baird Laura Prepon Ashley Scott Michelle Behennah
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