South By Southwest Interactive: Growing Past Music Fest

I've spent the last week covering South by Southwest Interactive in Austin and on this week's "All Tech Considered," we discuss the annual festival, which brings together Web designers, social media addicts, app developers and others for panels, parties and more.

This year, the Interactive fest grew by about 40 percent over last year and paid Interactive attendance is expected to land at about 12,000-13,000 for 2010, organizers said Wednesday.

You can catch up with all of our SXSW Interactive panel write-ups, videos and other coverage on Digital Savant.

Other highlights and low-lights from the fest:

• The much-anticipated keynote from Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams was not exactly what people expected. Not by a long shot. (Video above by the American-Statesman's Jenni Jones.)
  
• It wasn't the first time a keynote went horribly awry at SXSW Interactive.
  
• YouTube introduced Musicians Wanted, a new way for indie bands and artists to get a larger slice of the video-embedding and Web ad pie.
  
• Location-aware apps like Gowalla and Foursquare had the biggest buzz at this year's fest.
  
• Other companies with things to say or introduce at the fest included Microsoft, Digg, MOG and Spotify.