The "Monster" SXSW Tech Week

South by Southwest (SXSW), the vast festival in Austin, Texas, covering music, film and interactive technologies, is starting off with a bang. Representatives from the likes of Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Spotify and hundreds of other companies of all sizes are addressing the tens of thousands of attendees throughout these first five days.

But what’s interesting about SXSW is not just the big names, it’s the smaller developers and start-ups who are presenting their ideas in the tucked away corners of Austin’s Convention Centre and the surrounding hotels into which the conference overspills. Finding them is another matter – the list of speakers runs to 41 pages.

The SXSW Web Awards took place last night (winners here), with location-sharing service Gowalla beating out Foursquare for best site in the mobile category and search site Wolfram Alpha nabbing Best in Show. TechCrunch liveblogged Twitter co-founder Evan Williams’s keynote Q&A. Evan did not go into details about the company’s new ad platform and was surprisingly tedious according to many audience members. But his Twitter posts about the event were followed in awe by millions. Other big news: Google Buzz was a “privacy fail” (via ReadWriteWeb), and music service MOG will let you stream any song on demand to your phone (via GigaOM).

This event is starting off like it was intended: “A hotbed of discovery and interactivity, the event offers lucrative networking opportunities and immersion into the art and business of the rapidly evolving world of independent film.”

The Prestigious Information Security RSA Conference in SF

In the new information security age, you’re trained to expect the unexpected. Changes occur in a nanosecond. The RSA Conference in San Francisco, CA is the most all-inclusive forum in information security offering enterprise and technical professionals a place to learn about all those changes. A place where they can go there to learn about the latest trends and technologies, get access to new best practices, and gain insight into the practical and realistic perspectives on the most critical technical and business issues facing you today. This year’s theme is the Rosetta Stone, designed to remember “the Rosetta Stone’s legacy to modern Egyptology and its lasting message on the power of collaboration.”

Our client Narus spearheaded and spoke on yesterday’s panel, “Delivering a Unified and Resilient National Cyber Security Framework.” Moderated by Wall Street Journal reporter Siobhan Gorman, the impressive panel looked at the Obama Administration's concentrated effort to protect the U.S. national infrastructure from cyber threats, and the pitfalls it has encountered thus far in doing so. The panelists discussed how this problem may be solved with cooperation between government and the private sector. Narus CEO Greg Oslan and Cisco CSO John Stewart joined top national security advisors Melissa Hathaway and Bill Crowell for this lively discussion. The panel had about 175 satisfied attendees from major security agencies, defense contractors, governments and large enterprise companies.