SXSW (South By South West) this year is the first year that I covered it solely for Hi-Tech Chic and it proved to be a very successful SXSW thus far as press. It was also the first time I did LIVE broadcasting via twitter and Facebook which was also an interesting experience for those listening, commenting and following my LIVE broadcast. I must admit cell coverage was non-existent during SX so I dropped the broadcast every so often. My apologies who got dropped off the broadcast and thanks for tuning in!
My SXSW press pass was only for interactive and I milked it for all it was worth, believe you me. The convention center was actually calm and not as crowded as I thought it would be. Inside the convention center was the Bud Light, Mazda and Esurance booths who were there the entire festival. After getting my badge at the convention center I started making my way to Rainey Street where the Intel House was located. 
On my way to Intel I got intrigued by the Carvana which is a car vending machine and I HAD to check it out. I had never heard of Carvana until SXSW furthermore they opened their first Austin, Texas location that is less than 2 miles away from my condo!
For those who don’t know what Carvana is it’s an online marketplace for buying and selling used cars. While at SXSW Carvana had this HUGE vending machine with a full size car inside and SXSW attendees got to shake these two hand polls to get your car of your choice. Of course its not a real car and unless I’m a weebbowoble I sadly won’t fit in the tiny matchbox car, nice souvenir though. Here are two videos of me “Shaking it up” from two different angles while at SXSW. I promise they are not naughty but more innocent though it doesn’t look that way!
The Intel event was one of my favorites because they had an open bar, amongst some very cool AI technology products. All joking aside I did I spend time with AMD while at GDC in San Francisco so I decided to give some mad love to Intel during SXSW.
The Age Prediction demo using facial recognition software was cool except it had my age way off! Another cool demo at the Intel AI Lounge was the Pikxizo software that changes a normal picture to a work of art. There were several other interactive demo’s throughout the Intel AI Lounge but it got so busy in there.
This concludes part one of SXSW; stay tuned for more recap articles from SX throughout the week.
Source: Fortune, Intel, Carvana, SXSW
