Mobile Pie have just come back from an outstanding trip to the States to attend South By South West, a conference and festival of film, music and interactive based in Austin and it’s wonderfully confusingly designed Convention Center. We were obviously most interested in the interactive section, in which respected individuals of the digital media world led presentations, panel discussions, conversations, and also ’salons’, which were a bit like the conversations except some people sat on the floor.
We were joined by plenty of UK companies as part of the Digital Mission, a scheme run by Chinwag and supported by UKTI which allows businesses like Mobile Pie to explore opportunities overseas and maybe attract investment. Also it was a pleasure to travel over with many other Bristol representatives including several from our home the Pervasive Media Studio.
You can read our collective blogs here, which offer many different perspectives on the event. For Mobile Pie the big takeaway message was that the opportunity for mobile content was in rude health and we were inspired by some of the speakers into producing some truly outstanding and innovative work in the coming year. That included the creators of some acclaimed indie games such as Braid and World of Goo and all time classics like Deus Ex, so expect lots more game content coming out of the Mobile Pie factory in 2009!
There was lots of entertainment around, including the Screenburn Game Arcade, where we witnessed an almost perfect Guitar Hero rendition of Dragonforce’s ‘Through the Fire and Flames’ in expert mode, Halo’s Master Chief doing the robot dance, and The Go Game which made me talk to a bear and pretend to fall over.
Every night there were several parties to choose from, with open bars to ease the networking process. We met some brilliant people, made great contacts and came away thoroughly exhausted but with renewed vigour and motivation! Shame we couldn’t stay for the music week but we’ve got work to do!
