Phizzflop would be a more apply tittle, Microsoft's involvement here at
SXSW this year has been a disaster. After the
IE8 announcement you would have thought they would have been welcome with open arms and a big Texas Yahoo!
Everyone at the conference got a 30 day time bomb version of Expression, but most were tossed away as if they were spam. There is a booth in the hallway with a very helpful staff, but the main attraction is Guitar Hero and a email station. Today is the last day of SXSW Interactive and there is a mound of t-shirts and tons of swag just sitting there.
Last night was the Phizzpop Challenge with an entire 6th street bar rented-out with free drink and food. The space wasn't a third full and they were admitting the homeless just to full up space.
I stopped by the booth this morning to commensurate and was told that it was
a great party and I'm sure that's what will be told to the people who sign the checks back in Redmond. When I asked why no one had blogged about the contest result given there are thousands of bloggers in Austin this week they had no answer.
This is my forth year at SXSW,
Jeff Sandquist knows I'm part of the community at
SXSW and his team builds
social media sites at Microsoft so why can't they communicate?
After writing this post I went back to the Silverlight booth and talked to Rob who pointed me to the
SXSW mash-up site Pulse a shining demo in Silverlight - cool...wish I'd known about it a week ago, I could have helped spread the news.