The South by Southwest (SXSW) Conferences & Festivals will kick off on March 8, 2013 and will run through the 17th.  The conference, which spans over a week, is divided into three sub-events namely Interactive, Film and Music.

WHERE to go

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SXSW is happening at the Austin Convention Center.  If you’ll be attending the conference for the first time, you might find yourself getting lost in the sea of attendees and overwhelmed by how big the venue is.  So better arm yourself with the official SXSW mobile apps for iOS and Android devices.  The SXSW Go features event schedules, maps, search, tradeshow and even be able to share your schedule with friends or other SXSW attendees.

And here’s a tip for next year: remember to register early for the event to get your SXSW badge.  Registering early will also allow you to get better flight and accommodation deals.

To keep up to date with the latest SXSW news, you can subscribe to the monthly email newsletters and social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and more.

WHAT to pack

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Remember to pack clothes for every occasion, since SXSW is an opportunity for you to meet new friends, expand your business contacts, and maybe even get investors interested in what your company has to offer.  And since the venue is so huge, you’d better be nice to your feet and wear comfortable shoes.

SXSW Interactive has really grown over the years, becoming a hot spot for startups to gain fame and fortune.  Twitter was launched at SXSW in 2007, and the Interactive festival has become a launch pad for others like Foursquare and Gowalla.  It seems every year brings another breakthrough app and just last year, two social discovery apps, uberlife and Highlight, made a huge splash at the event.

BREAKTHROUGH app will be…

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This year, the focus still seems to be on ambient-aware apps, as two more apps are banking on serendipity for their success.  Speeker is an app that lets you discover what’s happening around your location,share your opinions and photos with people at your location now, or those passing by at a later time.  Then there’s Collaborizm, an app fosters serendipitous discovery and offers intelligent matchmaking for projects and collaborators, simplified project management and communication tools and a diverse community based on shared values.

Then there’s the fun apps such as Hater which lets you share to the world everything you hate from music, celebrities, politicians, restaurant food or service or just anything you generally hate.  It beats Facebook’s “Like” since not everything in this world is actually likable.  Remember playing “Not it” when you were a kid?  Now there’s an app for that and if you’re a team leader and you find it hard to delegate tasks, you can just use this app when a task needs to be done, and your team will be alerted if the game is in play, the last one to respond will be the loser responsible for the task at hand.

Checkout other startups in SXSW’s Startup Village on the Fourth Floor of the Austin Downtown Hilton, 500 East 4th Street, with satellite events happening at various locations around downtown Austin.

THINGS to do

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Gamers are also welcome at the event, as Nintendo sponsors the SXSW Gaming Expo where attendees are welcomed to hands-on demos and networking opportunities.

SXSW attendees will enjoy hearing speakers talk about The Copyright Era Meets the Open-Source World, Indigenous Tweets, Visible Voices & Technology, You Are Exposed – Current State of Online Security, Zombies, Run! Transforming Fitness, Games & Story, Startup DNA: Hacking the Code.  There a lot of great sessions happening at SXSW so you better fix your schedule in order to attend sessions that interests you the most.

And of course, an event like SXSW would be very dull without entertainment, so get ready to laugh out loud with Comedy at SXSW and see live performances from different artists of various genres at the event.