THERE WAS a significant increase in the number of Irish companies showcasing and participating at this week’s South By Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference in Austin, Texas.
The conference, which provided a launch pad in the last number of years for such social media innovations as Twitter and Foursquare, attracts about 20,000 technology and media professionals to the city every March.
According to Enterprise Ireland, 30 Irish companies were represented at SXSWi. The agency showcased at the conference for the first time in 2011 with 17 Irish participants. This year it hosted a booth at the trade show,, organised various networking events and provided financial support to the delegates.
Companies operating under the Enterprise Ireland umbrella included such start-ups as LocalSocial, Zartis, Relevenz and SeedsUp, a number of digital and development agencies including CKSK, Rua and Kavaleer, and return visitors from last year including Windmill Lane and Storyful.
The Irish delegation also included Minister of State for Research and Innovation, Seán Sherlock, who said he was “looking forward to engaging, sharing ideas and joining the inspiring conversations”.
In addition to the 10 Irish acts in town for the SXSW music festival, which began yesterday, there were also a number of music-related tech companies showcasing their wares.
Dublin-based start-up 45Sound, which match fan videos from a band’s live show with top-quality audio, is one of the eight finalists in this year’s Music Accelerator competition for new tech tech start-ups, which is held in conjunction with Microsoft BizSpark.
New online entertainment hub VenueOne will be filming and streaming a number of live shows from Austin over the next few days.
Seán O’Sullivan is from LocalSocial, a mobile marketing tool using proximity-based technology to allow retailers and business owners to offer users rewards and incentives when they visit the premises. O’Sullivan was making his SXSWi debut; he admitted he was not initially sure about the merits of attending the conference.
“I do a lot of conferences in Europe and the US, a lot of the standard mobile tech conferences, and this was really not on my radar,” he said.
“I knew that SXSW had been instrumental in the launch of Twitter and I always associated it and Austin with music so I thought that Interactive was just tacked on to the end of music.
“It was word of mouth from a couple of Irish companies who were here last year which brought me out. They were all ‘with a product like that, you’ve got to go there’.”
Mr O’Sullivan said it had already been very worthwhile in terms of meeting “three or four very instrumental people”.
LocalSocial was one of the Irish companies that participated at the SXSW offshoot, Austin-International Tech Summit, last weekend.
This featured representatives from local Austin tech companies as well as delegates from France, Singapore, France, Britain, Ireland and other countries.
