The Spring, Austin, Texas

AustinBlogger | AustinCast | AustinTweet | AustinLifestyles | TourofTexas | The Spring Blog

Excuse our dust!  We’re remodeling Spring.net and it won’t be much longer till we’re full functioning again!

You’ll see quirky code and stuff while we work on this during the week of Dec 21-27.

video from NetRootsNation and SEMforSMB with commentary and SXSW!

We were at SXSX March 13-23 2009 and we’re pushing the videos out on our
http://austinlifestyles.com tv show and video podcast.

Full hour interview with Tamar Weinberg of Mashable. Tamar Weinberg tech blogger search reporterLifehackercontributor social networking junkie schwag addict conference attendee and presenter at SXSW is Mashable’s  Director of Community.

In this interview at conjunctured coworking, Grace talks to Lindsey Allen.

Rock singer and actress Grace Sharington (dremana is her band talks to Wordpress veteran and educator Lindsey Allen (exploringnewmedia.com) at the Nov 3 Wordpress meetup at Conjunctured Coworking, Austin, TX. Be sure to catch the rest of Grace’s “Night at Conjunctured” series on http://austincast.com/blog/ and http://austinlifestyles.com/

The following came from Mashable, who voted AustinCast one of Austin’s top 13 blogs.  The mashable article was written by Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins who will be on Spring.net soon doing a podcast interview.  Spring.net is currently in talks with Mark about a joint venture at SXSW (clue, it involves a tricaster).

AustinCast – This site is a frequently updated hub for video and audio interviews of local area movers and shakers in the technology scene. He’s published over 100 video interviews with the likes of Veronica Belmont, Pete Cashmore, Zadi Diaz, Cali Lewis, Lindsay Campbell, and Leah Culver as well as a number of local heros to the Austin scene.

But who were the other 12? Here’s a rundown of Mashable’s picks with our observations on how these blogs are doing.

Most of us that have been to one or more of the SummerMash events have been really jazzed about the turnout in all the various cities which aren’t typically considered regular hot spots for technology.  Ever since the first MashMeet we had earlier this year in Los Angeles, Pete has been a big fan of the area and it’s interesting oncoming convergence of entertainment and technology. Seattle was described by our Sean P. Aune as a somewhat more low-key locale, “Comfortable and intimate, you had no problems striking up a conversation.”

Of course I’m still waiting for the firsthand reports to roll in from Boston, Miami and tonight’s NYC event. As for me and my SummerMash experience, I’m still riding high from the revelation of exactly what’s going on over in Austin, which is a burgeoning startup community.

As a way of letting the larger audience of Mashable () in on what it is going on there exactly, we thought we’d put together a list of blogs and companies and compile their blogs into an OPML file.

Keep in mind, this list is compiled based on the help of a few folks, the business cards I was handed at the SummerMash party, and what other resources I was able to dig up from perusing recent blog posts on the blogs I found.
Undoubtably, we’ve missed a few resources, so we’re going to take a few passes at this list.  In the OPML file, you’ll find all that we have so far, both corporate RSS links as well as Austin area pundits.  We’ll profile the pundits this post, but if we missed anyone, we’ll include them in the next release of the file, and make sure to mention them in the next post (assuming, of course, that the list doesn’t get overwhelmingly large and grow to the size of an encyclopedia tome).

Austin 3.0 – A website designed to give the “younger Austin Geek a place to see what is going on in Austin.” Created by Kristine Gloria (pictured to right) and Joey Lopez, the site is aimed towards fostering more communication between the various “geeky groups around town.” Kristine works in high tech public relations, and Joey is a social media and website consultant serving the Austin area as well as the curator of a local high-end audio store.

Austin Startup – Austin Startup is simply a news site that chronicles the goings ons and creation of new tech sector business in the Austin area. In terms of the Silicon Valley centric news blogs, they are most closely akin to VentureBeat’s coverage, of course tailored towards the Austin scene. They cover everything from Web 2.0 offerings to CleanTech, semiconducter news, media moves, IPOs and other deals as well as rumor patrol and editorial.

AustinCast – This site is a frequently updated hub for video and audio interviews of local area movers and shakers in the technology scene. He’s published over 100 video interviews with the likes of Veronica Belmont, Pete Cashmore, Zadi Diaz, Cali Lewis, Lindsay Campbell, and Leah Culver as well as a number of local heros to the Austin scene.

Austin360 – This is the official New Media offering from Austin’s reigning Old Media institution, the Austin-American Statesman. The tech bloggers there at the Statesman appear to be active members of the tech community, and their coverage reflects that. While they manage to catch a lot of the younger culture and the Web 2.0 community, they also are responsible for covering other area giants like AMD and Dell.

GeekAustin – Probably one of Austin’s oldest tech blogs, LinearB’ and Orion have been chronicling the gaming, business and tech communities of Austin since 2000.

Michelle’s Blog – Michelle Greer is someone I’ve had a number of close encounters with (I stood around as part of Matt Mullenweg’s entourage in Dallas with her for a while, and was packed in like a sardine in a car after SummerMash with her after the event), but never have had the opportunity to sit down and chat with her and get to know her.  From what I gather, though, she’s a very active leader and figurehead to the new, young Austin Tech community, and has her hands in just about everything.  Her personal blog reflects all the myriad of ventures she’s involved in there.

Josh Dilworth – Josh is over at PR group Porter Novelli, based in their Austin office. Amongst all his many work related projects like SXSW, he has quite visible presence amongst those in the online Semantic and AI community as well as an avid participant in a number of widely used social media tools. I was recently a guest on a podcast of his, Falken’s Maze.

John Erik Metcalf - John Erik Metcalf is a major figure in the Austin scene as well, as he’s a co-founder in one of the town’s two co-working spaces: Conjunctured as well as a board member and co-founder of Texas Ventures. His blog presents a personalized perspective of growing a tech business in Austin as well as providing interesting material of interest to everyone involved in a tech startup regardless of location.

Social Media Club Austin – The site describes itself as “part think tank, part curiosity, all new media” and is a repository for all that is going on in the “business networking event” scene for the Austin area.

Some Assembly Required – a self-described “business development and networking blog” authored by Thom Singer. The site occasionally touches on local issue, but focuses on professional branding, social media marketing and the sales side of social media. Thom is the author of three books on the topic, most recently Some Assembly Required: A Networking Guide for Women.

The Jeff Beckham Weblog – Jeff is an Austin area blogger who focuses his posts on the evolution of media, specifically in relationship to how the Internet is forcing transformation on not just media industries but “the word itself.”

Door64 Blog – The blog for Door64, the forum and community portal for the Austin-area tech community.