The huge “South by South West” conference happened last week in Austin, Texas. The yearly festival has music, film and “interactive” sections. The “Interactive” component is a large conference in its own right bringing together “Digital Creatives” and those interested in online media, games and mobile media.
I like the term “Digital Creative”. It describes a well established segment of media culture that media educators have not yet really acknowledged. Web design, games production and the like are still considered to be part of the Technology Education part of the curriculum in many schools. But increasingly, media students are wanting to work in areas beyond digital video production - bread and butter for media teachers.
Media educators are slowly embracing blogging, podcasting, web design and production, video games and mobile media, but there’s a whole lot more we could be doing to apply a media education framework to the study of these media through reflective participation.
Events like SXSW demonstrate the momentum that this aspect of media culture has gained in recent years. Check it out at: http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/
Many of the panel presentations will be podcast, so it is possible to get a little taste of SXSW, even if we couldn't be there in person.
Also check out the archived podcasts from 2006:
http://2006.sxsw.com/coverage/podcasts/
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