2007 Interactive Keynotes

Keynote Conversation with Phil Torrone and Limor Fried on Sunday, March 11

Phil Torrone of MAKE Magazine and Limor Fried of the Eyebeam Technology & Research Center will participate in a Keynote Conversation on Sunday, March 11 at 2:00 pm.

Torrone has authored and contributed to numerous books on programming, mobile devices, design, multimedia, hardware hacking and is a columnist for Popular Science. He also produces the MAKE audio and video content on the Makezine.com site.

Fried is a New York based engineer, artist and hacker. She recently received her Master of Engineering in EECS from MIT where she designed and implemented technologies to help people defend their personal space from annoying cell phones and televisions.

Dan Rather to Keynote on Monday, March 12

Award-winning television personality Dan Rather will reflect on how emerging technology is shaping the news in a special Keynote Interview on Monday, March 12 at 2:00 pm.

A native Texan, he made his mark covering the Kennedy Assassination and reinforced this reputation for hard-hitting reporting during the Watergate investigation. Rather served as anchor at the CBS Evening News from 1981 through 2005.

In July 2006, he became a producer and a host at the cable network HDNet.

Dan Rather photo by John Filo.

Will Wright to Keynote on Tuesday, March 13

SXSW is very excited to announce that Will Wright will serve as the keynote speaker on Tuesday, March 13.

Wright can be considered the Bono of the video game industry — in fact, he was the first game designer to be profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and has been named to Entertainment Weekly's "It List" of "the 100 most creative people in entertainment" and Time Digital's "Digital 50." He is probably best known for creating the critically acclaimed series, The Sims, which has sold more than 70 million games around the world and is one of the few video games that has attracted an audience that is equally split between men and women. The series is one of the most successful in the world, having generated more than $1.6 billion in sales. Wright is now working on his newest game, SPORE. As noted in a recent feature in the New York Times Magazine, "No one doubts that the game [SPORE] will be the most ambitious work in the history of this new medium, whenever it is released. But for it to succeed as a game, it can't just be complex. It also has to be fun. If anyone can pull it off, it's Will Wright...There is probably no one alive who has a comparable track record of combining arcane scientific theories and compulsively addictive entertainment." Photo courtesy of Electronic Arts.