[tor-reports] Trip Report: SXSW

[Kelley Misata]

Sitting in the airport (again), it feels like the perfect time to write a
trip report.  Over the past 4 days, Karen and I have been attending South
by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive festival in Austin, TX.  The Interactive
part of the larger SXSW conference is dedicated to technology innovations
and the challenges and inspirations which surround it.  It's a even full of
technology evangelists, innovators, big thinkers as well as journalists,
media and film experts.  It was a very productive 3 - 4 days which included
the following highlights:

   1. Presentations:  Karen was invited to SXSW by IEEE to participate as a
   panelist on their session, Tips and Tools for Protected Connection.  Other
   panelists included Robin Wilton from the Internet Society and a director
   from Forrester Research.  She did a fantastic job and once the slides from
   the event are posted we will get a copy as they included lots of great
   information we could use for our training and other educational events.  It
   was an excellent panel in a room filled with approximately 70 people.
   2. Funder Outreach:  The Knight Foundation generously offered us office
   hours in their booth at the Exhibit Hall as well as invitations to all
   their evening events.  It was very productive face-time with the Knight
   Foundation team to share with them highlights from the journalists training
   in Iceland (which they supported) and a chance to share with them our
   submission ideas for the Knight Foundation News Challenge.  Thanks to John
   Bracken, Michael Maness, Marie Gilot, Michael Bolden and others on the
   Knight team for the great conversations!
   3. Other Outreach:  Other connections made during our time at SXSW
   included journalists from the Texas Tribune (interested in journalist
   training events), SecureAuth, USAID, Director from France Television (who
   very excited about our upcoming dev conference in Paris and would like to
   arrange a journalist training event before or after the dev conference),
   Bitpay (got a new point of contact to reach out to regarding our current
   donation limits) and others of whom, I'll let Karen expand on.
   4. Press Interview:  Karen did a fantastic (taped) interview with NBC
   New Digital (Matt Rivera).  It was so informative he asked her to stay to
   do a 30 second, "What is Tor", sound bite to use for another project he is
   working on.  In addition, Karen and I did a taped interview with Josefine
   Campbell from PineTribe, on the role of women in security and technology
   organizations.
   5. Sessions:  We attended several informative sessions including the
   keynote sessions with involving Edward Snowden and the ACLU on the issues
   to privacy and surveillance and Chelsea Clinton's talk on technology
   innovations and policy.

Thank you goes to IEEE and Knight Foundation for a very busy and productive
three days and for including us in their SXSW events!  Karen and I are
already brainstorming about session ideas (and crypto party events) we plan
to propose to SXSW organizers when planning for 2015 begins in July - we
feel strongly SXSW is a great venue to expand Tor's presence and funding
opportunities.

Kelley


-- 
*Kelley Misata*
*Outreach and Communications*
*The Tor Project*
*www.torproject.org <http://www.torproject.org>*
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