(L-R) Julie Germany, Riley Triggs and Tim Ziegler

The SXSW Interactive Festival Advisory Board consists of industry experts, as well as veteran members of the community that come together in Austin each spring. Advisory Board members are very involved in helping select the best of the best proposals, which SXSW receives each year through the SXSW PanelPicker. We asked Advisory Board members Julie Germany of DCI Group and Campaign Tech Conference, architect and design thinker Riley Triggs and Tim Ziegler of The Austin Post the following question...

"What are you most excited about for SXSW Interactive 2013?"

Keynotes

Julie Barko Germany: Elon Musk. I think we need to think big and continue dreaming. Going to space is one of those dreams for so many people.

Riley Triggs : Tina Roth Eisenberg. Tina has a great sensibility towards design and the world and getting to hear her speak in person will be a tremendous treat.

Tim Ziegler: Elon Musk – such a big thinker, from PayPal to Tesla to space exploration, plus his experience spans Internet "epochs" to give him great perspective. (I also heart The Oatmeal.)

Featured Sessions

Julie: I'm completely intrigued by Jiro Dreams of Game Design. I like games. I LOVE food. And Sukiyabashi Jiro is one of my favorite restaurants. I'm looking forward to seeing how this session unfolds and what lessons I can learn from the worlds of food and gaming.

Riley: Get ready for a world where everything is computed. Stephen Wolfram is addressing an important shift from developing technology to creating good uses for it. We've done this several times before in history, and we are at the edge of another of these cusps - it's about time we use all of this technology to enhance our well-being.

Tim: In order of total awesomeness: Tim Berners-Lee!, Nate Silver, Bre Pettis and David Carr.

Panels

Julie: Privacy: Who Is In? Who Is Out? is my "meat and potatoes" panel pick. It touches upon on of the most important policy and regulatory issues facing the digital industry in the issue. As members of the digital and technology worlds, we can't ignore that. We have to look for ways to actively engage with Washington, DC as well as with our customers on this issue.

Riley: Revealing Basketball's 10 Hidden Positions. This sort of data crunching is how we will start to understand our world in the years to come. By seeing how our rigid structures and assumptions about the world are different than we generally believe, we will be able to act more appropriately and more creatively in situations that are seemingly closed to change.

Tim: Beyond Squishy: The Principles of Adaptive Design – very current topic I'm interested in IEEE/W3C Open Future Meetup with Tim Berners-Lee – so awesome to have TBL, plus a great topic.

Workshops, Book Readings, Meet Ups

Riley: Yes, and... A Design Thinking Bootcamp. Interested to see how design thinking is being delivered at Stanford.

Tim: Forget Native: Learn to Write HTML5 Mobile Apps – an incredibly current topic, as HTML5 allows coding of the same page to work great on mobile, and mobile penetration on sites like the one I run is heading for 30%. Space Social featuring NASA – all the others (many of which are great) are with people I interact with all the time. But talking to NASA is especially cool.

By Date: Friday, March 8 sessions

Riley: Building the Touchy-Feely World of Tearaway. Anything that smooths the space between virtual and physical is hot and a signal of what the future has to offer.

By Date: Saturday, March 9 sessions

Riley: 1 Coffee Pot, Many Disciplines: Why Space Matters. This just makes a lot of sense, and it is essentially about learning to organize our world as if we were humans again like we did before technology made it possible for us not to...

Tim: NewsBots

By Date: Sunday, March 10 sessions

Riley: Pitchforks & Printed Electronics

Tim: New Standards for a New Era of Journalism

By Date: Monday, March 11 sessions

Riley: This is a Future15 session, Smart Cities & Connected Objects.

Tim: The Future of 3D Printing (though I don't know the panelists). Scott McNealy is my runner-up.

By Date: Tuesday, March 12 sessions

Riley: Breaking the Mold with Meaningful Design

Tim: Esther Dyson, Release 0.9

Trade Show

Riley: Love seeing latest at the Gaming Expo, and enjoy meeting the people behind the booths at the trade shows.

What trend / meme / idea / product will emerge from SXSW 2013?

Riley: Convergence of physical and virtual.

Tim: Maps and Mobile to me. Why Digital Maps Can Reboot Cultural History, Maps as the Emotional Connective Tissue, Mobile Saturday: Retail Is Going Mobile, Addicted to Mobile, the New Cigarette and Practical Agile Mobile Design.

Thanks to Julie, Riley and Tim for contributing to this post. Stay tuned to the blog, follow us, friend us, or add us for more Advisory Board recommendations in the coming days...