SXSW -- South by Southwest -- is a set of film, technology, and music festivals/conferences that take place in March, in Austin, Texas. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_By_Southwest)
This article by the Altimeter Group's Chris Silva and Jeremiah Owyang presents their views of the conference's themes --
- Hardware was king this year (SXSW is typically focused on software and services)
- iPhone users switching to Android
- Mobility was about supporting the enterprise (i.e., work)
- Major brand presence --
and technologies, including -- 
- Gesture-based computing
- 3D printing and replication
- Proximity-based and near field communications
- Collaborative economy
- Android
- Space exploration
- Augmented and virtual reality
- Micromedia (e.g., Vine)
- Quantified self (personal anaytics -- e.g., Nike FuelBand) --
as well as technologies on life support (good riddance, QR codes).
The piece matrices each technology across examples, disruption potential, and import (what it means).
Altimeter's Take: The Technologies That Matter from SXSW 2013
Posted on March 13th, 2013
Technologies are Emerging at an Increased Rate –Making Tracking Harder than Ever
SXSW is no longer about disruptive technologies being launched, instead, it’s a mainstream, it’s a mainsteam festival, actually) and digital leaders at today’s large corporations are already present, and you should be too. In fact, the amount of data created about the topic had nearly double year over year. Altimeter Group was well represented with 9 analysts or researchers at SxSWi this year, with a large team in Austin tracking what’s disruptive. Long known for launches of big names such as Twitter and Foursquare, as well as those with more hype that long-term staying power like Highlight – would be past its prime and recycling yesterday’s news. If you weren’t able to attend, Altimeter has captured the salient highlights to showcase here:
See the link for full content.