frog's SXSWi 2011 Party Wrap Up

For the 13th year in a row frog hosted the official opening party for SXSW Interactive, the geek-love tech fest in Austin, Texas. This year's theme was “Playing with the Time of Light" and that's just what we did with a number of interactive Microsoft Xbox Kinect hacks, including a Human Tetris knock off and an Angry Birds mash up.

With a crowd of 5,000 and a line that wrapped around the block from Brazos to 4th, badge holders were eager to see what kind of tech magic frog, led by our fearless hacker, Principal Technologist Jared Ficklin, had in store for them. If you weren't there to party with us, check out the photos and videos of some of the featured hacks below.

Kinect Hack: Wall Panic 3000

Wall panic 3000 is a casual game inspired by Japanese game show Human Tetris, in which contestants contort their bodies to fit through human-shaped holes in approaching walls. The better you do, the more difficult it gets. 



Life-Sized Step Sequencer


Guests got their own groups together to create a symphony of noise on this crowd-sized instrument. The step sequencer allows you to step on a 2" high square to generate a music sample and a beat.



Kinect Hack: Exquisite Corpse

Guests got to be Picasso for a night by using their hand gestures to doodle on this collaborative digital mural. 


Hungry Birds

This wildly entertaining Angry Bird/ Hungry Hippo mash up pitted 2 players against each other.

Kinect Hack: Shadow Play


Party goers busted out their best dance moves with Shadow Play, a hack that fuses your body motion to a series of sound visualizations.

A World of Tweets: SXSW Edition

Based on the success of our global app, we displayed this SXSW Edition of A World of Tweets. This is a real-time visualization of geolocated tweets around Austin. Each time someone tweets, a drop falls to their exact location. The more tweets there are from a specific place, the "hotter" or redder it becomes. Check it out here.