South by Southwest...Airlines!

[lreynolds]

Members of the Blog Team are heading down to Austin this weekend to kick-start their first official foray into the informational/sensory overload that is SXSW. I’ve always thought the Interactive portion of the festival was one of the best-kept secrets in the Web 2.0 World—I myself only learned about it through volunteering there during my spring break from the University of Texas back in the day.

Well, it’s not exactly a secret anymore, as 2008 was their biggest year ever. More than 10,000 people attended the festival, and I have a feeling those numbers will be surpassed this year. Who exactly attends these kinds of things, besides the “Nuts” team? Well, that’s exactly what makes this event so unique. It’s a mishmash of content developers, web designers, programmers, bloggers, wireless innovators, gamers, tech entrepreneurs, and investors—just to name a few. Not to mention you might see the Craig from Craigslist or Mark Zuckerberg (the Facebook guy) wandering around.

Who are we most excited about seeing? Tony Hsieh from Zappos, John Adams from Twitter, Chris Anderson from Wired magazine—plus many, many more. As for listing all the panels we can’t wait to attend…well, that could take days.

Southwest Airlines is absolutely ecstatic to be a part of this gathering of creative minds, and we’d love for you to vicariously attend through us. Follow us on Twitter @SouthwestAir as we share pictures, mind-boggling new ideas, and the fascinating people we’ll meet throughout the week. And welcome to Austin, Texas!

[Anonymous1061]

Hey Lindsey! Thanks for the Mickey's Diner pitch. It was a wonderful evening with you and your fellow Southwest ding-a-lings. Stop in again when you're flying thru and let out a breath. I enjoyed reading some of your blogs - it's obvious that you enjoy what you're doing by how you write. Safe journey to you my friend. Dee - the beverage girl

[Colleen6]

I just wanted to let Southwest know that you guys are GRRREAT and I'm nuts about you! My father was recently in the hospital and critically ill. I ended up changing my ticket dates 3 times due to his health condition. I can't tell you how much burden was lifted off me by not having to pay for changing my ticket & being able to stay longer with my Father as needed. Not only do you not charge for baggage and ticket changes but you lead the airline world in all your policies. I could have flown with another airline but it ticks me off to no end that we'd have to pay for a suitcase. Give me a break, who typically doesn't have at leat one suitcase? I think this will come back to bite the airlines. I will always support & fly Southwest above all other airlines becuase of your policies. You deserve my unwaving support. In addition, I'm rarely late & even arrive ahead of time with every flight I've flown with you. The friendlyness & ''light'' atmosphere with your staff is the best. You guys keep it up! Thanks, Colleen

[dcomdan]

I have to tell you the Airline that I loved, is now just another airline. SWA advertised great rates last week. I went online, and guess what, the site couldn't handle the capicity. I tried over 10 times to get online on Friday to book a trip for this week. No luck. i did see that I could have booked my trip for less than half of what it is now being advertised. I checked at various times over the weekend and got the same Southwest message about the site having issues. I am sorry, but this is not my problem and now I have to pay double. I called reservation and the woman I spoke with said, "I'm sorry sir, what am I supposed to do?" I told her, don't worry, I have been a supporter of SWA for years, before it was "cool" to fly SWA. I have flown enough to earn a couple of year long companion passes. This is not what I expected out of my old airline. Shame on you for such carless customer service. It wasn't my fault your website couldn't handle the traffic. I work in the IT industry. There is no excuse for a multi billion dollar company not having enough capacity on its web site. I will say one thing. If you are going to charge me 700+ to fly your airline for a weekend trip to florida, why would I drive halfway across Metro Chicago for the privilage. I can get lousy pricing and bad service at O'Hare. Do I sound angry?!?! Dan K.

[jeepy]

Hey Southwest blog team, I signed up here just to get this message through. Your regular company website doesn't have an e-mail address. 😞 But anyway, I wanted to show you something positively AWESOME! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiXGm_TiRVQ&eurl=http://thebandwidthhog.blogspot.com/2009/03/rapping-flight-attendant-southwest.html This video was posted on the popular website Reddit.com (it's like digg.com only smarter) yesterday and received 436 upvotes and 70 comments. I think it's awesome, and a lot of other people do too! Anyway, I really really rilly think this guy would be great, positively great to have in a TV commercial. The video's been seen 25 thousand times on YouTube and has been up since December 08. -Jeepy

[Anonymous1326]

Missed you at the show, but SW is definitely way cooler than other Texas-based mainline carriers (AA, CO) who had no significant web presence at the show (or on the internet, for that matter). I am waiting to see some cooperation between the airlines and the new batch of travel planning sites - like TripWiser, Nileguide, Realtravel and mine - http://www.tripcart.com/usa-regions/Southeastern-Texas,Romantic-Vacations-Getaways.aspx