The SXSW Interactive Festival Annual Web Awards, now in their 10th year, have just announced the finalists!

From across the globe submit websites are submitted that have been launched or completely redesigned in 2006. Categories include: Amusement, Art, Blog, Business (for profit), Business (Green/not for profit), CSS, Classic, Community, Educational Resource, Experimental, Film/TV, Motion Graphics, Music, Personal Portfolio, Student, Tech Achievement. The finalists have just been revealed and the winners will being announced on March 11.

This year Wellington Interactive company RESN is a finalistist twice – in the Business (for profit) catagory for their Resn 2B2 company website, and in the Music section for their awesome The Black Seeds website.

And a truly ‘interactive’ event they of course have the ‘People’s Choice Award’. Members of the online public can vote once daily until midnight on Friday, March 2 – so vote for your favorite finalist for 2007!

The SXSW Festival?

South by Southwest (SXSW, Inc.) is a private company based in Austin, Texas, that builds and delivers conference and festival events for entertainment and related media industry professionals. Since 1987, SXSW has produced the Music and Media Conference & Festival. In 1994, as the entertainment business grew, SXSW added conferences and festivals for the film industry (SXSW Film) as well as the interactive media (SXSW Interactive Festival). The three industry events converge in Austin during a Texas-sized week, mirroring the ever increasing convergence of entertainment/media outlets.

SXSW Interactive 2007 will take place March 9 – 13, 2007

The SXSW Interactive Festival, as they say ‘uncovers the best new websites and celebrates those who are building and implementing tomorrow’s online trends! Acting like ‘…an incubator of new, cutting-edge technology.’ SXSW Interactive features presentations and panel sessions with leading industry people. Also, a Trade Show & Exhibition (e.g. ‘networking’). The newest element of the 2007 event is ScreenBurn, which adds specific gaming industry programming as well as a two-day Arcade to the mix.

If you, like me, living on the other side of the world and unable to attend, I recommend checking out the Interactive Finalists… well, all finalists actually… but I found especially inspirational… the Freeindie.com (music), superfluousbanter.org (blog), oskaarchitects.com (CSS) Hungry Suitcase (motion graphics) and AT&T Digital Lifestyle Center (motion graphics) websites. Also the SXSW Toolbox! And vote for the Peoples Choice!