SH4_Cover_L1-for webIf you are in Austin, we hope you are having a fantastic time at South by Southwest Interactive.

It’s one of the most thought-provoking tech conferences in the world and it continues to draw fascinating speakers and attendees. Having so many creative people in one place leads to a great time and lots of ideas percolating and perhaps serendipitous moments that could lead to the next big innovation.

SXSW is the birthplace of our print edition. This is our second annual SXSW edition of Silicon Hills News. We launched the magazine last year after a successful Kickstarter campaign. This year’s magazine features a lot of photos of local startups and some fascinating profiles on Bob Metcalfe, Honest Dollar, People Pattern, EvoSure and Vast.com and feature stories on perks,funding, women-led ventures and startups to watch.

Silicon Hills News held another Kickstarter campaign at the end of last year to produce two 2015 tech calendars with a focus on startups in Austin and San Antonio. The photo on the cover of this magazine is of the team at Austin-based OneSpot, an online advertising network for brands and companies. The company, founded in 2012, was featured in our last issue and that photo is displayed for the month of March in the Austin Tech Calendar. John Davidson, a local Austin photographer, took that photo and many of the other ones of Austin startups in this issue of the magazine including the photo of Bob Metcalfe at UT, Henry Yoshida and William Hurley of Honest Dollar, Laura Bosworth with TeVido Biodevices, the team from Clarify.io and the founders of EvoSure. And Gary Hartman in San Antonio took the photo of Magaly Chocano of Sweb Development and the photos of the Geekdom-based startups Promoter.io, TrueAbility, YupiCal and Storific.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to our Kickstarter campaigns last year and to all of our advertisers and sponsors of Silicon Hills News. And thank you to the writers of this issue Susan Lahey and Tim Green. And I also did a few stories myself.

This year, Susan and I will be covering South By. So please look online daily for our stories. Last year, nearly 33,000 people attended SXSW Interactive, which featured 2,400 speakers and 1,100 conference sessions. This year, the show takes place from March 14-17th and is expected to be even larger. Also, this year, the SXSW Startup Village has doubled in size and takes up the fourth and sixth floors at the Hilton Hotel across from the Austin Convention Center.

If you’re looking for a paper copy of the Silicon Hills News magazine, you can find them at Fogo de Chao’s Entrepreneur’s Lounge, the Austin Chamber of Commerce, Capital Factory, Techstars, Austin Technology Council and at various panels and places at SXSW. We’re also going to drop some copies by We Work Coworking. And if you see Susan or me, just ask for a copy.