San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor is meeting Thursday morning with Austin Mayor Steve Adler to put an end to the Taco War.

The battle began on Feb. 19th when Matthew Sedacca, a writer originally from New York, declared Austin the best place for breakfast tacos in an article in Eater titled “How Austin Became the Home of the Crucial Breakfast Taco.”

That made the folks in San Antonio, 75 miles down the road, upset to say the least. They even filed a Change.org petition requesting Austin to exile Sedacca.

Things escalated when Mayor Adler gave a speech to University of Texas students declaring his plans to go to battle to defend Austin in the Taco War.

Texas Monthly reports the two mayors will meet at the Hilton on Thursday morning and they will taste tacos from each of the cities. They will also put an end to the war and they discuss other issues of importance to the region.

Austin is known as one of the cities with the worse traffic congestion in the country.

And on Friday, it’s about to get a whole lot worse.

South by Southwest kicks off on Friday and President Barack Obama plans to give a keynote address at SXSW Friday afternoon and visit a few other locations around the city adding to the traffic congestion.

In his weekly newsletter, Austin Mayor Steve Adler released a map of street closures for SXSW and reported that when President Obama’s motorcade is on the move, traffic comes to a stop.

“That’s why I am asking you to strongly consider either working from home or asking your employees to work from home on those days,” Mayor Adler wrote. “I know some departments in City Hall are doing so, and I hope more downtown employers follow suit. Of course, many local businesses can’t work from home, and I hope you make an effort to support them as well.”

Mayor Adler also encouraged people who have to work downtown on Friday to take a bus. SXSW provides this guide to transportation options during the conference.

President Barack Obama Wednesday announced Austin is now part of the country’s TechHire initiative.

Austin is one of 15 new communities added to the TechHire program. San Antonio joined the program last year when President Obama launched it.

“In my State of our City address last month, I promised to make workforce development in tech a special focus of this year,” Mayor Steve Adler said in a news release. “The White House designating Austin a TechHire Community reflects the real progress we are making. The TechHire Initiative will help us create the best, most-effective job training ecosystem in the country. Austin is good at creating jobs. This will make us better at getting our own people ready to take those jobs.”

Mayor Adler held a press conference Wednesday morning to announce the news.

President Obama launched TechHire with 21 communities and 300 employers. The communities are training people for high-tech jobs using coding bootcamps, which can train workers in coding skills in just a few months.

In Austin, Microsoft, Google Fiber, Google and IBM are working with the City to provide opportunities for up to 220 graduates from training programs for veterans and low-income residents at Austin Community College, Texas State University and Zenith Education Group. These students will be eligible to interview for paid internships or similar offerings at the end of the program.

Today, a total of 50 communities and 600 employer partners participate in the TechHire program.

All of the communities have pledged to use data and innovative hiring practices to expand openness to nontraditional hiring. They’ve also agreed to expand models for training to prepare students in months through coding camps. And they have pledged to provide active local leadership to connect people to jobs with hiring on-ramp programs.

In addition to Austin, the other TechHire communities announced Wednesday include Atlanta, Burlington, VT, Riverside, Ca., Flint, MI, State of Hawaii, Indianapolis, IN, Jackson, MS, Milwaukee, WI, Raleigh, NC, Jackson, TN, Seattle, WA, Tallahassee, FL, Commonwealth of Virginia and Miami, FL.

Set.fm, which rolled out its service at South by Southwest three years ago, just got acquired by London-based Pledge Music, a direct to fan e-commerce platform.

Austin-based Set.fm, a member of the Austin Technology Incubator, originally launched in 2013 as Dejaset. Matt Peterson founded the company in 2011.

Set.fm has raised $2.27 million in five rounds from four investors, according to its Crunchbase profile.

The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

PledgeMusic also acquired NoiseTrade, based in Nashville. Altogether, the company reports it has a user-base of more than three million music fans. It curren provides technology to more than 50,000 artists and musicians.

“In bringing our three companies together under a single roof we are building a unique platform that adaptively supports the full lifecycle of recordings, tours and the constantly-changing forms of artistic output,” PledgeMusic Founder and CEO Benji Rogers said in a news release.

PledgeMusic, founded in 2009, provides pre-selling, marketing and distribution of records along with exclusives and other experiences from artists. The company has offices in New York, London and Boston.

“We’re thrilled to be uniting our market-leading live-event recording software and sales platform with PledgeMusic and NoiseTrade,” Set.fm CEO Peterson said in a news release.

1. Attend the free BBVA Compass Pre-SXSW Startup Crawl on Thursday night, put on by the Capital Factory. It will give you a flavor of Austin’s startup ecosystem that just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

2. Check out these panels featuring Austin entrepreneurs and issues of importance to the technology community.

3. Austin Tech Entrepreneur Bryan Menell’s Austin High Tech Happy Hour THURSDAY from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Dogwood and sponsored by Austin-based financial technology startup Honest Dollar. It is the longest running technology happy hour in the city and the SXSW edition is sure to be a blast.

4. Damon Clinkscales’s Austin Open Coffee is a regular hot spot for Austin entrepreneurs and others to gather to talk tech. The SXSW edition always attracts a crowd. It takes place Tuesday at Atlassian’s headquarters starting at 9 a.m.

5. And if you have the big bucks, William Hurley, founder of Honest Dollar along with Will.i.am is hosting a reception for President Barack Obama Friday at an undisclosed location. Tickets start at $250. It is a Democratic Party National Fundraiser.

6. Want to know where the locals hang out? At the Entrepreneur’s Lounge, the rooftop bar at Fogo de Chao. The event is put on by Laura Beck and Bart Bohn. But it’s an invite-only crowd. So best to know someone in the know. At the nightly Meatup, (called that because of plates of meat and bread are served by waiters) you’ll find entrepreneurs, press, public relations people, venture capitalists, angel investors, bankers, lawyers, celebrities and just about everyone from the startup world. Also, Hometown Hangover Cure at Rattle Inn on Sunday. It’s an invite-only affair.

7. Use Ridescout to figure out how to get around Austin. The home-grown Austin-based company makes a transportation app that lays out all of your options from ride sharing to bicycling to various locations around town.

8. Eat some good food. Austin Eater has put together this list of the hottest places to eat in Austin right now. (The list is less than a week old).

9. Get outside and go for a walk around Lady Bird Lake. The hike and bike trail now goes completely around the lake for a 10 mile hike or run. Of course, you can take much shorter routes and only go a few miles. Then go cool off at Barton Springs Pool.

10. A Taste of Koko & Visit Austin holds its Second Annual Downtown Photo Walk on Saturday at 10 a.m. starting on the South Lawn of the Texas Capitol. You’ll get to visit a lot of the Austin iconic murals.

Bonus: The City of Austin has put together these four steps to being a Green Visitor.

Correction: This post originally reported the wrong day for High Tech Happy Hour. It is on Thursday.

Do you feel a case of FOMO coming on? That knot in the stomach that keeps getting tighter the closer South by Southwest gets?

It doesn’t matter if this is your first SXSW experience or you go every year, one thing is certain: you will sign up for something and you will not go because serendipity takes hold once the conference begins. It’s best to just go with the flow.

But that doesn’t stop us from planning. And planning we must. Because FOMO is a terrible affliction. It’s better to know everything going on and to that end, enjoy this curated list of lists.

1. The Austin Chronicle Guide to SXSW: Knowledge is Power.

2. Best RSVP Links – The Cheat Sheet – Full List Available at Keegan’s List.

3. Gary’s Guide: The Ultimate List for SXSW Interactive 2016 Parties

4. UT at SXSW

5. The Austin Tech Event Roundup by Oliver Whitham.

6. Do you have a badge? The SXSW Official List of Events for 2016.

7. I don’t have no stinking badge. SXSW Official List of Free Events for 2016

8. Austin CultureMap’s Picks for the Biggest Free Parties and Unofficial Events at SXSW.

9. The Unofficial SXSW Guide on Facebook.

10. RSVPster – a way to RSVP to parties in one place for a fee.

Do you have a list we should include? Let us know and we’ll post it.

Bonus List: Tech Open Air in Berlin created this Ultimate SXSW 2016 Event List.

It’s time to soak in all of the knowledge from South by Southwest Interactive, which officially begins Friday.

And even though some people with badges never step inside a panel discussion, they are missing out on some thought provoking discussions. Don’t be one of those people. Go to the panels, book signings and discussions. Check out these events and enjoy your time at SXSW. It really is a magical conference filled with brilliant people.

FRIDAY

Two Ways to Keep the Austin Startup Scene Weird: 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Austin Chamber of Commerce office in the Hilton Hotel. A panel of top entrepreneurs in Austin talking about opportunities in healthcare innovation and alternative funding models. The panel features Dan Graham, owner of Notley Ventures, David Altounian, professor of entrepreneurship at St. Edwards University, Mellie Price, founder and CEO of SoftMatch and Suzi Soza, co-founder and CEO of Verb.

Austin’s Best Ed-Tech Startups: 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. – Austin is a hot bed for educational technology startups. This panel gives an overview of the ones to watch. It features Charles Thornburgh, CEO of Civitas Learning, David B. Palumbo, vice president of learning services at SoftMatch and John Raymond, CEO of ImpactLab.

Exploring Austin’s Startup Funding Landscape: 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. – Lots of buzz lately about whether Austin has enough money to fund its startups even though the city takes the lion’s share of venture capital in the state. This panel is surely going to attract a crowd interested in the city’s funding sources. It features Christopher Shonk, general partner of ATX Seed Ventures, Claire England, executive director of Central Texas Angel Network, Laura Kilcrease, managing director of Triton Ventures and Tom Meredith, co-founder of Meritage Capital.

Austin’s Best Hardware Startups: 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. – Five minute pitch presentations by five of the city’s hottest hardware startups. The panel features Andre Yousefi, cofounder of PCH Lime Lab, Jean Anne Booth, CEO of UnaliWear and Rick Yang, partner of New Enterprise Associates.

Austin Goes Global: Best International Startups: 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. – It’s a big world and Austin startups are finding markets outside the U.S. and international startups are also setting up shop in Austin. This panel features Dawn Winchester, CDO of Publicis, Fred Schmidt, director of international affairs at Capital Factory, Joel Eriksson Enqvist, investment manager of Creandum, John Erskine, vice president of publishing with Cloud Imperium Games.

Weird Goes Galactic: Austin’s New Space Economy: 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. The space industry is one of the region’s top growth sectors according to the Austin Chamber of Commerce. That’s the major subject of discussion at this panel featuring Dorothy Swanson, former CFO of NASA/Johnson Space Center, Stephen Kreher, senior director of economic development for the Austin Chamber of Commerce and Tom Markusic, CEO of Firefly Space Systems.

Creating a More Diverse Austin Startup Scene: 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. The panelist include Aviva Pinchas, growth marketer with Automattic, Charmane Sellers, advisory board member with Enterprising Women Foundation, Koy Mcdermott, chief strategy officer of Leaders Inspire Leaders and Michael Henderson, founder and CEO of Doing Development.

SATURDAY

Reflections on the Austin Tech Scene Then and Now at 9:30 a.m. at the Hilton Hotel in the Austin Chamber of Commerce offices. This panel features Howard Falkenberg with Staats Falkenberg & Partners, Neal Spelce with Neal Spelce Co. and Pike Powers, CEO of The Pike Powers Group LLC.

Ding! Speed Meetings with UT Austin Entrepreneurs at 11:00 a.m. at 3Ten Austin City Limits. The event features Bob Metcalfe, professor of innovation at the University of Texas at Austin and his team from the UT Innovation Center and a round of speed meetings with Austin entrepreneurs.

The Future of Grocery Shopping at 5 p.m. at the Driskill Ballroom featuring Eric Bee, CMR&D Manager at Chaotic Moon Studios.

Can Austin Rule the AI World? at 5 p.m. in the Austin Chamber Offices at the Hilton. This panel features Doreen Lorenzo, co-founder of Vidlet, Akshay Sabhikhi, CEO of CognitiveScale, Amir Husain, founder and CEO of Sparkcognition and Manoj Saxena, founding general partner and managing director of The Entrepreneur’s Fund.

SUNDAY

The Media’s Role in Austin’s Tech Boom at 11:00 a.m. at the Hilton Hotel in the Austin Chamber of Commerce offices. The panel features Susan Lahey, reporter with Silicon Hills News, Brent Wistrom with Austin Inno, Colin Pope with Austin Business Journal and Joshua Rubin with The Daily Dot.

Get Backed – book reading – 1:00 p.m. Sunday in Room 10AB of the Austin Convention Center by its authors Evan Loomis and Evan Baehr.

How Austin Leads the Business of Social Media at 2:30 p.m. featuring Virginia Miracle and Sam Decker with Spredfast, Erik Qualman with Equalman Studios and Krupa Patel Bala with Facebook.

How to Raise Capital for your Healthcare Company at 3:30 p.m. featuring Michele Skelding with the Austin Chamber, Rick Anderson with PTV Healthcare Capital and Casper de Clercq with Norwest Venture Partners.

MONDAY

Personal Rapid Transit: Available NOW for Austin at 12:30 to 1:30 at the Westin Austin Downtown in Continent 3. The panel features Richard Garriott de Cayeux, founder of Austin PRT.

TUESDAY

From Success to Significance at 9:30 a.m. in Salon E of the Hilton Austin Downtown. This talk by Joshua Baer, founder of Capital Factory, discusses the importance of fellowships for personal and professional growth.

Women@Austin has put together a list of events of interest to women at South by Southwest this year.

On International Women’s Day, it seems like a good time to share these resources and some more Silicon Hills News highlighted.

Jan Ryan, head of Women@Austin, put together a list of events and emailed them to members of the Women@Austin group to put a spotlight on women in technology at SXSW Interactive, the nation’s largest technology conference.

Diversity and inclusion are big topics at this year’s SXSW and many panels are devoted to them. It’s also a huge topic of discussion in the technology industry. That’s because less than three percent of venture capital goes to companies run by women, according to a 2014 report on women entrepreneurs by Babson College.

And even though women make up half the population and more than half the workforce, they are underrepresented in technology jobs.

“Just 12 percent of engineers are women, and the number of women in computing has fallen from 35 percent in 1990 to just 26 percent today,” according to a 2015 report by the American Association of University Women.

SXSW offers a great opportunity in which to talk about these issues and to explore more opportunities for women in technology.

Among the events Women@Austin spotlighted, was a gathering at the Dell Lounge, an interactive venue at Brass House at 115 San Jacinto Blvd. on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. The event focuses on Women in Tech, Policy and Entrepreneurship and features Rep. Suzan DelBene, Rep. Susan Brooks and Karen Quintos, Dell Chief Marketing Officer. They will discuss the role of public policy in empowering women entrepreneurs.

The following events were highlighted by Ryan of Women@Austin for SXSW:

Funding is always a big issue for any entrepreneur. On Friday, a panel on “Is the Venture World a Meritocracy” will take place in Salon D at the Hilton at 12:30 p.m. The featured speakers include Elizabeth Gore with Dell, Sara Brand with True Wealth Innovations and Lisa Lambert with Intel.

Entrepreneuring Austin Women on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. in the Austin Chamber Offices at the Hilton. The panel features Kerry Rupp with True Wealth Ventures, Jan Ryan with Women@Austin, Laura Bosworth with TeVido Biodevices and Amy Millman with Springboard.

Take No Sh*t: Thrive as an XX in an XY World, Tuesday at 11:00 a.m. Featuring Heather Brunner with WP Engine, Aaron Burcell with Vevo, Julie Huls with Austin Technology Council and Sara Spivey with BazaarVoice.

Lessons from Top Companies from Women Technologists, Monday at 12:30 p.m. , featuring Inhi Cho with IBM Analytics, Julian S Green with the Anita Borg Institute, Nancy Lee with Google and Shelly Swanback with Accenture Digital.

Afternoon Tea for Women in Tech put on by UK Trade & Investment at the Great Britain House on Monday at 2:00 p.m. Featuring Heather Brunner with WP Engine, Sara Brand with True Wealth Innovations and Nadya Powell with Sunshine, discussing female leadership in technology.

In addition, the following events might also be of interest to female entrepreneurs and everyone interested in diversity and how to be more inclusive.

On Sunday, Galvanize, Tech Inclusion and the Clinton Foundation’s No Ceilings initiative have come together to create a day long event featuring panel conversations, solo talks and networking opportunities on inclusion. Featured speakers include Megan Smith CTO of the U.S., Tracy Chou from Pinterest and Wayne Sutton co-founder of Tech Inclusion.

The Power of Perception: Media and Women in Tech on Sunday at 12:30 in Salon F of the Hilton. This discussion features Connie Guglielmo, editor in chief of CNET News, Elizabeth Ames, senior vice president of the Anita Borg Institute and Isis Anchalee, software engineer.

How to Recruit for Diversity and Achieve Inclusion on Monday in Salon 6
at the JW Marriott at 110 E 2nd St from 5 p.m. until 6 p.m. This talk is by Ashley Doyal and Gina Helfrich, co-founders of recruitHER.

Helfrich also did this post on Medium listing even more diversity events and mixers taking place this week and throughout SXSW.

And an extra special bonus is the talk by First Lady Michelle Obama at SXSW Music on Wednesday to discuss the Let Girls Learn initiative, which aims to break barriers for the 62 million girls around the world who are not in school today. SXSW will release the details of her talk soon.

South by Southwest Tuesday released details on President Barack Obama’s keynote address this Friday in Austin.

It will be held at 2:30 p.m. at Dell Hall at The Long Center.

But tickets are limited. To be considered, SXSW Interactive, Gold and Platinum badgeholders must register for a drawing. No other credentials are eligible to enter. Randomly drawn winners will be notified Thursday night.

Evan Smith, Editor in Chief and CEO of The Texas Tribune, will interview President Obama. The Texas Tribune is also asking the public to send their questions to the Tribune.

“If you don’t win or can’t make it, this will be live-streamed on sxsw.com/live and simulcast throughout our Conference venues including Ballrooms D and EFG, and Room 18ABCD at the Austin Convention Center,” according to SXSW.