Austin, Texas, and Redlands, California—February 28, 2013—Esri steps on the South by Southwest (SXSW) stage this year with the Esri Lavahouse, a clubhouse for hackers, entrepreneurs, developers, and executives. The Esri Lavahouse will be available as part of the annual music, film, and interactive conference and festival held in Austin, Texas, and will be open and free to the public from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Friday, March 8, to Monday, March 11.

The Esri Lavahouse is all about location—loaded with food, drinks, demos, and plenty of lobby space for SXSW attendees and their friends to get away from the chaos of the conference and meet others interested in the future of location. Esri developers will be on hand to talk about coding, application development, and cutting-edge map innovations. Esri has also partnered with HootSuite to map the activities on board the HootBus as it travels through Austin during SXSW.

"There is so much data available on the web and not many tools to bring it to mobile," says Amber Case, director of Esri R&D Center Portland. "The future of location is context and having the data when and where you need it. But privacy, battery life, and ease of use also play a big part. How we build applications in the future depends on this, and we're happy to provide a place to discuss and work on these kinds of technologies at SXSW."

Esri Lavahouse Highlights

• Open Data Hackathon with the City of Austin: Saturday, March 9, 2013, at noon and Sunday, March 10, 2013, at 5:00 p.m. (CST). These half-day hackathon sessions will give developers the chance to make the best mapping mashup with City of Austin data. Top teams will win AR.Drone quadrocopters and RC helicopters. No badge is needed. http://esri-sxsw-hackathon.eventbrite.com/
• Geo Happy Hours: The Esri Lavahouse will host a location-based happy hour Friday, March 8, 2013, at 3:00 p.m. and Sunday, March 10, 2013, at 5:00 p.m. (CST). http://esri-geohappyhour-sxsw.eventbrite.com/
• Esri Geo Brunch at SXSW: Saturday, March 9, 2013, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.. http://esrigeobrunch.eventbrite.com/
• Make Your Own Trading Cards: Everyone can create their own trading cards in the Esri photo booth. Enter the info you like, take a picture, and within seconds you'll have a personalized card to share with others. Occurs all day.
• Meet Amber Case: In addition to being a panelist at SXSW, Case will be on hand every day at Esri's Lavahouse. She'll be available to consult with entrepreneurs on their startup plans, as well as talk with attendees about how to integrate location into their applications.
• OAuth Meet Up: Sunday, March 10, 2013, from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. (CST). O'Reilly author Aaron Parecki will be hosting an OAuth Meet Up for users of the protocol. Appetizers and food will be provided. http://oauth-sxsw-meetup.eventbrite.com/
• 3D Demos: Scan your finger and see a 3D city come to life in seconds based on your unique fingerprint. Fly through a detailed map using Microsoft's Xbox Kinect. These applications and more will be available on-site. Occurs all day.
• Get There with the Esri Trolley: An Esri trolley will be leaving every three hours from the Austin Convention Center to the Esri Lavahouse from Friday, March 8, 2013, to Sunday, March 10, 2013.

Learn more about Esri's activities at SXSW at esri.com/sxsw. For more on Esri's support for developers, visit developers.arcgis.com.

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About Esri
Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.

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Press Information:
Jesse Theodore, Esri
Tel.: 909-793-2853, extension 1-1419
E-mail (press only): press@esri.com
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