The South by Southwest festival brings together music, entertainment, film, technology, social media, and a whole lot of BBQ each year down in Austin, Texas. There has always been a strong Canadian contingency, in particular from the Vancouver area. In preparation for next year’s SXSW Interactive, submissions have been collected and the public is being asked to vote on their favourite topics, which they will see presented in March of 2010.

I took a look through the 2,219 submissions in the PanelPicker and have weeded out some of the gems that are being proposed by some of our own local talent.

• Our good friend John Biehler is putting together a panel about the way we do business: Do Cool Kids Leave When the Suits Arrive?
• With the Olympics coming to Vancouver in 2010 this session proposed by Robert Scales is of great interest: Social Media and the Olympics: A Case Study
• Another one of our good friends, Dave Olson, has prepared: Hitchiking to the Boardroom
• James Chutter has two talks up for your consideration: Ubiquitous Participation: Graffiti Streets to Social Networks and the other is Beta Campaigns: Planning for User Driven Advertising
• Cecily Walker from the Vancouver Public Library proposed: Can I Reserve This Book With My iPhone?
• Ellitot Hurst from Supernova.com wants to talk about things like the CFOX Vancouver Seeds competition: Online Community Saved the Radio Star
• SXSW veteran and photographer Kris Krug is pitching the following: Your Content is You, Your Website is Dead and Listening the the Internet: Online Media Monitoring
• Not from Vancouver but our friend Meghan at Hill & Knowlton has proposed: Passionate People: The Key Ingredient to Social Media Success

The public vote counts for 30% with another 30% coming from staff and 40% decided upon by an advisory board. Should you have a panel submission you’d like us to check out, please feel free to link to it in the comments of this post. Best of luck to our peers and counterparts from Vancouver and we look forward to joining you down in Austin.