SXSW 2011 Day 3?Everybody was Kung Fu fighting

One of the things people have asked us over the past few days (besides “where’d you get those cool t-shirts”), is “why come down and launch Internet Explorer 9 at SXSW? As we’ve said from the beginning of our SXSW journey, we want to be a part of SXSW this year because it represents such a big slice of the web developers and designers pushing the boundaries of HTML5 and the web of tomorrow.

So today, we were excited to sponsor one of the coolest happy hours of the week: The Austin JavaScript 2011 SXSW party. The Austin JavaScript group is a regular meeting of web developers and designers who discuss JavaScript to jQuery and everything related to the web.

We thought it was a great place to spread the word about Dev Unplugged, our HTML5 developer competition we launched back at the start of March. Learn more about Dev Unplugged at: http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/dev/unplugged, and follow us on Twitter @IE and #devunplugged for the latest information and updates about the contest.

Today’s event was held at a cool Austin bar called the Kung Fu Saloon, which features great drinks and a ton of classic arcade games (it reminded me quite a bit of Barcade in Brooklyn). The place was packed almost instantly.

During the happy hour, we talked to people about the contest, gave away more Fast Access passes to the IE9 launch party on Monday night, and of course mixed in a few games as well. Personally I was proud of my undefeated record at NBA Jam Tournament Edition.

We also handed out one of my favorites of our limited edition SXSW shirts – our Never Mind The Bullets design. Never Mind The Bullets is another FWA winner, created by Steaw Web Design. It’s an interactive HTML5 web comic that you scroll and read with your mouse. A very cool example of what’s possible with HTML5 and exactly the sort of site we hope we’ll see as submissions into the Dev Unplugged contest!

Tomorrow of course is the big day. The final version of Internet Explorer 9 will be released at 9 pm Pacific time. We have much more in store for tomorrow as we hit the home stretch of our time in Austin. Check back here tomorrow to see how you can view the press event live, and learn much more about a more beautiful web.

Thanks for being a part of the SXSW journey so far! Now time to sleep…

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