Less than 24 hours until SXSW 2010 kicks off and the Stitch team is really excited for this year.  All of us were hoping to make it out this year but busy lives have meant that we have one pass too many for the Interactive event.

If you’ve been on the fence about whether or not to attend, or planning to pay the walk-up rate this might be your lucky day.  It costs us $100 USD to transfer our unused pass and if you’re willing to pay it, the pass is yours for the week.  That’s an 82% discount on the walk-up rate and it’s the DAY BEFORE.

We have a feeling that the pass will get snatched up at this price since we’ve heard of colleagues still grabbing the walk-up rates.  So instead of first-come, first-served we are going to host a little contest for the next 24 hours to declare the winner and transfer the pass moments before they pay the $550 in person.

Here’s the contest:

Stitch Media’s logo is a button.  We love it because buttons are everywhere – we take them for granted how ubiquitous and useful they are.  We want to see what you see when you think of buttons and we plan to transfer the pass to the most creative entry we receive in the next 24 hours.

Step 1: Take a picture of a button.  It must be your own photo (no submitting stock images).  We’re hoping you’ll be creative with what the photo is – is it an actual button or a craft you made or a sign you saw?  Anything goes as long as it’s an original photo and it has a button in it.

Step 2: Tweet @stitchmedia with the hashtag #sxswcontest and a link to your photo (Twitpic or TinyURL to Flickr or whatever – as long as we can see it)

We will announce the results tomorrow and post up the winning photo on the blog (you can choose to remain anonymous).  We’ll transfer the SXSW 2010 Interactive pass to you and we’ll see you there!

We’re excited to have a great panel for our SXSW talk on Interactive Documentaries March 15.

Dan Gluckman from the BBC produced the interactive for “The Virtual Revolution“, an open source documentary about how 20 years of the web has reshaped our lives. Check out the 3D Documentary Explorer a radical new way to navigate through clips from the first two episodes of the series.

Suzanne Stefanac is the director of the Digital Content Lab for the American Film Institute. The Digital Content Lab has generated more than 90 cutting edge digital media prototypes including The Interview Project from DavidLynch.com. Here is a recent talk Suzanne did about the future of digital media.

Ashley York is a co-founding member of the Los Angeles-based design collective, Take Action Games, where her work in the field of digital activism and games for social change led to the production of “Darfur is Dying“. Darfur is Dying is a heartbreaking video game that teaches users about the genocide in Darfur.

Check out this awesome panel on Monday, March 15 at 09:30 AM at Hilton K and be sure to tweet about it using the tag #iadoc.

Travis Bartel is gearing up for a full day of media discussion in the Big Apple at Crossmedia NYC this week. The event looks like it will be jammed with with great discussion on cross media featuring an impressive group of panelists including: Dr Adam Klein (Media Leader), Alistair C. Mitchell (Research In Motion), Ashley J Swartz (Digitas), Bonnie Fuller (Hollywoodlife.com), David Kruis (Metranome), Jeff Gomez (Starlight Runner Entertainment), Jeremy Caplan, Mathieu Ferland (Ubisoft), Michael Scissons (Syncapse). Petri Martikainen (MultiTouch), Roger Keating (Hearst Television), and Sam Cox (Milabra).

In the wake of Gordon Lightfoot’s death and resurrection via Twitter and Canwest’s newswire, it seems like we should really be grieving for fact-checking. Read more »

Stitch Media is seeking a full-time Technical Director to work in our Halifax office.  This position will focus on programming large-scale interactive online projects and may require you to work as the sole programmer, eventually leading a team of programmers with unique areas of expertise.   Read more »

Yesterday was a historic moment for Halifax – the city officially apologized for the destruction of the Africville community in the 1960’s and announced a $3 million reconcilliation package. Read more »

Stitch Media celebrated our (belated) third birthday this morning. It’s hard to believe that three years have already passed, but as you can tell we’ve grown quite a bit from just a dude in Halifax, to a permanent staff of six (and a large extended family) existing (and birthday partying) over two cities. We’re all looking forward to what the next year holds for us, and if the last three amazing years of Stitch has taught us anything, it’s that you can have your cake, and eat it too.

Seeing the evolution of Powerthirst from a viral video by my favourite local comedy troupe into an actual honest-to-goodness product is pretty surreal. But perhaps the fact that you can order packets of a fizzy, delicious powdered drink named after the Powerthirst videos is the least weird part of this video’s legacy. Read more »