Posted on March 27, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

A location-based road trip to SXSW with TriOut badges, widgets and check-ins.

As some of you know I had the opportunity to attend SXSW Interactive, and participate in a great American Race style road trip/competition sponsored by Chevrolet. So while SXSWi was held in Austin, TX the road trip started for me from Atlanta, GA. For the road trip I traveled 3 other friends @TheRab, @Jakrose, @NikisNotes aka, Team NC. Chevrolet was a sponsor of SXSW and the hashtag we used while traveling was ChevySXSW.

As a location-based app fanboy and partner of a location-based service (TriOut) I was looking forward to not only checking in at various locations at SXSWi, but also checking in at new cities and venues I have never been before.

Prior to the trip I was talking with Lawrence Ingraham (@LawPower) (TriOut founder/developer) about how cool it would be if we had a widget that could display all the check-ins from the road trip and a check-in badge for NC residents who were attending SXSWi. Lawrence said no problem or something like that and thus we have the road to SXSWi check-in map via TriOut below.

Note you can create your own TriOut widget here: http://trioutnc.com/u/widgets.php

I was told by Jay Cuthrell (@qthrul) fellow NC friend who’s awesome that there were over 218 NC residents who attended SXSW. Although I wish all 218 were TriOut users, that just wasn’t the case but we did have 7 TriOut users checked-in at the Austin Convention Center. When they checked-in, they were welcomed to SXSW with the TriOut badge above.

While in Austin for SXSW I added every venue I visited to TriOut such as the Gingerman, the Hilton, Champions Sports Bar + Restaurant, The Belmont and more. One common question I received by doing so was that if TriOut is a NC location-based social network, why check-in at SXSW or add locations from other cites? My response was that even though we require TriOut iPhone users to be in the state of North Carolina to create an account and we emphasize on “Exploring the Triangle”, NC area, TriOut is also about NC residents as well. TriOut users let their friends know where they check-in to and/or where they’re on the way to. They write reviews about locations, post photos to share their experience.
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Note: This was cross posted on the TriOut blog.

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