Sloane and I have been attending film and interactive panels at SXSW since Saturday morning, in addition to catching world premiers at the Alamo Drafthouse and other venues. There’s a wealth of material here to absorb and share. So much so, I feel our attempt to do so on this site will fall woefully short. Yet, an attempt must be made so we can later reference the thinking, dig deeper and hopefully apply some of the learnings.

The most inspiring interactive panel I’ve attended thus far also happens to be the most recently attended. This morning academics Danah Boyd and Henry Jenkins addressed a packed room on Convergence Culture, a topic Jenkins recently wrote a book on. Convergence Culture is the practice of sharing narrative across multiple platforms. A film series like The Matrix Trilogy, for instance, takes advantage of comics, animé, games and web sites all serving a community of participants.

Jenkins said community intelligence and the collective energies of large-scale communities are driving the need for greater complexity in our storytelling. He also said more people are finding fandom now than ever before and that the web opens the doors to discovery. Jenkins noted how fans were once on the fringes of the content production industries, whereas today they are central to it.