You heard it right! Elance is heading southbound to Austin, Texas, home of longhorns, legendary bar-b-cue, live music, and the world renowned South By South West conference. We’ll be in full force hosting a booth at the main conference hall at the Austin Convention Center as well as participating in this year’s Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator program as judges and sponsors taking place at the Hilton Austin Downtown.

But this year, we won’t be able to make SXSW a success without you. Every year, new faces, cutting-edge technologies, and smarter applications surface to the world at a breakneck pace, and we need some help from some elancers to cover all of the fast-paced action. That’s why were offering two full-access SXSW Interactive badges (valued at $500 each) to two very talented blogger/social media/journalist-types to perform in-depth, hard-hitting coverage of the show as members of the Elance Team. We'll also be providing you with $300 stipend as well for your stay in Austin.

So, are you interested in attending SXSW Interactive this year? Do you have the writing and reporting chops to compete with the rest of the media? Do you eat, breathe, and live all things tech? Write a 500-750 word blog post anywhere you'd like on which technologies, companies, and influencers will be making big waves at this year’s show and send us the link at alex@elance.com. Don’t forget to submit your name, the dates you plan on being in Austin for the show, and a picture so we know who to look for if you win. Please only enter this contest if you have arrangements to attend the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas during the duration of show, and remember that we'll be looking for 2-3 blog articles per day of coverage during the Interactive festival as well as several posts of preview and after-show coverage. 

We’ll be taking entries throughout the rest of February and will be announcing the two winners and highlighting their winning entries on the Elance Blog on March 1, 2010.

Good luck, and we hope to see you in Austin!

Links:
SXSW Conference 2010
Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW