MUMBAI: GeniusRocket, a leading social network of creative talent, today announced the successful conclusion of a creative request project with South by Southwest (SXSW) festival and conference. SXSW, the leading technology, music, and film convergence conference and festival, selected four promotional videos created by users within the GeniusRocket community.

SXSW challenged the GeniusRocket community to create a 30 second to 2 minute video to demonstrate that SXSW is the premier event to experience the full range of digital convergence in music, film and interactive technology and content. Across a 45-day period the GeniusRocket community created 35 high quality videos which SXSW evaluated and then selected the submission best fit for their creative needs.

The winning selections are:

--  1st selection - Erik Laurentzen, Austin, TX

--  2nd selection - Robert Capria, New York, NY

Runners-up:

--  Sofia Romano, Milan, Italy

--  Todd Wiseman, Austin, TX

This marks the first time that SXSW has utilized a crowdsourcing solution for creative content for use within the event.

"We were interested in seeing what the creative community would respond with and we were very pleased with the quality of the submissions," said Roland Swenson, Managing Director of SXSW. "Fostering open source talent and ideas is something we can really get behind as it is completely in the spirit of SXSW."

The videos will be utilized throughout the festival and conference for film trailers, television advertisements and party bumpers in promotion of SXSW 2009.