Jon Zmikly and Dale Blasingame are both prior New Media students at Texas State. They stopped by the classroom last week to give the current students some sage advice when it came to covering SXSWi 2012.

Blasingame had a career in the news long before he decided to attend Texas State to further his education. He had reported on SXSW in his time before attending Texas State, but he had never actually attended the event.

 

As a student reporter he impressed panels with his ability to engage in the question-answer sessions, this led to him meeting well known USA Today tech reporter, Jon Swartz. This not only helped Blasingame get a few unexpected interviews, but led to a long standing friendship with Swartz. He told current students to utilize Twitter while at the convention to identify and locate potential interviews. Learning the lay out of the convention center is also helpful, so you don’t get lost when in a time crunch.

Blasingame has won two Emmy awards for his work in news coverage.

Zmikly has been participating in the Texas State coverage of SXSWi since they started, five years ago. Originally an innocent tech-oblivious Michigan boy, he came to Austin having never heard of SXSW. Trial by fire is the best way to go, so he threw himself in the middle of the convention – even if he wasn’t sure what everyone was talking about. The tech knowledge would come later, but most importantly Zmikly was able to look around and say, “These are my people.”

The very next year he caught some of the most prized footage from an interview with Mark Zuckerberg where the crowd turned against his interviewer, blogger Sarah Lacy.

Zmikly is now a tech-savvy Texan who teaches at Texas State.