Well, there wasn’t fire, but that didn’t cool down the excitement for the first big chat of SXSW Interactive. This featured event delivered on the big idea philosophy right off the bat. Publisher Tim O’Reilly, as interviewed by Web entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, spoke about “happy accidents” that turned out to be successes during his career, as well as his propensity for being an idea person, not a money person. He discussed that “real brands have a core” and that core is the “locomotion that pulls the train.” O’Reilly continued that the best ideas need to belong to everyone, not just the company, and they need to be inclusive. This is obvious from his open source roots in working as a publisher of Unix training materials.

Calacanis asked him about regrets, and he said that he wasn’t regretful, but proud of the fact that his materials and brand have produced several multi-millionaires or even billionaires. Evan Williams of Twitter had his first job with O’Reilly when he left Iowa.

Another interesting point he made was in the role that governments play in innovation. He made the seemingly outlandish statement that Ronald Reagan was the “father of Foursquare.” But he explained that it was under his leadership that the idea was conceived to open access to GPS information. It was ultimately executed under the Clinton administration.

O’Reilly holds the same standards for political leaders as he does for tech innovations. He looks for people with big ideas and passion. “Larry, Sergey (Page and Brin of Google) and Mark (Zuckerberg of Facebook) are wrestling with deep problems that they care about.”

O’Reilly ended the talk with a plug for the Code for America project, a program that encourages geeks (or the technically inclined) to sign up for a year of public service, in order to improve the efficiency of government or public agencies.

Watch video of O’Reilly and Calacanis: