I am pleased to announce that the following five graduate students have been selected to represent the TXST SJMC at SXSW and participate in the SXTXState.com project.

Brittany Black
Kiana Fitzgerald
Megan Kilgore
Emily Lyons
Sara Peralta

The participants were judged on the following criteria:

• Quality of the essay – well written, makes a clear statement
• Creativity of the idea
• Qualifications of the candidate/ability to execute – as assessed by the additional info, any provided multimedia and instructors’ assessments (if applicable)
• Ways in which the students engaged their social networks to support, vote, comment and share. Also, comments that candidates left on each others’ proposals, indicating collaboration potential. In a few cases, this was critical as tie-breaking criteria.

Proposals were judged by Cindy Royal, Jon Zmikly and Jacie Yang, with input provided by former SXTXState.com participants Dale Blasingame and Sarah Garcia (Sarah now works for SXSW).

Please join me in congratulating these five, deserving students. I look forward to working with them over the next several months. Expect new and improved coverage on this site in the near future as we approach SXSW. First round of panel acceptances should be coming soon!

Thanks to everyone who expressed interest and applied to this new program!