https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/screens/2014-09-08/sxsw-interactive-adds-speakers/

SXSW Interactive Adds Speakers

By James Renovitch, September 8, 2014, 2:00pm, Picture in Picture

SXSW Interactive dropped a handful of names to keep excitement for next year's event high. The added speakers include a chef, the creator of The Walking Dead, a bionic man, and a handful of entrepreneurial self-helpers. Get to know your future.

Sandy Carter is the general manager of IBM with a pretty mean Twitter game. In other words, she runs the show and isn't afraid to let the world know it. We assume this means that her proposed panel about revealing brand personality in 200 tweets has been accepted. Carter also describes herself as a "social business evangelist," and we're not entirely sure what that means, but we're willing to convert regardless.

The chef and owner of Momofoku, David Chang, brings his culinary skills to the expanded SouthBites programming. You might want to get in that chow line now.

If the term biomechatronics conjures images of RoboCop then make sure you get to Hugh Herr's panel to get introduced to something significantly more elegant. The MIT associate professor and double amputee continues innovating bionic limb technology and will bring his expertise to SXSW 2015.

The entrepreneurial ecosystem can often be a boy's club, but Ari Horie strives to change that. Her Women's Startup Lab puts a focus on how powerful femininity can lead companies to greater heights. Her success in business as well as a keynote speaker at SXSW V2V led to this call up to the big leagues.

Robert Kirkman is the man behind The Walking Dead comic book series. If that doesn't get the SXSW Gaming crowd excited we're not sure what will.

If politics is more your speed, SXSW Interactive brings Lawrence Lessig to town. The man whose Mayday PAC strives to keep politicians honest by reforming the campaign funding system.

If anyone knows how to fail with grace, it's Sarah Lewis. The author of The Rise espouses the art of using failures to achieve your goals. And to think we've been sweating all those screw-ups over the years.

Nilofer Merchant's success speak for themselves. She's launched more than 100 products netting $18 billion in sales. Yup, she's legit.

Author of The Lean Startup, Eric Ries, brings his ethos of an agile business model to SXSW.

If her book title is any indication, Reshma Saujani isn't a follower. As the founder of Girls Who Code and author of Women Who Don't Wait in Line, Soujani is the kind of tech instigator SXSW loves. Hopefully she will address the attacks on women in gaming as part of the #GamerGate controversy.

Bryan Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative fights for the wrongly condemned and underprivileged trapped in our criminal justice system. Stevenson's recent book, Just Mercy, brings his organization's issue to light.

Statistics and mathematics aren't the sexiest topics, but Talithia Williams has taken her skills in those fields to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, National Security Agency, and NASA. She'll bring her hot data to the fest.