Battledecks II: It's On

Poetry slams and rap battles are soooo OS9. All the cool kids are throwin' down with battledecks, the hardest version of a Powerpoint presentation ever. Competitors have five minutes to put together a presentation to a series of random slides. And random means screengrabs of Digg, scaleable horses, charts of pudding versus skin, and massive Amy Winehouses. The results are judged on conviction, jargon, interpretive dance, Husker Du references and how disgusting your fund is.

SXSW regional Battledecks champion Anil Dash of Six Apart Ltd. put his success down to "Passion. No, I like to have a good time and I'm pretty comfortable with crowds." He also, he admitted, got lucky with the slides, saying, "I thought there would be a Winehouse, and I was thinking a lot about what I would do if she turned up." But he puts his final victory down to a brief video clip of Rick Astley. This would have thrown a lesser battler, but not Dash. "Throw in a Rick Roll and you can't go wrong, that's just magic in a box."