SXSW Day Two--what's cool? Big ideas.

AUSTIN—Talk to people about what's cool at South by Southwest so far, and the talk tends to focus on big ideas.

The festival is a great place to launch new apps, as 35,000 hipsters descend upon the city for seminars by day, and partying by night. The big new app, at least this week, is the Meerkat live video streaming app, which many people are using to broadcast interviews and seminars to their Twitter stream from here.

Elsewhere, folks here are talking about hot button topics, like using drones for social good, getting more women involved in tech and using big data to solve issues.

Mark Graham, senior vice-president of NBC/Universal's new Stringwire live video service, says he was inspired by all the talk about drones. Specifically, he attended a panel that mentioned using drones in Vietnam to locate left-over but still-active bombs from the 1960s and 1970s war to keep people from walking right over them.

"The talk has been inspiring and encouraging, and something we can all learn from."

Other folks we chatted to singled out seminars about Apple's iBeacon strategy for geotagging push notifications, talks about bringing more women into the tech workforce and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone's new idea-sharing app Super.

"I liked what he's trying to build," says attendee Mike Holp. "Apps that are more empathetic to one another."

Sunday South by Southwest enters a new phase when its trade show floor opens, allowing many new startups the chance to show their wares to the 35,000 plus folks here at the show.

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