The Pepsi lounge at SXSW has a bar where you can try Pepsi products and a series of tents where you can go an create content. It’s a cool place to hang out and meet people, shoot video, charge your phone or talk to the folks who made it all happen. What did they make happen?

Pepsi Built a SXSW Information Command Center

Jumping right into the zeitgest stream gives you a a real-time summary of SXSW conversations. The current trend is towards eating [as it's lunch-time]. Other trending topics are arriving, drinking, connecting and partying. Messages that flow through the stream are color coded to their topic.

The “popular” feature shows the most popular words and assumes that those are also topics. Trending topics right now include Facebook, Austin and work. I would love it if this feature let me drill to the tweets so I could see what people are saying. Bigger points if I could follow the people on the fly.

The “swarm” is a geolocator that shows where tweets are coming from and who is tweeting. It’s a real-time maplication. It’s kind of cool to see people migrating to and from the convention center.

My favorite feature [and perhaps the most useful and innovative] is the party watch! Not only is it a good way to find out what is going on, you can find out how people feel about the party good/neutral/bad. I was tracking the Burlesque/Cupcakes party last night and found out that not only was there a long line, but that generally people thought it was a bust.

If we take some of the learnings from Jamie Monberg’s panel this morning which basically says that your application should be more like a pencil than a helicopter when it comes to usability. I think Pepsi has struck the right balance here. Good job Pepsi. I hope you do not let this die and figure out cool ways to use it beyond SXSW.