Not bad for a first time filmmaker.

They were more than rewarded with the well-received comedy and Apatow cemented his spot in SXSW history.

HBO’s poster child for a generation actually started building similar characters here.

South by Southwest Music and Media Conference | Jeffrey Blitz’s documentary about eight kids at the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee premiered at SXSW in 2002 and walked away with the jury award

Everett Collection; Kobal Collection

It was the most talked about movie at SXSW, winning the best narrative feature award.

The early reviews and excitement it generated surely played into the comedy’s enormous financial and critical success.

LB

INTERACTIVETwitter, 2007

Can you think back to a time before tweeting?

South by Southwest Music and Media Conference | Kicking off the Judd Apatow lovefest that SXSW grew into with Bridesmaids (he was a producer) in 2011 and the discovery of his Girls partner

Sergio Dionisio/Getty Images

2007 saw the advent of the undisputed king of microblogging.

LH

Mark Zuckerberg keynote, 2008

SXSW audiences are notoriously tough.

Everyone’s got an app, everyone knows what’s next.

South by Southwest Music and Media Conference | For those first introduced to Lena Dunham via Girls , it’s worth going back and checking out her independent feature film, Tiny Furniture . HBO’s

Jamie McCarthy/WireImage

Zuckerberg seems to have gotten the last laugh.

In just five days, over 1,000 stories were built about the conference.

South by Southwest Music and Media Conference | It’s funny now to think that there was a time when Bridesmaids wasn’t a sure bet. In a brilliant move, Paul Feig and company decided

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

South by Southwest Music and Media Conference | Can you think back to a time before tweeting? It’s hard to imagine there was a SXSW festival before people had the ability to @reply,

South by Southwest Music and Media Conference | SXSW audiences are notoriously tough. Everyone’s got an app, everyone knows what’s next. So being a 23-year-old billionaire and founder of the biggest social network

South by Southwest Music and Media Conference | FourSquare launched ahead of SXSW in 2009 and ultimately attained the wholly unofficial title of most buzzed about app at SXSW. If you wanted to

South by Southwest Music and Media Conference | The idea of Airbnb is enticing enough: a marketplace to list and book a place to stay anywhere in the world for everything from an

South by Southwest Music and Media Conference | The social media aggregator had been around since 2010, but really took hold at SXSWi in 2012, and not just because it won the Social