The South by Southwest (SXSW) festival has announced its dates for 2010.

The music portion of the festival is set to take place in Austin, Texas March 17-21, with the film and interactive portion kicking off on March 12. Artists participating in the 2010 event have not yet been announced, but this year's participants included Metallica, PJ Harvey, The Decemberists and Glasvegas.

The massive industry festival also announced that it is accepting submissions for panel ideas for all three festivals through a "Panel Picker interface", which allows the SXSW community to submit their own panel topics and vote on others.

The open submission process begins today (June 1) and runs through July 10. The second step will run from August 10-28 and allows people to review the proposed ideas and rate the submissions.

Participants can submit their ideas through the Panel Picker interface at Panelpicker.sxsw.com.