As most of you know I finally traveled to Austin TX for the annual South by Southwest Interactive conference (SXSWi). I’ve been wanting to go since 2007 when, shortly after I joined Twitter, I started following social media types talking about the conference.

Attending this year was a pretty last minute decision. It’s expensive, for one thing. The conference ticket alone was over $400, then you add in airfare, and hotel for 5 nights… EEK! But my lovely friend Sarah, who lives in Austin graciously offered to put me up, so that took out the hotel cost (or so I thought…) We also had a scheduling conflict so both Pat & I couldn’t attend, as we’d originally hoped.

But I went and I’m glad I did, mostly because I got to spend some time with with friends, and finally hug or shake hands with people I’ve only known through Twitter or Seesmic.

Some random, non-inclusive highlights:

• Going to Fry’s, Ikea, and a cute hardware store with Sarah, Phil, and Dave, and realizing that Texas looks just like NJ but with shorter trees.
• Finally meeting my first Twitter client, Connie
• Pedicab ride!
• Taking photos and video of each other “ironically” while certain A-listers huddled in a corner doing the same with a bit more intensity at the Seesmic/Blogher/Gnomedex/Ping.fm party (still no idea how they ended up hosting the same party.)
• Breakfast tacos!
• Spending time with small pockets of people rather than huge crowds for the most part.
• Stalking Merlin Mann & Jonathan Coulton (from a distance) to see if they were headed someplace cool (um, they weren’t.)
• Getting lost. A lot. But I saw more of Austin that way
• Geeking out with fellow You Look Nice Today fans Rob & Sarah as we sat next to all three guys at the Hilton bar (but did any of us go over to say hi? lol)
• Power Corner
• Watching a friend receive some very good news and seeing how happy it made her.
• Huddling around the last propane torch to the left at the Frog Design party
• Sleeping in a really nice hotel room all alone (after I wasn’t able to sleep in a house full of people, I moved to the hotel for the last three nights. Very $$$ but I made the most of it!)
• Rolling my eyes at the A-list
• Being declared the “coolest mom in the world.” Twice.
• My smooth flight home!

I just noticed that none of these highlights involve scheduled sessions. I guess that’s because of the one big problem I had- my lack of focus led me to spend more time wondering what to do or being distracted by my immediate surroundings than making sure I attended the sessions I’d planned on. That’s something I continue to work on- if someone else is relying on me to get something done, it gets done. But if it’s just for myself, well, maybe it gets done!

Another reason I seemed to miss good sessions was that there was no easy way to see who was speaking. The sessions I most regret missing were awesome due to the presenters, not the topics.

Ah well, it was a good experience and I’m glad I went. Would I go back? Definitely, but I need to have goals to hit while there, whether as a representative of someone else or for myself. In fact I want to go back next year just to apply the lessons learned from this one!