I’ve been trying to put this year’s South by Southwest Interactive experience into words, but it’s proving impossible. I was hoping to come home inspired and focused, and I definitely got what I wanted. I’ve already been doing some work in the area of online privacy, and the keynotes and sessions I went to proved that I’m on the right track. Stay tuned!

During the conference I wrote reviews of the sessions I attended at Lunch.com. Please go check out the reviews from me and others, and while you’re there have a look at Lunch, it’s a great new community site!

To name a few who helped make the trip special:

Adele McAlear shared my hotel room and was a fantastic roommate. Her research in death and digital legacy is fascinating stuff!

Sarah Vela let me tag along as she met with people to help promote her awesome new site helpattack.com (go sign up!) She introduced me to bunches of amazing people.

I devoted an entire blog post to how Thom Singer helped me out. Go read it.

Len Edgerly joined us for a recording of Push My Follow despite my failure to record our attempt to do the same thing last year!

Thomas Knoll invited me to help promote Lunch.com and proved once again why he’s so good at what he does. Look for him to cause fireworks in his new job at Zappos!

Conversations with Amber Marlow Blatt inspired me yet again. Love that girl.

I had a long, rambly conversation with Jason Jarrett at the end of a long day and it was just what I needed!

I finally met Ann, Shannon, Gavin, Ethan, & Baratunde!

Bonus- I got to grab a quick empanada with my grammar school classmate Linda! We hadn’t seen each other since 1977!

Others I hung out with or at least hugged:
Rob
Sarah
Tracy
Jake
Krissi
Mike
Phil
Zane
Wesley
Lloyd
Melissa
Steve
Rachael
Mary Ann
Jeff
Cathy
C.C.
Zane
Ewan
Becky
Derrick
Keith
Jeff
Jane
Alicia
Brian

Happy to have also met:
Kelly
Molly
Beth
Ian
Randall
Angie
Kevin
Mark
Liz
Joanna
Debbie
Diana
Noah
Sam
Cindy
Heather
and tons of others whose names I never even got (bad Annie!)

Sorry I missed:
Laura
Dave
Giannii
Sukhjit
Erin
Lucretia
Gary
Aliza
Chris
Bryan
Goldie

(if I saw you and missed naming you I apologize- I tried but I’m sure I forget a few!)

Until next year, Austin!

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!