SXSWi: Let the Austin Digital Invasion Begin

Wow.  Twitter is absolutely on fire with peeps getting excited to be getting on planes to head to our fair city of Austin, Texas for the start of SXSW Interactive.

What was I thinking?  I should hang up the laptop for the day and go out to the airport and sell some hot dogs or something.  Can we fit enough planes into Bergstrom Intl to get everybody here who wants to get here today???

Well, it’s all very exciting, and I want to apologize to my readers for being a slacker (speaking of slacker, I just got introduced to Slacker.Com, the other radio streaming service, and I’m pretty impressed) and not having yet publish the sessions I hope to attend.

I’ve been handicapping for a couple of days, and it’s a work in progress.  This year seems to be an embarrassment of riches, as far as session content, and the venues have expanded to several hotels in and around the Austin Convention Center.

I will refer you to my previous post to get some Austin tips and tricks, but let me just extend a huge, warm Texas welcome to everybody arriving in Austin.  We love having you here every year for SXSW overall, but especially SXSW Interactive.

It’s obviously great for our local economy, but it’s also great for the interactive industry.  And for me, it’s awesome to have some of the best minds in the digital realm showing up in the thousands to share, network, discuss, and learn about the latest and greatest initiatives in our industry.

Though I may be partial, I’ve been around these Web parts for 15+ years, and I’ve seen a few Intnernet related-conferences.

SXSW Interactive stands up there with the best of them, and we Austin digerati are so glad you all have helped make it such a tremendous success.

I’ll be on the ground at ACC for the next several days myself — sharing, networking, listening, learning — and my podcast buddies Scott Laningham and David Salinas will be around as well, and we’ll be working to try and recap some of what we hear and what we think about it all.

For all you weary travellers, take tonight to grab your badge, grab a Shiner Bock beer, and kick back and get ready to fill your head.

As to my schedule, I’m sharing it with you and the world here — don’t hold me to it, however.  I often make last minute changes, and as you can see, I’ve had some challenges deciding across a number of the session slots on which to attend.

My own session entitled “Smarter Social Media” is Tuesday afternoon at 5:00 PM (although there’s a chance I could go on as early as 4:40 PM) as part of the Future 15 series.  It’s in Hilton D.

I can’t tell you how excited about meeting some of those familiar faces I see here annually, as well as those of you whom I’ve yet to meet.

Welcome to Austin, Texas, the live music capitol of the world!

PS  If you couldn’t make it here, fear not.  Just follow the hashtag #sxswi on Twitter and you’ll hear all about it!