SXSW Interactive. Whew. It’s been… 2 weeks? 3 weeks? I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to recap the whole thing. The short story is that SXSWi was AWESOME. It’s my fourth year going, and I think it’s one of the most important interactive events out there. It’s been pivotal in repositioning our company in the minds of the technology crowd – letting them realize and see that we’re more than just another “ad agency.”

But more than that, it’s the people. It’s absolutely insane the sorts of people you can randomly meet, and it’s an invaluable week for reconnecting with old friends and making new ones, especially if you don’t live in New York or the Bay Area.

As I get to know more people, though, I find it to be a bit overwhelming. When I first went, I only knew a few people, and it was easy to get QT in. Now there are just so many people to see, it’s really hard to get some quality sober time with people. Still, though, if you work at it, it can be done. I had good dinners and lunches with people I don’t get to see often, and met some great new people.

I made a point – despite what it reads like below – to be more work-focused this year, down economy and all that. For us, though, who work with large brands, there really are only four or five brands here that could be potential clients. But there’s a myriad of opportunities to position ourselves, and do things like recruit. I can’t say enough good things about it.

Anyway, off on my personal blog I do long recaps of every day of my life. I’ve been doing it for… god, four years? But since the conference was so work related, I’m posting the recap of these five days here.

Friday, March 13 – Arrived at the airport, waited around for Emma and me, Justin and Emma shared a cab into Austin, even though we were all at different hotels. Ha. I got off at my hotel and unpacked and did a few things and then headed on over to the convention center to get my badge, and immediately started running into people – I think Alice was first, but I also ran into Schmeg, aka Miss Lunarkitty, and oh man, I’ll never be able to remember it all at this point. Then I went to Alex Bogusky’s panel on Bike Sharing to see what Crispin is up to these days. That was mildly interesting. And then to Ryan McMinn and Ali’s panel on online dating, where I met up with Emma and Diana and a few others. The panel was super good! I liked it a lot and it was in a nice intimate room and the audience was very sharing and participating. So good for me! Two panels in the first day I was there, and there a day early. Then a bunch of us went to Iron Cactus for dinner – oh, lordy, there were a lot of people. I think I took a picture. lemme look. oo yes I did. I can discern Ryan McMinn and Emma and Spangley and I remember Diana being there and Eva joined us. I just found a tweet that says some other people were there. Thank god for Twitter Search and the Foursquare checkin history for parsing my actions 2 weeks later.

Then we all went to Emo’s for Pasties and Pastries, but it was super crowded and hard to get into so off to the Belmont it was where there were a bunch of SF people, and next door were a bunch of NY people like Felicia and Tim and whatnot, and I couldn’t get everyone to merge. It was funny. The night ended with me and liane and aubrey and aubrey’s friend Jackie and these two guys from CAA that I spent a lot of time with – um.. they were friends of Liane’s. Matt and Omid. Omid and I got in a calf fight. Purevolume was tolerably not crowded.

Saturday March 14 Okay! So let’s get this SXSW thing started! Got up, had breakfast at Manuel’s with Emma and Jackie, which was awesome. Then to the convention center where I got into HARD CORE PANEL ACTION, although I think I chose my strategy wrong.

My first panel was the Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh’s panel, which was awesome. I mean, there aren’t any surprises, really, we all know about Zappo’s and what makes them so great, but it was great to see Tony lay out a solid business case for being so good and caring about people, and it was awesome to see him and just be able to tell that he does, in fact, feel it and mean it, and it’s not all a ruse.

Next up was the Hyper Island presentation, which was AWESOME, but I didn’t know it was going to last THREE HOURS, so I only got to see an hour and a half of it or so, with Zach Canfield from Weiden and Nick Parish from Creativity Magazine. LOTS more ad industry people at SXSW this year. Hyper Island, for those that don’t know, is a school that teaches interactive technology, marketing and development, funded by the government of Sweden. They are AWESOME. We sometimes sponsor some of their initiatives, though I’d love love love to do more, and I’ve done several interviews with the students there. They are awesome. I was thinking the panel was going to be sort of the story behind Hyper Island, which I would have loved, but in fact it was something different, and actually much more useful – it was a full-on mini-version of their entire curriculum. An incredible value, really, for anyone breaking into this stuff. Seriously. Worth the price of admission to SXSWi on its own. I strongly hope that the SXSW/Hyper Island relationship continues, because it’s seriously genius and there’s a ton of potential there.

Next I went to the “Freelancer to Agency” panel, with Jeff Zeldman from Happy Cog, Roger Black, Kristina Halvorson and Whitney Hess. Obviously I’ve already gone through this phase with TBG, but I was hoping for some old war stories, or concrete tactics on growing from a freelancer to an agency, because it’s a part I have to advise and consult a lot of people on – the differences between doing it just for design or deciding you actually love running a business too. Consciously thinking through how big you want to be. That sort of thing. One of the women on the panel – I believe it was Whitney – did say something I really liked though: “If you know enough about something to talk about it for ten minutes, you can probably charge for it.” Good advice right there. The panel was definitely more focused on freelance than growth, though, which Emma, who went too, sort of confirmed, being a freelancer who wrestles with growth questions to some extant.

Next up was the Comedy and Television on the Web panel, which was stellar. My friends Lindsay, Caroline, Liane, Skaff and a few others joined me to this one. The panelists were Meridth Scardino, a writer for the Colbert report, Keith Richman, the CEO of Break Media, Ricky Van Veen, the Co-Founder of College Humor, Avner Ronen, the CEO of Boxee and BJ Novak from the Office. These guys were seriously great. Really solid insights into online video and monetization, Avner really laid out the economic challenges of making money online vs. the web, and did a great job explaining Hulu’s motivations with them in a fair and honest way. Everyone was obviously hilarious, and the crowd appreciated it.

Foursquare tells me I made a stop at the Madison at this point, but I don’t really recall that. What I do recall next was going to the Gingerman for the SoDA meetup. SoDA is the Society of Digital Agencies – a group trying to be an advocacy group for digital production shops and agencies. Ran into Mike Geiger from Goodby and Nick and it was good to check in on what’s going on with the SoDA crowd. I went with someone too… I had a male companion. OH. Skaff. yeah. Skaff’s on the digital advisory board for the AICP, which is the boradcast equivalent of what SoDA is trying to do, only VERY established, very integrated into the lawmaking, unions, negotiating, etc. compared to SoDA. I’d love to see SoDA head in that direction, but it’s not quite there yet. So that was good, and then I stopped by my hotel and dropped my stuff off and grabbed a drink with a lot of ladies – Liane, Anne Z, Emma, etc. That was a good time. Ran into Garret and Melody and bunch of SF people as well.

Then we headed to the Bigg Digg Shindigg over at Stubb’s. Two band I should mention for my regular band list – The Republic Tigers and Barcelona. Both were great. Ran into a lot of new yorkers at this one – Rex and Kelly and Cap and Julia and Melody and… it was a good time. Eventually we popped over to Beauty Bar, thinking it would be an interim step, but it ended up being awesome and everyone sort of joined us. And you know what would be awesome? If Foursquare told you in your history who else was there. Because it does during your twitter checkins, except I turned those off. But now I’m thinking maybe I’ll link it to a secret account just so I can know in the future. That might be interesting. Gotta think that one through. ANYWAY, it was super fun. Cap and Nate Bolt are awesome. Oof. here there is a checkin from Purevolume, so I guess I went there afterwards. OH YES. I did. To meet EVA. So it was me, Eva and a few others.

Sunday, March 15 Did some stuff with the locals! My friend Tara, who runs the Homeslice Pizza SXSW series of concerts, picked me up at the Driskill and took me to an amazing Thai place called Madam Mamm’s. It was SO GOOD. I hear there’s one near the university that isn’t as good, but the one on south south congress? Super good. Tara was also kind enough to let me stop at Best Buy to get a cord to plug my computer into my TV @ my hotel so I could watch the BSG finale. Ha.

Then to Rio Grande to meet Aubrey to get wristbands for our party @ Purevolume on tuesday, and then to the Convention Center, for a panel but i don’t remember what, and then I met up with my friend Sabina, a flash designer, for the SXSW Awards Pre-Party. Then back to the hotel and then I ran into Garret Camp, StumbleUpon’s founder, and he invited me to dinner, so off we went to the Moonshine Patio, except there was, of course, a like 3 hour wait. So then we wandered around lost for a while, found a bar, got a drink, found friends, and isn’t that the way of SXSW? Then to the Facebook/Red Bull party, and I must here thank Raquel D from Facebook, who I had run into at the Driskill the day before and gave us VIP wristbands, thus avoiding the like 400 deep line. The party was great. Facebook knows how to throw one, and Red Bull probably throws the best parties of any brand ever. Lots of good people there, we got to dance a lot, they had some good bands – Lights and Flosstradamus who tore it up. Good times. LIane, Emma, Matt, Omid, God… I wish I had taken more pictures. Julia Allison and Randi Zuckerberg prancing around looking bored getting their pictures taken. Aubrey, Tom Clifton and Jackie. Tom was awesome. That guy can dance. I often find myself in ridiculous dance situations with Tom Clifton. He does, however, need a stronger internet presence. Pretty funny – his company (Animoto) is the darling of Tech Crunch and the dude doesn’t even have a blog.

OKAY, anyway, this is where things get weird. I’m talking to George Ruiz of ICA and we decide to go over and hit the Tumblr down the street. We get to the front door and there are about 30 people trying to get in, and they are holding cases of wine. At the forefront of the throng is the dynamic duo of Gary Vaynerchuck and Robert Scoble. Apparantly Gary has a bunch of wine left over from a Wine Library filming and he wanted to set up shop somewhere. The bouncers and doormen at the venue that Tumblr is having their party at – Cedar Street Courtyard – are having none of that. In their defense, the place was already overcrowded, and I’m sure it was of dubious legality. Undaunted, Gary and Robert look around, see a bar across the street and march over there, and 50 or so of us follow. The door men aren’t sure what’s going on, but they just sort of move aside and all 50 of us march in, march to the back, and gary starts opening wine and pouring it. The blogosphere alights, tweets are twitted, foursquares are updated and within 30 or so minutes it’s the only party to be at, a few hundred people are there, and that bar made a shit ton more than they would have made if they didn’t let Gary in that night, even with his ten cases of free wine taken into account. it was crazy. Power of the internet. And much dancing to new wave music for the rest of the night with Alice, Eva, Emma, Tom and a few others. Awesome.

Also a visit to the RVIP lounge was made that night, but man, is it hot in there.

Monday, March 16 – Okay! Daytime again and TIME FOR PANELS. Breakfast at Chipotle and to the convention center before noon! A victory for me! Although weirdly, looking at the panels I marked in Sched.org, I didn’t go to any of them. I wonder what I did. Ha. Well, anyway, eventually I mozied over to the Rio Grande and did some stuff with Skaff, and did a little segment for a project he’s working on. Then I met up with Stephen Landau of Substance for a good old cathartic talk with another small agency owner about things like billing and contracts and timing and all the stuff we’ve got no one to talk to except for one another. That was good. Then I met up with Caroline Waxler and we went to the Gingerman to meet some friends of hers, and in the process I met an awesome dude who makes crazy complicated math-based software for things like container shipping and airline ticket selling, and a few activists who are working to bring awareness to the plight of detained illegal immigrants in the US, which is really TOTALLY CRAZY and why hasn’t Obama done anything about it yet?

Then a quick stop at my hotel and then pizza with Caroline and to the Mohawk for the second annual Barbarian-Onion-Mohawk party of awesomeness. So we sponsored the party with The Onion for their new product The Decider. We had Eugene Mirmann host, and we had some great bands – The Lemurs, Low Line Caller, Wooden Bird and – one of my favorites – Evangelicals.

The Mohawk is a great venue, the people there are super nice, and the party was awesome and I met a ton of great people like Anya and Tyler and all my austin friends came like Charlotte and Bree and Megan and all the bay area people and the new york people and it was good to make them mingle – I think that’s going to be one of my goals in life. It was funny introducing Laura and Melody to some of the Gawker people in NY and then trying to explain to the Gawker people how much the bay area doesn’t like them because of Own, of whom none of them really know or have any idea. Very interesting. Anyway the party was awesome, there are a few pictures from it, and thank you everyone for coming, and thank you Kestrin and Jonathan for bringing the RVIP there! And thank you Dens and Naveen for including our party in the Trifecta badge on Foursquare. SERIOUS MARKETING HERE PEOPLE.

Tuesday, March 17 Okay maybe in the future I won’t throw a big party right before my panel, but WHO KNOWS when they’re going to put your panel. Anyway, got up super early on tuesday, and I suppose the panel kept me from getting too too drunk and hung over on Monday, so that was good. I met my fellow panelists at the Convention Center at 9 AM, and we started getting ready for our panel, of which I’ve documented already over here. It went well, my panelists were awesome, the room was packed and the audience was awesome. Thank you. I was pleased.

After that I wussed out and went back to my hotel and took a nap, then got breakfast, then back to the convention center for some more panels. I went to the Chris Anderson/Guy Kawasaki panel and Q&A and they were both interesting, though I think I’ve already made my feelings known on free. Chris has done an admirable job subtly shifting his arguments to be more palatable after the economic meltdown, but I think he knows this one’s a wash and it’s time for a new meme.

Then I went to a panel called Mobile Ubiquitous Banking and the Future of Money. As an economist working in web marketing, how could I NOT go to this panel? It was good, and three of the panelists were insanely smart and had a LOT of interesting things to say. It was marred slightly by the incomprehensible politicizing of the panel by one panelist saying a lot of intellectually dubious things about the bank takeovers by the government. She wasn’t too bad, though, because at least her poltiics were confusing and you had to think. ha. Justin and Emma joined me for that one.

Then I grabbed some dinner, washed up, and headed over to Purevolume pretty early for a party I had sponsored with Aubrey, Helen Jane, Gerard and Joe Stump called St. Patrick’s Last Stand. it was a good time, but Purevolume is a terrible place to throw a party, it gets way too crowded. But everyone came, and it made a great night and a great party and a great transition to SXSW Music.

ONLY FIVE MORE DAYS TO GO!