SXSW: Afterthoughts and Afterhours

As flight delays scrolled across screens and text messages tapered off, SXSW negated to close its doors, yet gave a swift slap to attendees as it dismounted from Interactive. As mentioned, most of the interactivity action happens outside of the panels and what happens in SXSW, stays on Flickr. With leftover hand-stamps from evening outings, attendees gingerly, yet somehow still enthusiastically dragged their feet to morning panels over the last few days. The main word on the carpeted streets was "overwhelming" with the plethora of things to do and people to see seriously taxing attendees stamina.

Friday night kicked off with the traditional Break Bread With Brad ceremonial drinkfest and introductions. One would think that after a few drinks, the crowd would begin to tangentially veer from social technology topics, however with the circulating video bloggers stumbling within the crowd and the lively debates over Technorati and Twitter (which becomes a more flexibly applied verb with a few drinks), the physicality of what is usually online activity kept everyone buzzing.

With Treo and Blackberry ornaments hanging from every messenger bag pocket, and laptops all in a row, it was no longer business or pleasure, personal or professional. Threadless shirts and logo-ed tattoos pwned all. While parties like Dorkbot, Fox Interactive, 8-bit, LAist, Mashup, Blogger, Lifehacker, and SXNW played venue to a meeting of interactive minds, it was the actual interaction that made and continues to make SXSW a unique, sometimes awkward, but always appreciated, online to offline experience.