SXSW thoughts from a first time attendee

It’s Sunday.  I’ve been here in Austin since (late) Thursday night and wow this is an experience.  Yesterday I didn’t catch a single panel, and I didn’t mind at all.  The BlogHaus was where people were hanging out and chatting and, well the chances of learning something cool was pretty good.

Today I got up bright and early … that’s a story alone (remember that we had the time change last night so the 6:30 AM sunrise became 7:30 AM sunrise–enough said)…to go to Darren’s panel on online advertising.

Sure I’m not really the target and, yes, Darren is my boss–so I was there as a supporter.  Member of the team you know.

Back in the BlogHaus I did some impromptu video with Loren Feldman and later with Gina Tripani.  That’s my goal for today.  Video interviews for Intruders Canada—that’s a big priority.

You know me though, my videos are pretty rough cut.  One take, not staged.  I like it that way, hope you do to.

The rest of the day … few more networking events and, this should be funny, Geek Bowling.

Tired?  Yes.  Rather.  And there are two more days to go?

While the BlogHaus is awesome.  It’s also buzzing with activity.  Lots going on and very hard to focus.

Overheard here in the press room “I think SXSWi has jumped the shark…”  are we getting conferenced out?  Or is just this one person jaded?

Frankly, not a lot of the sessions seemed interesting to me.  Tomorrow and Tuesday those are the days that I’m going to be doing more session time.  Now picking which sessions to go to … yikes