The W In SXSW This Year Stands for "Work"

The South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas is a unique animal, combining the excitement of a massive multi-band concert with the geekfest of a technology event. And if you read some of the breathless previews and last year's reviews, you could be forgiven for thinking it's pretty much a week-long excuse to party. This year, after keeping a fairly low profile for the most part since starting this blog in 2006, I'm signing up to go. But if you think I'm going for the parties, you're wrong. I'm looking forward to meeting new people, new companies, seeing new ideas, and participating in what I think could be one of the more dynamic panels on the agenda.

That's right, I'm ready to work. If I go to zero parties, but get connected with even more people that matter and are being innovative in a down economy, then we will have succeeded.

My goals for attending SXSW 2009 this year are simple:

• Participate in the "Beyond Aggregation" panel
• Get introduced to new companies and services
• Meet up with peers in social networking and tech
• Come away with great story ideas

As such, I am 100% open to starting to fill up my calendar, so do hit up my e-mail with a subject line that includes SXSW09. I get in on Friday night, March 13th, and don't leave until the afternoon of Tuesday, March 17th. Phil Glockner, the newest member of ReadWriteWeb, will be my tag-team partner coming and going, so I am absolutely looking forward to that. If you're really good, maybe you can brief or meet both of us at once!

The panel is one I am particularly excited about, and has, in my opinion, with the exception of myself, some of the most-interesting characters presenting at SXSW09 this year.

Topic: Beyond Aggregation -- Finding the Web's Best Content
Day: Monday, March 16
Time: 10:00-11:00
Place: Hilton A

Also on the Panel:

• Melanie Baker (postrank.com)
• Micah Baldwin (lijit.com)
• Marshall Kirkpatrick (readwriteweb.com)
• Gabe Rivera (techmeme.com)

As you can see - a packed lineup from one of the Web's best tech blogs, two intelligent services aimed to find relevant content, and the most-widely known tech aggregation site. Not too bad for one panel.

When I participated at BlogWorldExpo last fall, I was a little surprised at the low amount of blogging I found about the conference in general. While, yes, people were tweeting about it and using hashtags, these microupdates are largely in the ether. For SXSW this year, I plan on doing my part to keep the full blog posts coming. Hope to see you there if you're going. Hit me up on e-mail, or of course, call my cell at 408 646-2759.