SXSW was awesome. Nowhere else in the entire field of geek can you plug in so easily. There are so many conversations, so many connections. It just feels good to be there.

Hummel asked for a transcript of the conference, so here goes…

Short version (recommended):

Most of the people I met, I wasn’t expecting to. Most of the people I thought I’d meet up with, escaped. People like Twitter.

Longer version:

Michael and I finally got to meet up with Guy Kawasaki IRL. (Stefan had already caught both Guy and Will in Palo Alto.) After thousands of emails (I was going to say hundreds, but my smart folder says 2,561) I still couldn’t verify whether or not he actually is smiling 100% of the time. He is.

We bowled. Big thanks to Cindy Li and the nclud team for picking up the event. It was all kinds of awesome, and we were proud to be one of the sponsors. I got to say “hey” to Jon Snook and [other] assorted web geniuses. I’ll admit meeting an awkward ego or two, but each was easily ignored.

I got a collectible moo card from Andrew Hyde. And participated in the famous elevator pitch. My pitch was a social network for people who like social networks.

I had lunch with the Twitter famous New Media Jim (Jim Long) and other cools (oh, and some guy named Brian Shaler. Meh.)

I met scores of twitter friends. This seemed weird the first few times, but the feeling quickly passed. Everyone at the conference spends time on Twitter. Handing out business cards didn’t seem to make sense.

The bloghaus was weird (bloggers applauding bloggers, weird). But the connectivity rocked, and so I lurked.

I attended some incredible panels. Sorry for not linking. You’ll have to trust me.

I also participated in my first SXSW panel, True Stories From Social Media. Held in Ballroom A the day after Zuckerberg’s spectacle, I wasn’t sure I’d be adding much, but nobody was paying attention to me anyway. Guy Kawasaki was moderating, and the rest of the panel was female.

We had great food. And a few mojitos.

We missed SXNW and the Great British Booze UP. These were the high points of last year’s conference for me, but dinner with Guy K ran late, the lines ran long, and ambition ran out.

We launched Alltop. It was already live, but we switched the front page just in time to make a few more people hate it.

The weather was perfect. Austin has great energy, and we caught it at the perfect time. I really wanted to stay for music, but not as much as I wanted to get back to a few very specific people at home.

Flights were great. Northwest Airlines didn’t screw up once. My beautiful family was waiting to pick me up at the FSD airport.

Other things happened that I’m sure are worth noting, but my head hurts, so I’ll just recap the takeaway…

1. Twitter is the new blog. Everyone is talking about [Twitter] as a hub.
2. As much as everyone seems to want to conquer it, video is still awkward. Tripods and lights are being lugged around, but people are still using crappy hand cams. A killer [video hosting] app has yet to be found.
3. Bloggers have become very interested in themselves. I can’t tell you how many times I saw blogger a interviewing blogger b. It might be time to get them their own internet.
4. Austin rox.

p.s.: I took a few pics. So did Stefan and Michael.