SXSW: Davos for hipsters and weberati

I’m getting stale on conferences these days, going to an average of two a month.

But I’m definitely going to SXSW next year. I’ve never had a better time conferencizing. The panel sessions were OK-to-good, the evenings were OUTSTANDING.

Normally at a conference cocktail hour, you find yourself spending ten minutes trying to find some common ground with the person next to you. At SXSW, you just had to turn to your left and introduce yourself and instantly, ka-ching, you were saying “wow, I’ve always wanted to meet you.”

Other friends, old and new, I enjoyed seeing: Will Pate, Steve Reading, Jim Cudney, Biz Stone, Eric Case, John Vars, Milan Negovan, Jackson West, Tony Pierce, Tantek Celik, Evan Williams, Richard Luckett, Ana Marie Cox, Philip Kaplan, Jason Calcanis, Tiffany Brown, Gokul Rajaram, Lockhart Steele, Jason Shellen, Alaina Brown, Jake Dobkin, Marc Brown, Mitch Ratcliffe, Susan Kaup, Rex Hammock, Mike Slone, and Edward Cossette.

As Jenifer Hanen told me “this is my tribe.”

PUD gave me a copy of his F-ed company book. He signed it and I got dotcom survivors Biz, Ev, JasonC, Richard, JasonS, Jake and Tony to add dedications. JasonC, who can be witty when he tries, scribbled out: “to a gentleman and a scholar: may we be never be f-ed and may we always be in good company!” Ev wrote: “I once f-ed a company. Don’t recommend it.”

Here’s a photo of Biz and me taken by Eric.

Update: a more jaundiced view of our Woodstock@Motel6 from The Register and Jossip.