Going to SXSW?

Secretly (don’t tell anyone, dear readers) the conference I look forward to all year is SXSW. It’s actually a three part conference, catering to three types of nerds: computer, film, and music. This year I’ll be out of town for the first two evenings of the music part (curses to MIX09 scheduling! JK! KISSES! ;>), but I’ll be around for the rest of it.

I’m always excited to meet people who’re in town, so if you’re here next week, track me down (Twitter is probably a good idea). Maybe I’ll take you up to my favorite hidey-hole bar near the convention center. They’ve got great Micheladas, burgers, and a calm atmosphere which is welcomes after a couple days and nights of SXSW’ing.

HallwayCon

There’s always a wide variety of fun people in town for SXSW – mostly the hipster computer people who do consumer based software, services, or fit into the category that the the enterprise world would call “The Kids” – which is really the fun part about it. There’s tons of sessions, all with alluring topics. I tend not to go to any of them, well, maybe one or two. For one, there’s been recordings of them (months) afterwards for the last few years and, two, the hallway- and street-con at SXSW is where it’s really at.

The schwag is nice too.

The One Session You Must Attend

Open Source Software, once considered revolutionary, has increasingly been accepted as mainstream. In this panel of some of the most experienced open source leaders and analysts, we will explore what has made open source successful and what lessons all businesses can learn from this paradigm shifting technology.

That said, this year, thanks to an invite from moderator Neelan Choksi, I’ll be on a panel entitled “Lessons Learned from Open Source Software” (Saturday, March 14th at 11:30AM CST, see the sched.org entry, if you prefer). I’ll be joined by fellow panelers SaraD and SpringSource’s Mark Brewer.

RIA Weekly

This year, as last year, my co-host for RIA Weekly, Ryan Stewart, will be in town. We’ll be looking to do a wrap-up video as we did last year, but hopefully we’ll be able to snag some people here and there for other RIA-related mini-episodes.

Parties

There’s of course tons of parties throughout SXSW. One of my favorite is the (as I like to call it) “free meat party,” otherwise known as the “Entrepreneur’s Lounge and the Austin Interactive Showcase“ (see more info and press release here too). I call it the “free meat party” because it’s nightly on the top of Fogo De Chao where, you know, there’s trays of free meat and drinks. If you can get it, it’s highly recommended. The first night they’re having the first Austin Interactive Showcase which will be showing off several local Austin tech companies and startups.

There’s also friend-of-RedMonk Maggie Fox‘s sponsored party Mix at Six which I’m sure will be fantastic. See the upcoming entry.

On Sunday, me + 1 will be checking out the Texas Social Media Awards party (of which, I’m one of the awardees). They’ll be naming the over all winner out of the 25 winners. Also, while it cots $15 to attend, they’ll also have “free alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.” As I tweetered earlier today, that’s $15 for a 3 hour booze buffet. Sounds pretty good when you look at it that way, eh?

There’ll be tons of other parties and get togethers, planned and ad hoc. Check out the Austin Tweetup on Sunday night, for example.

(If there’s a fun session or party I’m leaving out, leave a comment below.)

Update: check out my public schedule if you care. The tool I’m using for it, sched, is fantastic.

Disclosure: Adobe sponsored RIA Weekly.