Heard at SXSW

Here some things I learned at South by Southwest Interactive:

1. The average blog has an active readership of six.
2. The whole internet is really small. People kept saying (in exaggeration) that the entire internet was in the lobby. In fact, there was no one from Google, Facebook, Yahoo! or youtube in the lobby.
3. Pickles had a series of unfortunate events that makes me wonder why she wants to go back next year.
4. Austin is growing like crazy. Since I went there in 2000 - there are probably 10 or so new downtown skyscrapers.
5. The best sessions tended to be specific topics rather than general ideas. For example, crowdsourcing was terrific with Behance and Digg and Third Coast was awful.
6. I find certain things about media more interesting - open sourcing and data analytics - and somethings far less so - graphics and social media less so.
7. I really understand how Twitter can make a conference better. Great job on the hashtags and ongoing twitter talk.
8. Some people probably would prefer if I don't remember some of their not as good moments from this weekend. And honestly, I wish I could. However, Pickles and I have created some new googlesque verbs to refer to certain behaviors.
9. Surprisingly no discussion of mobile slaughterhouses.
10. Austin really is weird.
11. It seemed like a lot of discussion from everywhere was about capital and bootstrapping - not just poor Midwestern states.
12. I was surprised by the quality of the government personnel and NGOs in social media. I thought Architecture for Humanity was great as was were the space people.
13. Conversely, I was highly disappointed by financial services and US soccer. Neither seemed to "really get it" - although I do like Smarty Pig and Mint - still.
14. I felt like a duck out of water as a Chamber/Economic Developer guy - not because of what I do, but because so many people immediately cast me off as interesting.
15. Danah Boyd was fascinating. Evan Williams not so much.
16. There was a mouse in the Austin Airport last night and while I found it funny when I saw it running into the grill that I was eating at, I think it made me nauseous the whole way home.
17. Austin's airport is much nicer than the last time I was there.
18. Big Omaha could match SXSWi in a couple of years for content - but parties and clubs just aren't there yet in Omaha to match the non-conference part of the conference.
19. My favorite parts of the trip were remembering living in Houston and spending time with my brothers and sister on Selection Sunday - particularly watching my dad's awesome draw unfold.
20. I want to start a company because I think that I can beat some of the people I met at their own game. It really humanizes entrepreneurship and company creation to meet the entrepreneurs and see their fallibility and their true awesomeness (sometimes in the same person).