Here are 20 Tips for SXSW Interactive. These are tips for anyone who will be attending SXSW for the first time, or for veterans who may need a few reminders. Please leave a comment with any tips that I may have missed.

Please be sure to share it with your friends and colleagues who are heading to Austin this March 11.

Have a great time!

UPDATE:

I’ve made this into a video too. Be sure to tell @penmachine that you love his song!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2nKL1-S26c

And so ends another South by Southwest Interactive. SXSW is the conference filled with countless panels, educational book readings, incredible meals with amazing people, late night parties and early morning breakfasts.

I believe leaving SXSW with no voice is a sign that you made good use of your time. It means that you were talking to the wee hours of the night with plenty of new and old friends. This is the conference that we celebrate all things geek and it feels so good (minus the sore throat of course).

Now I’m home. While I’m happy to be back in Nashville, a part of me still longs for the organized chaos in Austin. It feels weird to come back to earth after a week at SXSW. In case you’re having trouble realizing that you are in fact back home, here are ten signs that South by Southwest is over.

1. Celebrities won’t openly converse with you anymore.

2. Foursquare isn’t pushing a new check-in every three seconds.

3. Your drinks are no longer free and strangers on the street aren’t handing you copious power bars.

4. You’re not freely checking tweets on your phone, while you’re in a discussion with someone who is doing the same thing.

5. You are no longer lost in a convention center, only to run into friends along the way to a panel that is already over by the time you find the room.

6. Nobody around you is wearing a lanyard. How are you suppose to know their name?!?

7. People you talk to don’t know what a tweet is. I recommend not mentioning location-based services to them either.

8. You aren’t hanging out offline with your online friends anymore.

9. You are not openly encouraged to participate in creating a viral video (I’m the last guy in the second row on the right, behind the woman in the red).

10. You are in bed by 9:30 PM (which is when I am writing this post).

I have to hand it to Hugh Forrest and the rest of the SXSW army. You guys have thrown yet another amazing conference. My hat goes off to you all. Thank you!

Did I miss anything on my list?

The trick with participating on panels is that you need to pitch your idea to SXSW nearly one year before. If your pitched panel is selected it then gets added to a public voting page where YOU give a thumbs up or thumbs down.

I’m happy to announce that the two panels I suggested were both approved! Here’s the part where I ask you to kindly give them a thumbs up please. Just click the links below and hit the thumbs up please. It’ll just take you a minute, I promise. Thanks!

1) RoadTwip

2) You’re Nowhere Without Passion

I’ve also been invited to participate on Dave Peck’s panel on building community offline. I’ll be joining Michelle Greer and Chris Pirillo on that one, it should be tons of fun. If you’re so inclined a thumbs up there would be lovely too.

Thanks for your thumbs.

Image By: vernhart

Gnomedex changed me. This was the incredible conference where the infamous Jason Calacanis and Dave Winer showdown occurred. There was much more to the conference though. Each presentation was inspiring and thought provoking. The attendees, speakers and Pirillo family all touched me, it was like joining a family.

I love huge conferences like SXSW Interactive, but the single track format of Gnomedex and smaller attendance keeps everyone tight. We have the same presentations to reflect upon together, which makes it more intimate and special.

The presentations are incredible too. I often refer to Gnomedex as a poor man’s TED. Of course I mean this tongue-in-cheek, but the truth is most of us aren’t invited to even attend TED (let alone can afford a ticket). It’s not to speak badly of TED, but rather to point out the quality and importance of the presentations at Gnomedex.

In 2007 I got to watch Guy Kawasaki do his famous presentation on the art of evangelism.

I was inspired by Darren Barefoot who used humor to discuss death, legacy and philanthropy.

I was touched by Derek K. Miller‘s story of being diagnosed with colon cancer, live from his bed in Vancouver.

I was educated on how older folks experience the the Internet by “elderblogger” Ronni Bennett.

In 2008 I watched in horror as Danny Sullivan opened our eyes to online privacy.

I was thrilled to see the attendee generosity and use of microphilanthropy to raise money for Beth Kanter.

I enjoyed watching three generations of geeks share stories and their visions of the future with Francine Hardaway, Mark Bao and Chris Pirillo.

and I was knocked on my ass in awe by Scott Maxwell‘s presentation on his full time job as the Mars Exploration Rover driver.

Of course there have been many more incredible presentations that I’ve seen at Gnomedex in the last two years. I am terribly excited to see what’s in store this year.

If you’re not coming you should read this and then ask yourself why.

On March 16, I was sitting in the Blogger Lounge in the Austin Convention Center for SXSW Interactive. The good folks at Zappos were doing a giveaway via Twitter, to the first tweet from the lounge. I was the proud winner of a Flip camera!

I’ve always wanted a Flip camera. I was slightly bummed that I didn’t win an HD one, but beggars can’t be choosers. I was thrilled to win the Flip regardless of it’s type. It’s an older model that actually takes Double A batteries, which is convenient when traveling.

Today my Flip was dead. I replaced the batteries, but the new juice did nothing to resuscitate it. I checked Flip’s website and found a customer service number, so I thought I’d give it a shout to see what could be done. Did I mention this was on a Sunday?

I rang the number and was pleasantly surprised when a human answered their support extension. She was charming and friendly, very happy for someone stuck at the office on a Sunday.

As it happens, the Flip doesn’t do well when you allow the batteries to die completely. In fact, it takes up to 72 hours for the camera to reset itself. You need to remove the dead batteries and leave the device alone, for three days. It’s a bummer this is the case, but I’m not complaining. This post isn’t about the device, it’s about how awesome Pure Digital Technologies’ (Flip’s parent company) customer support is.

Kudos to the good people at Flip for answering the phone on a Sunday, and for being knowledgable, curteous and friendly. Thanks also to Zappos for the Flip. Cheers.

A quick message to Google to thank them for their nifty Maps feature. As it turns out, it will take me approximately (Walking Directions are still in beta) 11 days and 17 hours to walk from Nashville to Austin.

You see, I’m on my way to Austin, Texas in the morning to attend SXSW Interactive. I decided that it would be best to fly the 861 miles rather than walk it.

I’m really excited to connect with old and new friends during this true festival for geeks. Speaking of geeks, if you’re in Austin and peckish on Sunday morning please join us for breakfast at the first Geek Breakfast.

I’ll be posting regularly on Twitter during SXSW (be warned). You can follow my tweets on my personal account @davedelaney and some special tweeting from me @griffintech.

See you in Austin (with happy feet).

So I’ve been mulling over throwing a Geek Breakfast in Austin during SXSW.

Geek Breakfasts have really starting spreading lately. The first one was held in Nashville, TN in December, 2007. There are now GBs in Knoxville, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Murfreesboro, TN, and two in South Africa.

There are three simple rules of Geek Breakfast:

1. Everyone is invited, attendance is free (excluding food, beverage and gratuity).
2. Pictures, audio and video should be licensed under Creative Commons and tagged using “yourcitynamegeekbreakfast” and “geekbreakfast”. Please add them to the Geek Breakfast Flickr Group.
3. Geek Breakfasts shall never be sponsored. If a company approaches you about sponsorship opportunities recommend they sponsor local unconferences instead, like a barcamp or podcamp. It’s important to note that if the breakfast gets sponsored you’ll wind up with many people turning up for a free meal, rather than being there to contribute to the conversation.

Please add your local Geek Breakfast Current Events page.

It just makes sense that a monthly GB should be created in Austin. I’m hoping we can do this during SXSW to connect and to start the tradition. The only question is if people are willing to meet up at 8:00am during SXSW?

Please tell me if you think I should organize this and if you’ll be there.
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Thanks for your two cents. See ya @ SXSW!