SXSW has descended upon Austin. More than just a direction by a more specific direction, SXSW is a Music, Film and Interactive festival that brings a whole mess of talented people to town and really effs up traffic.

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A lot of people mention the Music and Film portion, but forget about Interactive. You may recall, Metroblogging Austin awarded my mad Googlin’ skills with an Interactive badge, and it’s been a little slice of digital heaven. I could have gone to the panels that were relevant to my job, but in the end I decided since I got the badge all on my own I’d wrap myself up in discussions of tagging and web production and things that interested me as a techy, not me as an employee. Is that bad? Probably only if the people I work with read my blog. I left the Women’s Visibility on the Web panel ready to be a strong female blogger. I left the Henry Rollins interview all fired up about music and politics. I left the Yahoo!/Flickr/del.icio.us party w/ cute little branded gumballs and buttons. I left the DIY panel laughing over a quote from the founder of Dogster who reminded us when we get stressed “It’s just dogs on the internet.”

In the end, I wish I’d been able to do more. But now that I’ve had a taste for it, I don’t think there’s a chance I’ll miss it next year. Them’s my people. I’ll represent.

Now… on to the music. Where’s the coffee?