At long last, here’s our SXSW wrap-up post.

How to Go Badgeless at SXSW

Ahead of time:

• Make plans to attend the meetups you’re interested in.
• Make a list of all the people you’d like to meet and/or hang out with.
• If you know them already, ask for their contact info in advance. Maybe even set up plans to meet.
• If you don’t know them already, put them on a Twitter list (and add them on Foursquare, if you’re into that sort of thing.)

At SXSW:

• Check Twitter/Foursquare to see if anyone you’d like to hang out with is bored or at a particular place. If so, meet up with them.
• If not, find someplace convenient and comfortable. Sit down. Tweet “I’m at this place! Feel free to drop by.”
• Repeat.

Seriously, this is all we did during the entire week of SXSW, and we had an awesome time. I can’t count the number of times when we were having amazing conversations with amazing people, and half of them got up and left to go to a panel. I know it’s the usual error, but I just can’t see how a panel (that you can listen to a free podcast of afterwards) could possibly be cooler than company of this quality.

A Typical Badgeless Day at SXSW

Here’s a taste of our SXSW 2010 experience.

On Friday, we dropped Nathalie off at the convention center, where I collected my first drive-by Jonathan Fields hug. (Even though I never got to talk to him for more than five seconds at a time, I collected a total of 5 Jonathan Fields hugs over the course of SXSW. I hereby declare myself the mayor of Jonathan Fields.)

We saw Melle Baker tweeting from the Hilton lobby, so we joined her for a while and bumped into Erica Douglass and Richard Soderberg while we were there. Nathalie joined us and Melle left us, and we had a lovely lunch at the Iron Cactus. Back at the Hilton lobby, we tweeted and Karl Staib dropped by.

After he left, we saw on Twitter that a bunch of our friends were at the bloggers’ lounge, so we plopped down in the hallway outside the bloggers’ lounge and talked with Cath Duncan, Kelly Kingman, Andy Hayes, and Andrea Ramirez.

Fire drill!

We went outside and bumped into Colleen Wainwright, Charlie Gilkey, Angela Wheeler, and Ali Hale. We made plans to have dinner at Roy’s, and met up with a whole bunch more awesome people there. I chatted with Jeff Moriarty and Tei Lindstrom while Naomi and Megan Elizabeth Morris launched a product at the dinner table. Roy’s was also where the infamous “maple syrup” incident occurred. Don’t ask; you had to be there.

Last but not least, we picked an apple-eating hooligan up from the airport.

You Need A Montage!

…Fresh Choice with Steve Spalding, Nathan Thompson, and Michelle Nickolaisen… Amy’s Ice Cream & marble cows… for the Incredibly Rich! It’s vaguely exploitative!

…SOBCon meetup with Liz Strauss, Terry Starbucker, Chris Brogan, and a haze of a hundred other people…

…a break from the chaos at Katz’s with Missy Ward, Mark Jaquith, Brian Clark, Darren Rowse, Johnny B. Truant, and Tei Lindstrom…

…Rock Band! …with Kyeli, Marty Whitmore, Johnny, and Nathalie. We totally rocked out.

…attempting to drive Chris Guillebeau back to his hotel but getting lost. In our own city. (:

…pleasant conversation with Tony Clark, Kim Clark, Chris Garrett, Sonia Simone, Darren, Deb Ng, and Brian…

…lunch at Olive Garden with the hottest and most talented chick at SXSW…

…Freak Revolution meetup with Green, Lynnivere, Chris & Cherie, Andy Hayes, Michelle Nickolaisen, Kelly, Cath, & Nathalie…

…Thai and ice cream with Sonia…

…staying up past 2am in our pajamas with Nathalie for an impromptu slumber party…

…completely miscommunicating (at first) with the communicatrix (;

…scaring the pants off of Cath as a birthday present…

…getting to meet/spend time with Andrew Norcross, Adam Baker, Carl R. Nelson (the Dance Nomad), Hailey, Tzaddi, Eileen Valazza, Kelly Parkinson, Nora, and a bunch of others I’m forgetting (my apologies!)

Some of our friends’ overlapping adventures

• Nathalie wrote about her SXSW experience, including the fun times she spent sleeping on our couch and some great photos.
• Marty wrote about how much fun he had endangering Nathalie’s life. And playing Rock Band.
• Johnny wrote about how to make the most of SXSW last weekend, including a pic of us playing Rock Band together. (:
• Chris and Cherie wrote about their travels from Orlando to Austin, including a shot of me getting my arm signed “To my #1 fan!” at the Freak Revolution meetup.
• Colleen wrote about finding your circle of awesome.
• Ali wrote about finding what makes you happy.

What We Learned at SXSW

I learned about eighty billion things at SXSW, but the most important thing I (re)learned is that people are people. Sure, I hung out with a bunch of Big Deal A-List Internet Famous People. But what did we talk about? Our kids. Dorky in-jokes. Life. The universe. Everything.

I vastly prefer making new friends to collecting autographs.