... or you can just make it an unconference; notes about SXSW

I know that not everyone is so enamored with South by Southwest, the media-film-music hipster monstrosity of a conference underway right now in Austin, TX. (It's okay, I still <3 you, Erik.) But I'm certainly amused that SXSW attendees have been plotting their revolts using the chatroom feature sponsored by Meebo. This entry in Wired News will get you up to speed with what's going on (and here's what went down at the Mark Zuckerberg keynote). The general attitude appears to be that if you're not interested in the topics that are taking up the valuable time of being around these interesting folks, make it an unconference of sorts by saying what you do want to talk about.

While I'm linking, I also found last night a great exercise posted by Rohit Bhargava on the 25 best marketing moves in the swag bags. Great idea! I know that a few of the bits of swag I received at the Science Blogging conference in January still stand out, mainly the free coffee and the back massager, but I confess that I have no clue who provided them. And I further confess that the rest of the stuff is still sitting in the bag in my foyer ... maybe I'll unpack that soon. :)

If you want to read a bit about what SXSWers are saying, see this page for a list of all confirmed speakers at the Interactive Festival. There are similarly large boatloads of interesting people speaking at the Film and Music Festivals.