Vancouver does SXSW: I (heart) Austin

Contributed by Colleen of Shot Heard Round the Web

Austin is fabulous. I officially love this city.

Photo Credit: Chris Heuer on Flickr

This is my first SxSW experience and it’s nothing at all like i expected. I stopped going to the panels after my first two (tho I did make an exception for Blame Canada…) and hung out in the hallways, on the tradeshow floor and best of all, in the AMD sponsored BlogHaus.

Difficult little room to find, but once you got in there, snacks, beer (or coffee in the morning) power strips, internet connections, Guitar Hero III and internet A Listers abounded. The Austin Conference Centre is laid out in the oddest way. When you first come in, you go from the first floor directly to the fourth. Bloghaus was on the 3rd floor. For the first day, I was actually fairly convinced that Texas just didn’t bother to use the numbers 2 and 3. It’s not that everything is bigger in Texas, it’s just that they can’t count.

I met a good portion of my Twitter friends on this trip, and hung out with the Vancouver tech contingent more in Austin than I do at home. John Biehler, Peter Andersen, Tod Maffin, Phillip Jeffrey, Roland Tanglao… there are a TON of Canadians here. Last year, Twitter was the rock star of SxSWi, and everyone was trying to predict what this year’s Twitter would be. Canada is this year’s Twitter. 2008, we’re the rock stars of SouthBy.

I could have told them that tho.

Contributed by Colleen of Shot Heard Round the Web