I just got back from SXSW Interactive 2008. It was a great experience and I had a lot of fun. It was great to hang out with friends and meet new people. That was really the main part of the conference for me. I arrived in Austin on Thursday evening, March 6 and left Wednesday morning, March 12. So, I was in town for about a week. It was my first time at the conference and my first time in Austin, in addition to the most west I’ve ever been in my life. What follows is a community minded recap of my participation at the conference. However, if you’d like to read about everything else I did, please check out my personal blog.

The first and only panel that I attended was Edit Me! How Gamers are Adopting the Wiki Way on March 7. I wanted to hit this panel because, besides being community related, my good friends April Burba (of NCsoft) and Jake McKee were on it. I attended and it was a solid panel. I spoke with Jake briefly before and after (he was focused and busy) and April a bit afterward.

She invited me to a drink at Champions later that day. While there, I met other people from NCsoft (the company April works for) and also the other panelists that were on the Edit Me! panel – Angie Shelton of Wikia Gaming and George Pribul of WoWiki. Doug Kennedy, Marketing Manager for Wikia Gaming was also there. And I’m forgetting the names of the other people, unfortunately. But, it was cool to hang out with some community minded people and, especially, to get a chance to talk more with April.

March 8 was my brother Sean’s 19th birthday and it was the first time I’ve ever missed his birthday, so that was a little odd. I had wanted to attend the Managing Communities That Work panel – another one with Jake – but I got there late and it was packed. So, that wasn’t in the cards.

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