Go to SXSW for Free!

Well, not really. Or sort of, depending on your outlook! Here’s the deal – I am going, in a day and a half, to Austin, TX to South by Southwest Interactive, or SXSWi2009. Or just sxsw (ok, or #sxsw in Twitter).

For those not familiar with SXSW, it’s a cool webish, techie conference. Want to hear Heather Champ talk about flickr? She’ll be there. Charlene Li talk about Groundswell? She’ll be there too. Yes, to say I’m excited is a bit of an understatement 🙂

But here’s the deal – wanna come along for the ride?

There are a couple of ways to follow along on the conversations, the conference sessions, and probably even the partying (well, that last one’s a bit of a stretch, but still):

Easiest way = Read my blog!
I will blog most sessions I attend (I say most because there’s always a couple of stinkers at a large conference, or I get conferenced out towards the end). Hate my writing? Do a search for sxsw, sxswi, or sxsw2009 in Technorati or Google blog search to find other bloggers blogging away about all things sxsw. Or go to one of the popular sites like Mashable or Boing Boing – they’ll most likely be covering the conference pretty well.

Photos and Videos
I’ll also probably take some photos and some video, so click those links in the next couple of days, and you just might see and view interesting little tidbits of the conference. Don’t like my photos or videos? Search flickr or YouTube for sxsw and (my guess here) see a TON of videos and photos of sxsw happenings. For even more video, make sure to check out other sites like Vimeo or blip.tv.

Well, how about real time?
I will make sure to Twitter some. Even better – follow along with the twitter hashtag #sxsw, or if you discover some of the hashtags for individual conference sessions, you can follow along (and even participate) using those. For example, Beth Kanter plans to use #roi for one of her sessions.

And don’t forget the streaming video sites! I’ve heard of more than one speaker who plans to live stream their sessions. So check out uStream.tv, justin.tv, and qik.com for those.

So now you know where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing for the next 4-5 days. Feel free to follow along for free!