SXSW Interactive, LAist style

LAist Editor-at-Large Jason Toney was among the fantastic Blogging While Black (Revisited) panelists at SXSW Interactive. In a conference that pays a lot of attention to tools, this was a rare, welcome session devoted to content. Hooray! LA bloggers Jason and Tony Pierce were engaging, funny, thoughtful and smart, and the rest of the panel (Lynne, Tiffany and George) were, too. Just don't say they were well-spoken, which is not the way to compliment a group of black bloggers. (it's all explained in the transcript).

Our bretheren at Austinist are super-nice, have boundless energy and throwing a zillion parties around town. One place we hit with them was Factory People, which is where you should go when you're looking for $300 jeans in Austin. Their staff photographer Matt was snapping photos that make it look appropriately glamorous.

Panels, parties, panels: the one constant at SXSW Interactive is the blogging. Bloggers bloggers everywhere. At the Blogging While Black panel, one audience member even explained that she'd been so impressed by last year's version that she'd stopped blogging to pay attention. Now that's devotion.

If you want to get the SXSWi flavor without leaving home, you can, of course. Podcasts of some sessions are online (if you've read Surowecki in the New Yorker, don't bother with his). There are close to 1,000 mp3 downloads all ready to be bittorrented to you; photos are being updated manically on flickr and buzznet has all that plus video. We're not even going to begin to try to link to all the bloggers but technorati will.