Okay, I know I expressed a bit of concern about whether SXSW would be this big I Heart Twitter! fest or if I would actually learn something new. No worries! I attended three fabulous panels and a keynote address on Day 2. In all honesty, the speakers most certainly did teach/encourage/motivate/challenge me, so if I had to go home today I would feel like I got my money’s worth.

I very much enjoyed hearing from Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh, his keynote address was packed out and even spilled into three simulcast rooms. The great news about Tony is that he’s relatively young, extremely successful and absolutely understands that THE BEST way to have productive, customer service-oriented, on-message employees is to create a culture that fosters those things.

If you want your customers to be WOWed, as Hsieh does, then you’ve gotta take great care to hire employees who enjoy WOWing folks. And, “fire quickly” those who do not. Nice the hear that Zappos’s priority is creating and maintaining that culture. “If we hire for the culture fit,” Hsieh said, “the rest just takes care of itself.” He also said that Zappos considers money spent on WOWing customers and training and motivating employees as marketing dollars. It’s billiant, in my opinion.

The panel on Internet privacy was also fabulous. It wasn’t so much that I learned new stuff, you already know how I feel about the importance of knowing your online self. It’s was really just nice to have my obsession validated by really smart folks who are just as freaked out as I am about how little the average person cares about what personal information of theirs is floating around on the Web.

Anyway, there were so many great nuggets of geekdom crowding their way into my head that I thought I might explode a little. You can see my schedule over there…except for that Obama/Dean one. I skipped that to hang with hubby. And that’s okay because the keynote for Day 3 is the same Obama Web-ness, so it’s all good. The topics and converstaions spurred many blog ideas for me, so look for those in the coming days!

In the meantime I’ll leave you with this video of Dave stripping down at the trade show to get a cool t-shirt. We do what we have to do, friends:

Woo Hoo! Team Newman is just three days away from descending upon Austin for South by Southwest Interactive.  Although it’s not a total vacation (we’ll still be working on the road) we are ready to get out and about and learn something new… an expectation that makes me a little nervous.

See, SX has traditionally been a predominantly male, Apple product lovin’, geek haven. As attendees, we’d feast our eyes on new technologies, books and ideas that would debut there. And here’s the catch: the stuff really was new. Three years ago, Twitter launched at SX as a way for festival peeps to keep up with each other as we moseyed about Austin. It fell off the radar for a while and then suddenly, about 16 months ago, Twitter popped back up to the surface. And now CNN and MSNBC are hailing Twitter as a “new” social media site. But, you see, it’s not new. At least not to SX-goers.

Which brings me to my point about this year’s SX — there’s a lot of social media stuff on the slate and I just PRAY there is something new, something fabulous, for me to learn this year. I will just DIE if I get there and sit through six days of “How to use Twitter” or “Social Media 2.0″.  What if I get there and instead of the geek crowd it’s nothing but normal people? What if the “new” stuff is nothing more than the popular/mainstream stuff? I really think I’ll cry.

So, I’ve got this little bit of fear going on; that said, I simply can’t wait to touch down on Austin soil, stand in line for two hours to get my prized lanyard, drink free beer, meet fabulous new friends, find my online peeps, hold hands with my hubby and learn new stuff.

Oh! And I’m sure I’ll also do something completely random this year like dance at a goth bar and put temporary tattoo on my forehead just to get a free t-shirt (a la SX 2007). No worries, I’ll be blogging, taking photos and rolling video from SX so you’ll totally feel like you are there for every odd and geekish thing we do!  Stay tuned!

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