For your viewing pleasure, the Team Newman SXSW Interactive video montage:

Seriously! We showed up at 6:58 (registration started at 7 p.m.) and we breezed through the line and secured our lanyards. We go back downstairs to find at least 500 folks standing there like dominoes looking at us like we’re walking by them wearing The Precious. And we were. SUCKERS!

I love being a dork.

After a two-hour ice/sleet/WTF-is-this-weather delay, Team Newman arrived safely in Austin this morning around 11. We moseyed to our fabulous hotel with complementary wireless, got a little work done and then headed out to have the world’s best margaritas at Cantina Laredo. Oh, yes. We know it’s a chain. We don’t care.

Then it was on to the Starbucks to pick up a match to our everyday china, and now we chill in the lobby counting down the minutes til we wait in a very long line for our SXSW Interactive lanyards (cue heavenly host angel chorus).

It feels good to get away on a mini work/play-cation. Need anything from Austin? Lotta beer here. Lotta coyboy hats. Feels a lot like Nashville, honestly. 

Oh, and thanks, Amy, for Twittering this grub suggestion. We’ll totally check it out this weekend!

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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So me and the hubbster are going to Bar Camp Nashville tomorrow. I’m looking forward to attending WordPress 101, PR 2.0, New Media for Change and, of course, Make Google Your Bitch.

Bar Camp is free. There will be a plethora of Nashville Geeks, beer and Apple products. I’m excited to meet in person folks that I’ve only Twittered with up until now. This is also why I’m excited about our trip to Austin’s South by Southwest Interactive in March.

Are you attending Bar Camp? If you need more info, here’s the boilerplate:

BarCamp Nashville is an open-source gathering of technology enthusiasts who come together for one weekend to share what they know and learn what they don???t. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.