My follow-ups to South By Southwest are getting shorter and shorter each year. Mostly this is because what you read elsewhere would be repeated. The folks are the reason for attending and four days at one conference means many opportunities to meet people informally.

In Six Words

Here are my six-word synopses of the most memorable sessions and events I attended

Design is in the Details: Just throw stuff together; magic happens. Getting Unstuck From Desktop to Device: Still many hairy mobile development challenges. ABX Bowling / Team VCWear: Dollarsign eyes belie Andrew's genuine kindheartedness. General Theory of Creativity: Creative magic in associating two things. Great Design Hurts: Common request - I want a pony. Godbit Dinner: Wonderfully talented folks all around me. Design Eye for South By: Design rationale will follow; trust us. Emotional By Design: Appeal to all your users' senses. 30 ways to delight your users: Users want to rock; be helpful. Designing for Freedom: Every product decision impacts user freedom. Scalability Boot Camp: Add hardware now, software redesign later. WASP Annual Meeting: What should we focus on now? Video Blogging from Iraq: Entire squad watches fellow soldier's surgery.

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Not that I'm anti-Apple or anything, but I haven't had Quicktime installed on any computer of mine since...version 4? At the time, probably when Quicktime version 5 was released and Apple wanted more money again to upgrade to v5 Pro, I resolved to banish Quicktime from my hard drive for-evah.

And life was good. By and large, whatever I needed to see was provided in Windows format. Until SXSW 2006 that is. Seems South by Southwest is practically South by Mac West with all the Apple notebooks roaming the halls, but I understand. It's the platform of choice for Creatives.

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South by Southwest Interactive 2006 was a blast -- as many folks are mentioning in their blogs. I learned a lot. Here are a couple things I want to do differently next year.

1. Get invited to a meal with more folks

Meals are where the real interaction takes place -- folks discuss their current projects and lessons learned. Opinions over panel discussions and where things are going and the inside scoop on what's going to happen soon.

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