When I arrived in Austin Friday night, I had an email from a friend here at SXSW inviting me to join Twitter. Immediately that feeling of fatigue I get when I receive an invite to join yet another community site set in. I can barely keep up with two blogs, two MySpace profiles, a Bebo profile and an Amazon blog never mind Linked In and now Good Reads. So I didn't join (also because I just have an LG phone with a max of 200 text messages a month so receiving countless updates and texting a lot is kind of a pain). Not joining Twitter here was like being the odd girl out, watching friends check in on where the latest party was or read random comments about sessions or really about absolutely nothing at all. It's funny, because if you go to Twitter and read a lot of what people post, it's stuff like this:

daylight slaving time this year is really messing me up ... *yawn*

Now in Apple Store (Regent Street) chilling out prior to meeting Russell Davies at 3

Coffee is calling my name.

It's like everyone's just checkin' in with the world with short posts sent via text or the web. What's funny to me is that adults often marvel at how teens can spend so much time instant messaging or texting or leaving comments that seem nonsensical or like they're not really talking about anything but are still talking. When you see your friend at school, get all of the big news out of the way, but still continue that hyper connected conversation, you end up just killing time, checking in or typing silly stuff. Twitter seems to prove that adults still have a strong desire to do this, too....

Friday night I had dinner with some of my fellow panelists -- we all had a laugh about how bad we were as teens and made a pact not to share our war stories during the panel. I especially enjoyed hearing about what Erin is doing with Zoey's Room -- they are a non-profit tween girl community site I often recommend to parents. She was telling us about how they have a mix of both urban and rural girls on the site, which can lead to lots of misunderstandings. Evidently rural girls don't quite get the "affectionate insults" urban girls like to say to each other and end up reporting it as abuse.

Our Under 18 panel went really well Saturday morning -- the room was packed and we had great questions from the audience. Check out the recap here. Later in the day I had my very first book signing. I have to admit, it's a little weird figuring out what to write in someone's book -- I went with different iterations of "Stay totally wired" or "totally wired at SXSW" and then signed my name in my fourth gradery looking cursive style. I also got to sign a book for a friend who is working with Lego on a their new MMOG game. He asked about bulk orders of the book for his colleagues there (yay!).

I visited my friends from Current TV (they are hosting the Filmmaker's Lounge), who were excitedly telling me about the UK/Ireland launch - they went live on the air there today btw. Later, I went to the Ze Frank party where I drank a bit too much free alcohol and ended up dancing to 90s house music until after 1 a.m. This Iggy Pop like young rapper/DJ named Juicebox performed -- check out the pic, if you look very closely you can see my little head in the lower left.

Sunday I somehow managed to get to the convention center a little after noon, and checked in on the Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me) talk where he told the classic filmmaker story of running up massive credit card debt and deciding to use the money he did make from another project to fund "Supersize Me" instead of paying down the massive credit card debt. He also confessed to watching "My Super Sweet 16." I also checked out a panel about avatars and a panel on being a "Blogebrity," whatever that really means. I chatted with the lovely Zadi Diaz from Jetset and met one of the guys behind Next New Networks and found out that the folks behind Threadbanger started the site on AOL when they were teens and are now in their early 20s. I also ran into some cool folks from the storytelling magazine SMITH and had a snack with them before the SXSW Web Awards Ceremony. I hadn't heard of most of the sites nominated, but the mtvU/Cisco funded How Do I Say This, which I've blogged about before won for best student website.

Tonight I'm speaking again at BookWoman in Austin, hopefully to a crowd of local parents and teens and then plan to check out the GOOD Magazine/Creative Commons party. SXSW is the only conference that is as much about the parties as the panels. Even though I'm having a great time, I really miss my husband and my dog and am kind of looking forward to getting home Tuesday...

Technorati Tags: sxsw, Twitter

Posted by anastasia