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Me being silly during a webcast last year, p.s. I’ve lost a lot of weight since then…

This year, I finally get to see the hype first hand. I will be going to SxSW Interactive starting this Friday. Last year I watched the overflow of Information spill out from the event from my office back here in Northern Virginia and said to one of my contract customers, “I have to go next year!” Too late to put together a panel or a talk (I would have done one on Community Management), I am going this year mostly to network and sink in as many talks and panels as I can. But the point is I AM GOING!

Thanking my lucky stars for much of the pre-planning information this year, as  I am working out much of my trip as I can in advance with the help of some non-SWirgins. I am flying on the Big BWI Blogger Boeing on Friday morning (Flight 2262) with at least 6 other twitter/bloggers. If you are also on this flight, let us know so you can join the group. I am also looking to either carpool or take public transportation to the airport.

To get prepared, I have been doing a lot of reading of my trusted friends and experts who have done this thing before. Aaron Brazell aka @Technosailor has a nice write up about what to expect, some considerations, and even packing tips.

Andrew Mager (@mager) from ZDnet has a guide he put together with his picks for sessions to attend, as well as parties and extras.

And if you are looking for parties and other thing related to the event, you might want to check out the growing list over at http://sxsw.razorfish.com/

I have also signed up for my.sxsw.com. The official social networking site of the entire conference. It was developed by my good friends over at the social collective (follow @bucchere for more details). We used this networking software before for WIREICES last fall and they have improved it a lot since our experience and hopefully with our feedback.

Mostly I will be hanging out with other SWirgins Amy (@sengseng) and Steve (@robotchampion). We’ll be at Amy’s salon on Spying 2.0 (see below) if anyone wants to come say hello.

If there are any other tips or things I should know about please do not hesitate to let me know. I will be trying to twitter and live blog as much as I can during the event, but if my laptop becomes an anchor, there might be more twittering and less blogging until after the event.

I haven’t finished picking out my interested events and some are subject to chance, since some are at the exact same time as others I am interested in, but right now here is a brief list: