Just Registered for SXSW Interactive Conference

I submitted my registration (and coin) for SXSW Interactive this morning. I tend not to go to conferences, boot camps or other 5 day events that cost more than my entire home theater. There are a lot of reasons why that's generally the case, but apparently, this one caught my eye in some way that I haven't yet completely figure out and I'm actually going to this one.

One factor was that it's about as cheap (registration fee-wise) as conferences get. Some of these conferences, after fees, hotel, airfare and food end up costing more than my truck. While still not cheap (it's always expensive to pay someone to throw you and your luggage through the air across the country), this is about as cheap as it gets.

My interest was sparked by an invitation to go made by Robert Nagle after a series of exchanged emails about a variety of things including my OpenFiction activities. I know from experience that in person you can accomplish SO much more than you think that I decided to take him up on the invitation to visit his city.

And, part of it is my longer term goals, which include not *needing* consulting income to live. I'll probably keep doing it for quite a while longer, because I really enjoy directly solving problems for clients. However, I want to build up my blogging empire and other projects to get a more diverse and stable way of making my living. Eggs, baskets and all. I think that getting out there a bit in the interactive media community is part of that.

At the moment, it looks like I'll be travelling alone and still need to book my travel and lodging. If you'll be at SXSW March 10-14 or just in Austin, TX in general, let me know. I love to eat and enjoy good conversation over a meal or just in general. I'm not into parties and would rather hang with a few others and share ideas. I'd particularly enjoy conversations that can be recorded as podcasts in case anyone's interested in that as I expect I'll be bringing equipment along.

[Edit:
I booked my travel and lodging and am staying. My flight is scheduled to arrive in Austin at 9:30 Friday night and I fly back at 4:30 Tuesday afternoon. I'll be staying at Hawthorn Suites Ltd. - Austin Airport. That (as the most obsessive among you have already figured out (welcome back from Google Maps, folks)) is about 10 minutes from the actual conference.

While being right on site or a couple of blocks away might be great fun, the fact that the price difference between where I'm staying and places the conference folks suggest leaves a $650 gap (I could hire a limo to take me to the conference every day for that or a new laptop or any number of really cool things) makes me OK with the shuttle/taxi solution that will result.

So, the next time someone asks me how I can "afford" my gadgets or a new laptop every year or 2, etc., I'll just point them to the savings from this conference and smile.]