I'm not going to go out on a limb and say that SXSW was the main reason I dug my roots out of Kansas City and planted myself in Austin, but it did help a little.  Well, okay, I interviewed in person while I was on vacation during SXSW.  I somehow managed to wedge it in between the Interactive portion and the Music portion.  The rest of the story happened ultra fast.  It went from feeling like I bombed the interview to accepting an offer in about 2 weeks.  My start date was a month after and I had to scramble to plan something I've never done: relocation.

I did my research and picked up a couple of handy tools along the way.  The whole trip went mostly perfect and I stayed well within a meager budget.  SXSW season just kicked off and I figured, what better way to enjoy another go at it than by sharing my experiences.  So I signed up for the SXSW Panel Picker and created an entry, "The Magic Carpet Ride: Relocation Made Easy."  Voting began today and I'm asking everyone out there to register and vote for my panel.  There's a ton of information to share for people who are thinking about relocating or booking their ticket tomorrow. Vote for it at http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/12321

Here's the Description and Questions Answered:

After toiling long and hard to get your dream job, you finally landed it. The only problem is that it's in another part of the world! Fortunately, there are tools both online and in the mobile world that can help. Mike Hochanadel will discuss the tools used for his relocation experience and share tips to help the tech centric crowd in their own magic carpet ride.

1. What can my future employer do to help relocate?
2. What is the most cost effective way to relocate?
3. What are the stages of relocation?
4. How I can seamlessly surf between the stages of relocation?
5. What loose ends are tied up at the end of relocation?

Sometimes opportunity comes and sometimes it is so great that it inspires you to reach past your fears and take a great risk.  That kind of risk manifested itself in front of me a little over a month ago.  I found a job in Austin, Texas and moved from my home in the Kansas City metro area.  It was scary at first, but ever since I started working on moving down here it's been real smooth.  I'm amazed at how everything has turned out.

Opportunity means different things for different folks.  For me, it's being able to learn while doing my part contributing to the group.  After three days, I've found that and then some.  Compared to my whole, and I mean my whole, career  I feel like my expectation of work and knowledge meets a real world environment.  I couldn't feel more comfortable.  And happy.

During my farewell tour, everyone told me that Austin was a cool town.  I understand that it is, but if I came down here just for the scene and not for the job, then I would still be in Kansas City.  Austin's live music, technology hub, and mash of culture is only the icing on the cake of my life choice.  The more people tell me that this town is a cool place, the more it bothers me.  I always thought that for something to be cool, you don't actually call it cool.

The hardest part of the farewell tour was saying goodbye, not the massive amount of BBQ.  This is first time I truly relocated and it got to be pretty tough toward the end.  It's not as hard as I thought it would be, but that can only be because of how great it's going down here.  Still, I will miss my friends and the wonderful relationships I've built with them in last 1o years or more.  Hey, they have a place to crash in Austin now.

It's taken me a long time to reach this point.  I used to be so scared of big changes, or at least having the will to make big changes.  Maybe that's why I was ginormous for most of my life and mostly single.  Once I got passed that and nurtured my will, the fear turned into calculated risks.  Moving to Austin and taking the great new job only builds upon that.  I feel like I'm playing with house money now.  I'm not afraid to fail.

So here I sit in my own office in my three bedroom apartment, riding a high of a successful move.  Will it be a successful life change?  I'm not sure, but I know at the end of the day, it will be a great adventure.  Everybody's got their adventure and everybody needs to overcome their fears and actually embark on their adventure.  I'm doing it and I hope you have or will soon.

Alrighty, I'm finally back home and recovering after a marathon of tech and music that was SXSW. I'm sitting down sipping some hot tea and getting ready for a night time cold and flu Alka Seltzer bath. That's right, I brought home lots of tech info and a cold from beautiful Austin, Texas. Hey, if you are gonna do it, you gotta go hard or not at all. At any rate I have one more day of summaries to dispatch before I start something new this year. I will go over each talk I went to into a little more depth, more for the benefit of myself more than anything else, as well as give proper respect to the .

The final day saw me head to Ballroom C in the Austin Convention Center for Hacking RSS: Filtering & Processing Obscene Amounts of Information. This was more of a personal joy than most anything else. I use Google Reader on a daily basis and run through an insane amount of information. Any kind of help is much appreciated. I got here when the lady discussed using Yahoo! Pipes, BackType, and Twitter to jumble around real-time information and tune it to your personal preferences. This is gonna be a fun one to go back over and implement.

I do some side work here and there (http://hoketronics.com), and because of this I decided that I owed that side a bit of love by going to Freelancers: You're Five Products Away From Freedom. The guy who gave the talk is one of the Five Tech Guys in Kilts and also wrote a CodeIgniter book. While geared toward freelancers, I see benefit across the board from this talk. His main idea was that there are tools that cut across so quick to publish and take payments for any type of product, that any idea of fix someone comes up with can be monetized almost instantly. Great stuff there.

My day job does work geared more toward the government side of things. With How Governments are Changing Where Big Ideas Happen, I got a small taste of how governments lure tech companies. Representatives from Louisiana, Europe, Shanghai, and even Austin talked about methods their local governments use to lure talent to their area. It was a refreshing view to see that the public sector is starting to catch up and compete with the private sector in these areas. One thing I didn't know, Facebook opened up their first office outside of California in Austin, Texas.

After snacking some lunch and raking in the schwag from trade show floor, I dipped into the Reid Hoffman Presentation titled, "Data as Web 3.0." Reid was the driving force behind LinkedIn and his discussion revolved around the next iteration of the Internet. With describing Web 1.0 as searching data and retrieving it as well as Web 2.0 as introducing social aspects of relations, Reid presented his thoughts on Web 3.0. He claims that the next step is the processing and making sense out of the huge amounts of data spewed out from the marriage of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. He then ran down his top 10 list for entrepreneurs. Again, all great stuff.

Finally, since I missed all of the keynotes this year, I decided to attend the closing speech by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling. Bruce was the man behind the cyberpunk culture and he gave a great punkish talk to close out the Interactive portion of the conference. Between his musings, ramblings, and one liners, Bruce laid out his biggest problem today. Progress is moving fast and it's up to the youth and it's ability with tech to start taking the lead. I'll never forget him telling the Baby Boomers to stop trying to hold on and get out of the way.

All and all day 5 filled the few gaps left in my puzzle board of needs for SXSW Interactive. I filled it plenty with some hardcore code and design sessions earlier. Now I had some business and a little more government items to pluck right in. Finally, Bruce Sterling was the last inspirational piece to make my puzzle complete. With almost a week out of SXSWi 2011, I'm still feeling complete and basking in the glow.

I'm not really reporting, but I'm actually blogging.  Fortunately for me, the line between reporting and blogging is seriously blurred, all in the sacrifice of journalism.  But back to my point.  I'm here in the glorious Austin Motel, gently tapping away and reflecting on a big blur day of travelling.  From some morning claws to feeling Mediterranean, it was both fast and eventful.

In case you were wondering, I won last night at Settlers of Catan.  I also lost after that.  Catan is too much fun.  The game combines the best parts of Monopoly, Jenga, and I think I tasted egg and cinnamon.  If you have 3-4 people and about an hour to kill, take the time to play this ditty because it is totally worth it.

After some tasty local donutry, my beautiful girlfriend and I hit the road to Austin.  This year was a little different as we took  3 hours yesterday to make today much easier.  And much easier it was.  We blew through Oklahoma in the morning and then enjoyed some tasty fare in Texas before hitting Austin.  Miguelito's has the tastiest Mexican beef stew that I've ever had.  Make a point to drop by there if you are around the area.

Compared to last year, our drive was much easier.  It paid off in dividends as we now have some time to take for tomorrow's SXSW kick off.  Today we picked up our badges and suspiciously light schwag bags.  We lapped the convention center and pinpointed our favorite places before returning back to our hotel.  And what a great hotel it is.

Last year, we stopped by Joe's Hot Coffee everyday and noticed that the Austin Motel was way close and more scenic than the place we stayed at last year.  Fast forward to December last year and about a 100 tries where you have yours truly landing an exclusive spot in the scenic Austin Motel.  We have the Mediterranean room and enjoying every second of it.   Tomorrow has plenty of activity for us and I'm glad our home for the next week and half has a landscape painting of Red Sea on a wall.

Just thought I'd drop a note and say I'll be at SXSW again next month.  Last year was a blast and a signed up again to ride the wild horse in Austin.  Already there are tons of interactive talks I starred and locked in to my schedule and I'm sure there will be more to come.  The music showcases already have plenty of new and old school bands ready to rock my world.  All in all, I super excited to go and I hope to meet anybody else heading out there next month.

I'm hoping to take away a little bit more this year.   Last year was my first time so my expectations were set mega low.  Of course, those expectations were blown away otherwise I wouldn't be going back.  That said, I'm hoping to build on what learned from last year.  The big thing for me was node.js and I'm anxious to see what others have done with this tasty JavaScript program.  My people skills are way better in a bar than in a conference room so I'm hoping to marry the two together and get to know more peeps.  My place of employment is more into what I'm doing down there so government and technology is big on the list.  All in all it should be another massive sponge soaking of knowledge.

The big issue I had with last year was the hotel location.  My beautiful girlfriend and I fixed that situation.  We're alot closer and will be spending lease in hotel time.  The lines are going to be another big issue so I hope SXSW employs the early ticket line thingy they did last year.   Although, last year was a nightmare trying to get into the Predators preview.  We waited 2 hours and were turned away.  Never again, especially for film.

The film portion does not float our boat so much and that's no big deal.  It would be more appealing if we were able to get into what we wanted to see without 2 hour waits.  The line solution worked great for music but it didn't for the film.  There were two, maybe three films I saw last year and only one of them was mildly entertaining.   I think SXSW knows this because they do not sell an 'Interactive + Music' badge.   They do other types of badges but not for that.  So, if I'm lucky I may catch and enjoy a film.

SXSW is less than three weeks away and I'll be reporting every cool and not so cool thing during my trip.  I may have some extra surprises in store but it will reveal itself in due time.  Oh, and we're driving down again.  Look for some updates on the road as well.  Buckle in buddies, SXSW will more than likely kick me in my ass again and you'll get to witness the destruction.

So Sunday was our last day here in Austin as we are heading back to Kansas City on Monday.  Compared to the rest of the time here, it was pretty tame.  The only official SXSW thing we did out here was a softball tournament my lovely girlfriend participated in.  Bookending the tournament was a couple of walks around South Congress shopping and getting some eats.  It was a vacation from the vacation.  We even had some time to hot tub and relax the sore muslces from the whole SXSW experience.

That's what SXSW is: an experience.  You know when someone says you gotta try something once or go someplace once?  Well, take all of those combined and come down to SXSW.  From the Interactive techno fest to the long nights rocking out at the Music fest, you will take part in a get together unbeknownst anywere else on this planet.  I'm trying to pick my brain and remember what all I did on this trip and I still can't remember all of the good times I had. They say if you take out your intestines and roll them out, it will measure about 40 feet.  Like that, except SXSW times.

Even more so, I have this massive schwag bucket to go through when I get back.  Not for the goofy trade show trinkets, but for the contests and follow ups on all things tech and music.  The vacation is almost over and the real work is about to begin.  The mental schwag I picked up here as well will keep my motivation going for at least the next 6 months.  The flood gates have opened and it's time to ride it back to Kansas City.  Look out, I'm not even close to the high water mark.

So Friday down on 6th street, I marvelled at the mass amount of culture floating around the bricks and shops.  Well, overnight, a nothern storm blew through and dropped the tempature about 20 degrees for the day.  The wind also made if feel like back home in Kansas City.  The thing is, though, Kansas City was going through their own version with an additional 8 to 10 inches of snow on top.  So at least we missed out on that.

We were guessing that the crowd would thin down to the badge holders for SXSW because of the weather.  As the evening came Saturday, there were tons of people out, but nowhere near Friday night's crowd.  That said, the concert going faithful still made the venues respectable. Through the cold, we made our shows and ended the Music portion of SXSW a memorable one.  Today, it's the softball tournament and battery recharge before the one day drive back home.

No day panels today.  We tossed that out the window after the mis-managed scheduling of the of the songwriter panel.  So with gig bag in hand, I headed out to the parties on 6th street with my lovely girlfriend.  The day parties went great and we got our fill of drinks and schwag.  We opted for the super secret Muse show at Stubb's and enjoyed every second of it.  But the biggest thing I took away from SXSW today was somehing special.

I remember a cab driver tell me that we didn't even know what would hit us when the weekend showed up.  After we got out of Stubb's, I now know.  The streets were spilling over with people constantly moving.  We're talking jam packed with all different types of people, not just the badge holders.  What was on those streets was pure humanity.  Every culture of every type represented.  It was like the Olympics.  Except instead of competing, the world's best in music got together to celebrate.  And it will only get more crowded tomorrow.

Alrighty today saw me hit up more of the music parties than some of the panels.  I wanted to go to a songwriting panel but they A) moved it on me and B) ended up cancelling it.  Oh well.  What I've learned down here more than anything else is that you just need to keep moving.

The one event I did make was the Ableton Live demo.  Basically, the product guy from Ableton Live showed off some of the cool features of the program.  What I learned was not only does Ableton do a great job of layering live elements, but it can also switch to a linear view to edit in a more traditional DAW style.  I also got some info about the APC40  and will be doing some research on it when I get back.  That's about it for the panels today.  Check my music blog for the show run downs.

Day 5 of this mish mash of culture here in Austin and SXSW left me experiencing a true intermission.  The Ineractive portion winded down while the Music portion is winding up.  I took the opportunity to head out the lobby and get myself a drink.  Speaking of drink, the early morning rain scared us from walking to SXSW and we ended up taking a cab to catch the afternoon's events.  Even though I had a small number of panels, it ended up being very beneficial and marked a great transition to the Music portion of the show.   Oh, and the closing party rocked.

The previously mentioned rain held us up big time in the morning.  Combined with the wickedly awesome Computer Blip Blop Bull@#$% party we were rained on from last night, and this guy had the beginning of a small chest cold.  So we piled into the car and now I'm currently rocking the Zicam and Airborne.  Works every time.  So, after an hour or so of blogging and recovery, we hailed a taxi via phone and headed to the convention center.

The first stop of the day marked my first keynote address.  Me and my lovely girlfriend got a prime seat to watch Daniel Ek talk about his UK only music app, Spotify.  Not many people knew of this service before and when the demo went through, the oohs and ahhs confirmed it.  Ek talked about the liquidy of music and developing a platform that handles the fragmented liquidy of the music industry.  We also got a chance to check out a live demo of the new Spotify running on an Android phone that Sony was putting out.  The keynote informed and entertained and I'm glad we had a chance to get an overview of an app that will definitely give iTunes a run.

Next up was a quick panel on mobile advertising.  Now, I'm not the advertising guru, but being that I'm here to check out all thinhs mobile app development, I needed to see some business views revolving around it.   So Dennis Crowley from Foursquare fame and a representative from Mocospace (the original guy couldn't make it) talked about strategies they employ to get business to do ad buys for their phone apps.  What I got from Mocospace's talk was how traditional mobile apps work with companies to do targeted ads based on demographics for mobile phone users and using the platform to do some media promotions as well.

Crowley's side of it was fascinating.  Foursquare created a new platform that behaves its own way.  So they sell ads, while they are in the middle of figuring out their business model, in a non traditional way.  Crowley also talked about how they have very little in terms of resources going toward sales reps.  The reason is that the users of the app are pushing the local business to do the Foursquare based specials.  So one hand, I got a view of advertising on a traditional model and on the other I got to peer into how a new platform evolves its advertising model.

The final panel for my Interactive portion was perfect for transitioning to the Music.  I sat on the Remixing for the Masses panel ran by Paul Lamere from EchoNest.  If you don't know who he or the company is, go chekc out the More Cowbell app and come back.  So Lamere started out the panel talking about the differences between remixing, sampling, and mashups.  Girl Talk was the apex of these methods and we got to see a quick video of how he does it.  He then asks, how can that be made easier?  With the stuff he showed off from EchoNest, I believe that it will be.

Lamere demoed what EchoNest software can do in terms of combining Digital Signal Processing and Natural Language Processing and producing new ways to cut up software.  He showed off using some Python code to select the first bar of a song and cutting it out without degradation.  He showed that they can take each beat and flip it in reverse piecewise.  I saw him combing audio and video to select the vocals of a Nickleback song and place them in the same song to make it sound the same.  I could go on with the rest but I gotta say you have to check it out for yourself.  And, yes, they have a live performance version in their labs.

After the panel, we had the opportunity to check out a real movie for the Film portion.  Skeletons is the Scottish version of Being John Malkovich.  It had an endearing quality while not being to goofy or silly.  Check it out when it comes out in your town.  Then we headed out to the Mohawk for the Media Temple and SXSW Interactive closing party.  Hey, when you have free PBR tall boys and some kick ass Alt-Mariachi music, you know it's a good time.

So that's it.  That was the Interactive portion.  What did I come away with?  Well, discovery was the goal and I laid my eyeballs on so much that I more than fulfilled that requirement.  I have tons more work to do when I get back because of it.  Awesome!  So now comes the time to celebrate by hitting up the Music portion.  I'll talk about some of the days events here, but I will also hit up music information on my music blog.  Keep tuned.