I'm a week removed from SXSW and I finally recovered.  The sickness stayed over in my body for the end of my music portion of the trip.  To learn more about that, head over to my music site, http://h0key.net.  I've had plenty of time to reflect on my interactive experience and would like to sum up the conference and what I took away from it.  For all of the stimulating action that took place in,out, and around the conference the message for me was:  Start cultivating the white noise.

Last year was my first year for SXSW.  The starry eyes was somewhat blinded and numbed to all of the commotion going on around them.  I went on my own volition and had no other sponsorship but myself.  It was clear that I was a rookie at it all and I ended up missing items I really wanted to see.  Hey, it just kept moving so I told myself that it's all good and go on to the next thing.  This year was a little different.

I knew how to plan better for SXSW. Sure the conference is still a bursting damn of activity, but I had a paddle this time.  The newness washed away to wonder as I noticed just how much bigger the conference got in one year.  Last year I pretty much stayed in the Austin Convention Center.  This year I was running at most 10 blocks to go from one hotel to the next and back to the convention center.  The Screenburn Arcade blew up.  There's now a fashion portion of the conference.  Even the exclusive startup launches were growing.

Last year it was a race between Foursquare and Gowalla for location supremecy.  This year's theme was group texting messaging.  I lost count on the number of startups all vying for the same mantle and I'm still confused as to who won.  Of course, there were other startups but it looked like just about everyone who wanted to launch pegged down SXSW as the place to do it.  That ended up just upping the bar for white noise at the conference.

Which alot of the naysayers were pointing too as a reason why the conference was weak this year.  Some people were saying that the conference is getting too big for anyone to make a big splash.  Apparently the locals have been saying that each aspect of SXSW is pulling its own little Burning Rome scenario.  Even for some, the exclusivity that was present in the conference's early years is gone and they detest the quasi-exclusive nature of the conference today.  That is their reaction to more and more noise being created at SXSW.

That's what I see this year.  The hype two years ago of Twitter that convinced me to go and the location battle of Gowalla and Foursquare of last year now leads to an enormous amount of new data and noise generation.  Of course, the noise brings many, so I was much more successful networking wise.  I skipped the film portion altogether due to the size of the lines and instead went to more parties, which grew in numbers as well.  Of all of the apps I downloaded this year I'll more than likely use only one or two.

What does all of this noise mean?  We're getting ready to make some sense of new types of information, either in viewing or understanding.  When I look back to the track I took for interactive talks, I can see that point overlap over most of the sessions.  Whether its using government data or music metadata, people are finding news ways to see how data is represented.  Mobile applications up front must be simple to see and use, all the while the data they generate is complex and ample.  Reid Hoffman's Web 3.0 presentation hit the nail on the head.  The a calm before the storm is the push to understand and make sense of this new social, mobile, and freshly revealed data.

So the next step for me is to roll up the sleeves and get to work.  With new data, there's new opportunity.  The most exciting takeaway from SXSW 2011 is that there's alot of new information out there and I have a chance to make a difference by making something special from it.  There's no longer a sense that I have to be the next Twitter or the next Foursquare.  There's a new revision of technology right around the corner and I'm getting ready to be apart of it instead of a bystander.

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.