I kept saying to myself that I will eventually get around to writing something about this, but being out of the office for 8 days and the best part of offline for 10 means I’ve just had too much getting in my way.

In short: South by South West was great!

First things first; our panel.

Well, it went well. I think. People have been nice and positive about it. Two main concerns generally were a) that it wasn’t exactly what we were billed to do and b) some people didn’t know what microformats were. Well, regarding point b - it wasn’t billed as an introduction to. We only had so much time, and we felt that those likely to want to attend this particular session would already have a foundation, or at least an interest enough to have read about them a little, in microformats enough to know what was going on. I’m sorry if you didn’t get it - I’m more than happy to give you an intro to if you drop me an email (fberriman AT gmail).

As for the first point. You’re right. We did do more of a history/what’s cool now, as opposed to looking deeply into the future. To be honest, it’s hard to know what’ll happen exactly. I think we did a good job in showing that take up has been brilliant and a lot of big names are getting involved with supporting and implementing microformats, and that there’s real ways you can start using microformats in your day-to-day internet experience.

How did I cope, I hear you ask? I was nervous as anything (particular thanks to Patrick who put up with me being the best part of mute that morning).

<p>About 10 minutes before going on, we learnt that rather than being in a small room which I had somewhat managed to psych myself up for - we’d be in the biggest room (18ABCD).  This means I was not at all prepared for the green lighting and the spotlights and the 700-odd people!  </p>
<p><a href="http://tantek.com" rel="friend met colleague">Tantek</a>, <a href="http://www.glennjones.net/" rel="friend met colleague">Glenn</a> and <a href="http://www.kaply.com/weblog/" rel="friend met colleague">Mike</a> were brilliant though.  I’ve heard back from a few people who were genuinely really impressed with the backnetwork and Operator.  <a href="http://adactio.com" rel="friend met colleague">Jeremy Keith</a> joined us about half way in after a completely unplanned, but perfect, question which allowed him to show of his cool little bluetooth trick.</p>
<p>I did learn that I don’t like prepared speeches though.  About 2 lines in, I realised I’d for some reason abandoned what I had planned to say and was making it up on the spot.  I did not enjoy that.  I did however really like the Q&amp;A section.  Having to think on the spot about what people wanted to know about seemed to have the effect of removing a bit of my stage fright.  I suppose I prefer conversational tones.</p>
<p>Am I glad I did it overall?  Yep.  Would I do it again?  No.  Actually, yeah, I might… if I could do some more smaller things in the mean time and get some practice in, I’d consider it.</p>
<p>Other than that, SxSW was fun.  It was a good chance to put some faces to names I knew online and meet a few new ones.  Panel wise, I made a bit of an effort to avoid subjects in my field since I didn’t expect to learn that much and headed for more unusual topics.  I went to quite a few of the game track (screenburn) sessions, and really enjoyed them.  It was especially interesting to learn that they are having a lot of similar issues surrounding maintaining identities/networks in different parts of the web as we are.  Also quite fun to know that OpenID is a topic for them.</p>
<p>I have more to write I think, but this is already a long post and late!  “Hi” if I met you though, it was a pleasure.