This year was my seventh SXSW, and it was good.

If you’ve read much of my blog, you’ll know that I tend to shy away from going overboard on the personal introspection here. At a sub-conscious level, perhaps it’s a carryover of New England sensibilities towards mawkishness, or maybe, my reflexive aversion to the medium’s early tendency towards extreme navel-gazing. My conscious rationale has always been that capturing my behavior and external interests would both be more relevant to others and also in the long term, give me more self-insight than any extemporaneous analysis.

That’s a wordy way of saying that I don’t get too personal in my posts. That isn’t however, to say, that my blog doesn’t serve as a marker for points in my life. Usually, when I look back, the gaps reveal those just fine, but sometimes, I find myself wishing I had been just a bit less economical, and more diaristic.

SXSW was very different for me this year. It wasn’t just the conference itself: the signficantly larger crowd, the new faces, the shifted focus, the tone (if you sat and listened, you could hear the difference in the air), but it was me and my role as well. Beyond the changes in job and the relocation, my experience was reframed by the new responsibilities I had, sitting on a panel, hosting a party and representing a new organization.

I don’t think fully I appreciated the luxury of just being able to sit down with old friends that I’m lucky to see maybe once a year. Maybe I’m just turning into a softie in my old age.

(I started on that recap but couldn’t really be motivated to do a blow-by-blow. I spent the first half of the weekend very stressed out by panel and work stuff, but ended up relaxing Sunday night and having a great time after that. As far as panels, there was no Hamptons Inn continental breakfast to get me up every morning, so I missed a couple of 10AMs, but my in-conference experience was pretty good – I based my panel choices mostly by the panelists I knew, or knew were insightful/entertaining in the past. The best session I was at was Daniel Gilberts. Chatting with Andy afterward, we both agreed it was better than any session at ETech. My biggest disappointment was that I had no idea Why, of Why’s Poignant Guide was speaking. I really hope they put that podcast up. Also, worth listening to is the Bruce Sterling podcast. He takes it in a different direction this year.)