I’m trying to get as much out of SXSWi as I can without having a badge. I got myself out early after dropping off my son at school and hit Las Manitas for a small meetup of early arrivals from Laughing Squid, Technorati, Mahalo and Yahoo among others.
I made it back out around 10:30 and scored awesome parking at 3rd and Brazos for the Laughing Squid, blip.tv party at Six which has engulfed the bar area over Spaghetti Warehouse and the old B-Side. Bitter End has officially been demolished. I guess I don’t get over to the Warehouse district much these days. After waiting for 20 minutes to get to the roof bar, I passed Robert Scoble on the way in and found Metblog tech wiz Jason DeFillippo and introduced myself, finally meeting him in person. As with most SXSWi’s, it seemed as if San Francisco had taken over Austin. I spotted Matt Mullenweg of WordPress (the new platform for Metblogs) and then shortly thereafter met Kevin Rose from Digg and the staff from JPG magazine. We later hooked up with Sean Bonner, the other half of the duo responsible for Metroblogging. A good night for everyone in general. I think Sean summed it up best.