Direct2Dell

Dan Fost wrote an article today called Welcome to Conference 2.0 in Fortune online. After experiencing SXSW Interactive for the last several days, I think he just might be onto something. Like lots of folks mentioned, Twitter played a key role in there, even moreso than last year. I also agree with Shel Israel's view that Twitter is a tool that seems to be giving power to individuals, which I see as a really good thing.

Here's how it went down. People attending the conference used it regularly to share their thoughts on the panels while they were going on. It happenend at just about all of the panels I attended. It was definitely true during the Mark Zuckerberg keynote. I was there during Mark Zuckerberg's keynote. In my view, there were several things that contributed to the reality that people are still talking about. Nothing more for me recount details from that session, but it seems like on a few occasions this year, the line between panelists and audiences weren't as clear as they used to be.

Our panel called the Future of Corporate Blogs didn't happen until Tuesday, after these other instances occured. Bottom line, I think it convinced all of us to prepare for it a little bit more which I also think is a good thing. I also checked the tweets after our session, and was pleased to see that most comments were on the positive side.

Another trend this year that caught my attention also involved Twitter: impromptu party planning. Robert Scoble recounts how Scott Beale kicked off the Alta Vista party. Thanks to Rachel Clarke for giving me a heads up to the tweets that announced it. Brian Solis also tells a story of how Gary Vaynerchuk and Frank Gruber planned a get-together at the Marriott.

One thing I discovered after the conference was Sunni Brown's excellent visual recordings of several of the panels during the conference. Her post about Frank Warren's keynote shows a picture of how she does it. Cool stuff. Below is a copy of her graphical recording of Mark Zuckerberg's keynote.

Click on the image to pull up a larger version to see it more clearly.