Well, it’s been a long time since my last post. I’m back, and with a cause. I just returned from this year’s SXSW Interactive show in Austin, and it wasn’t nearly as good as last year. At the 2007 show I came away energized and full of great information to take back to the office. This year I came away frustrated because much of the session content lacked clarity and focus.

The schedule seemed a little out of balance this year. It was as if all the good sessions were scheduled together at the same time. The two best sessions IMHO were Tim Ferriss’ The Art of Speed and Bloggers Who Made It. At both of these presentations the moderators were organized and gave each panelist a fair shake to express themselves. And the panelists were good!

And the Mark Zuckerberg keynote? No comment. If you were there you know the deal. If you weren’t check out Tech Crunch’s video and link to all the hubbub here.

Now to be fair - I missed the Friday sessions due to a flight delay, so I can’t comment on those. All I know is that if I’m gonna shell out this kind of cash next year the session content needs to improve. SXSW has amazing potential to be one of the premier thought leadership events in the interactive space. It’s time for it to step up again like it did in 2007.