After over a week of panels, networking and the all important after parties, SXSW 2008 has come to a close. I was lucky enough to interact with tons of brilliant and talented people in their respective fields, be it technology, film or music. This was my first SXSW experience and definitely not my last. I’m hooked. For brevity’s sake, I’ll distill the conference days to a few things to look out for in the near future by category.

Interactive
On the tech front, all of the existing startups are going strong with a few notables. Twitter was still the communication tool of choice. I personally used about 3,000 text messages just over the interactive portion of the conference. It was hard to keep up at times, but you learned to just let some things go (and egg a few things on, like Sarah Lacy’s interview of Mark Zuckerberg, pictured above). As promised, here is a link to the CNET article with yours truly and a few others jamming out to Daft Punk just before Zuck hit the stage.

Gary Vaynerchuck of Wine Library TV became the unofficial host of SXSWi, graciously tearing open cases of wine for us as soon as the last panels of the day ended in applause, continuing late into the night when the official parties ended and our silly Texas bars closed at 2AM. This is a guy to keep your eyes on for sure.

Film
I only had time to see two films, but both were entertaining and I don’t regret spending some time sitting in the theater taking these in (a sign of a decent movie by my standards).

Choke, originally a Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club) novel, is a dark comedy about a sex addicted con-man (Sam Rockwell) and his mother’s (Anjelica Huston) sordid relationship. While this is no Fight Club, it is a decent watch and probably a way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Assasination of a High School President was the second film I saw. A film surely to be popular amongst the teenage crowd for obvious reasons, this was a film on the level of Election as a self-aware comedy about the cliques that comprise high school—real life or scripted. The neo-noir movie stars Reece Thompson, Mischa Barton and Bruce Willis as the hilariously militant Desert Storm veteran and Catholic high school principal.

Music
Dance parties ensued at shows for: Simian Mobile Disco, MGMT, Chromeo, MSTRKRFT and N.E.R.D. (who have a new album scheduled for June, just in time for Kanye West’s “Glow In The Dark” tour). Dance partiness is the new album sales; who needs Billboard?

All in all it was an amazing time and I have already made a promise to myself to be in attendance in 2009. I should also note that sched.org was the AJAX scheduler of choice for the majority of interactive-goers (and maybe some music and film people too). See you next year!