45 minutes to boarding. I’m sitting here in the airport after a lazy day in Austin, mid-way through a brief respite before throwing myself back into reality early tomorrow morning. Bruce Sterling made a comment during his conference-closing rant that information has finally become free, but when I have to pay $10 to get on the airport WiFi, I’m not sure I’d completely agree with that.

Bruce’s rant wasn’t as much of a rant this year as it was a cautious meditation on the state of technology and information, but it was still good as always. I’ve found his speeches to be a good starting point to tying all that’s SXSW together, a process for me that usually takes a couple weeks if not a full month or so. There’s a lot of great things to take from the conversations, panels and demos, but where things really get interesting is where those ideas start cross-referencing each other, kind of like an absurdly cross-linked mental Wikipedia.

Overall, I thought the conference was pretty good this year, although I ran into many who were disappointed in it. I hit a lot of mobile device panels, all of which were useful. In all, there were only three or four panels I didn’t really find that interesting, and in the end only skipped out of one. (Last year, I skipped out of 1-2 panels each day.) The vibe was less corporate than last year too, while not being stupidly anti-business as some earlier years.

If I had to pick one main problem this year, it was the physical organization of the panels. The Interactive conference was split in half, and you basically had to pack a suitcase to go from one end to the other. Not only did this make it impractical to go to some panel combinations, it made it much more difficult to run into people in the halls. Even with the huge crowd that arrived for last year’s conference, it was still relatively easy to run into people in the halls. This year I had to literally search people out. I was pretty worn out last night, but went to the closing party anyway in hopes of connecting with some of those I missed. (Many of them were there doing the same thing, so at least that worked out.)

Could I have planned ahead? Yes, but in the past it wasn’t necessary. Running into people was just something that happened. Besides, planning too much removes a lot of the wonderous serendipity that makes SXSW so great. This poor organization was basically an all-out assault on the heart and soul of the conference.

It can recover next year, of course. Just make sure all the damn rooms are together.

Well, I’m getting a bit hungry, so I’m going to grab a bite before we have to get onboard. Goodbye Austin, I’ll see you next year.