If you’re getting to Austin for SXSW Interactive just a little early, come on by and get your SXSW started with some others in town a day early too, not to mention meet some of us lucky enough to live in Austin. Feel free to forward this to others you know coming to Austin for SXSWi too.

Those of you in Austin, tell your Web/IA/Designer/Startup/SWSXi-like friends to meet us there. (Look for the geekiest crowd at the Cedar Door, trust me, that’ll be us. Probably on the East patio.)

Here’s an upcoming link for the event, if you’re into that kind of RSVPing.

Note that now you can pick your SXSW interactive badge on at the Austin Convention Center the same evening, come to the meetup, then pick up your badge!

Some highlight quotes from the panel you really shouldn’t miss:

• “Explicit refactoring affordances” – Adina Levin
• “Razor-sharp, small pieces of metadata” – Thomas Vander Wal
• “What happens in the brain… in your cortical areas” – Rashmi Sinha
• “Dual-folksonomy triad” – Thomas Vander Wal
• “What we need is Tagginess” – Prentiss Riddle
• “More math is always the answer” – Don Turnbull

How can you pass up quips like that?

The Tagging 2.0 panel was one of the “highly-rated panels” this year, tied for first place with a number of other entertaining and informative panels, so check out their podcasts as they become available as well.

Check it out.

Let a thousand orange smileys bloom!

Come one, come all to the Annual pre-SXSW get together for anyone doing Web design, development, Information Architecture, and anything else SXSW “Interactive-y”.

Whether you live in Austin or are in town early for SXSW, do join us on this Thursday, March 9th from 6-8 at the Cedar Door at 201 Brazos Street in downtown Austin.

As always, this event is sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin School of Information, the UTASIS&T Student Chapter and the Information Architecture Institute.

It’s all about micro-content (& servers for them).

Sharing micro-content interconnected together with People, Media, Events, Reviews, Tags, Recipes, Lists and Items. These are “islands of functionality” that should be inter-connected. (Canter)

(Martino)
Open Source standards – “nothing makes us happier” than people using data elsewhere. Craigslist doesn’t have full feed so you have to go back and visit the site (I must not be looking enough on craigslist, because I’m pretty sure I’m seeing the full feed.).

Tribecast – do we need another branded verb?

Uses FOAF, and let’s you edit the XML to expose its functionality and for re-purposing. You can migrate profiles from one site to another. Further steps for Canter’s digital-lifestyle-aggregator with OpenProfile on tribe.net.

Matt just asked if anyone is building something using open source infrastructures. Several people are talking about their ideas (which I can’t hear from the back row).

Here’s the blurb:

Room 18A on Sunday, March 13th from 11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Monolithic, overarching imposed systems rarely provide full support for the range of use and users that these systems are intended to serve. Networked software should be smarter, taking advantage of users’ behaviors to evolve a system keenly adapted to actual use, not just intent. We are currently in a special moment, witnessing the development of systems that are beginning to demonstrate the power of this approach. Whether it is through passive tracking, such as purchase histories on Amazon, or explicit tagging of content, such as bookmarks on del.icio.us and photos on Flickr, websites are increasingly taking advantage of the aggregation of individual behavior to improve the utility, usability and desirability of their systems. Drawing on a range of perspectives, this session will address the intersection of the personal and global, the tensions that exist and the opportunities they afford.

Check it out now, even if you aren’t going to SXSW.