So tommorrow morning I head out to South By Southwest for the interactive conference in Austin, TX. I am really excited… and really prepared. I will be attending the conference with friends as well as planning on making some new ones. Even with all this “IRL” social interaction will be in “meatspace”, there is a lot of technology going on behind the scenes. I am not talking laptops and hardware, although I am sure there will be tons of that. I am talking web apps. So here is a quick list of the web apps I will be using to help communicate, facilitate and organize my trip.

Twitter – Good old twitter… I can tweet my experiences, follow the #sxsw hash tag and get the up to the minute happenings. 

Facebook – I will be adding people I meet to my social network. 

my.sxsw.com –  I have selected all the events I plan to attend and now I have a personalized calendar that is integrated with my google calendar and in turn is viewable on my phone. Also has a private sort of twitter app, although I think I will probably just use twitter

BrightKite –  I will be posting my locations so that people looking for me can find me easily as well as be able to see which of my friends are where.

Viddler – I will be posting videos so that my friends and family who aren’t able to make it can “play along”. 

DropCard – A service where I setup a “business card” and then when I meet people I just txt message Dropcard their email and it sends them my business card.

It is amazing how I ever did a conference without this stuff! I will have a follow up post about what worked, what didn’t, etc.