SXSW Day One, or "if you look around the table and don't see a moderator...

...then it's probably you." That's a paraphrase of the famous line about poker of course, and as it turns out also applicable to the world of SxSW panel events. But we'll get to that later. Have you ever seen Laguardia airport at about 4:10am? Me neither, but no need to die wondering:


After a leisurely flight down, first on the agenda was the panel discussion "Crash Course - Press & Publicity" in the convention hall. As it turned out, it was not so much a discussion, but as advertised a crash course in PR hosted just with myself and the esteemed writer Kandia Crazy Horse, who was also surprised to find out that they'd decided to skip the agenda/moderator thing this time around. Here's a recap of the green room scene:


As it turned out it was a great discussion with a packed room, aided by some smart questions from the audience and a lot of talk about the role of the media and new media in music these days. I was even able to sneak my mom in, who was in town to see the premiere of a film my brother Chris has been working on for many months called 'Second Skin' that just debuted to raves during the film portion of the festival.

Then it was on to drinks with friends at the Driskill Hotel bar, which Matt has already ably documented below, followed by a leisurely stroll down sixth street and a stop in to visit with friends at iLike and catch a few minutes of a living room set by Moby:


That was about it for the night. Today kicked off with a noon set by the very talented Canadian songwriter Justin Nozuka (below) and next up is a whirlwind night including Brendan James, Brett Dennen, Tom Morello, Brandi Shearer, Sonya Kitchell, and most likely quite a bit more. But that'll have to wait for "Day Two."