I'm packing up my laptop, cowboy hat and steak knives to head out to Austin for this year's SXSW Interactive festival tomorrow, which should be a blast.

SXSW is really a very unique experience: it's pretty much the only conference in which interactive designers, hardcore tech folk, and the ideas guys gather together to swap stories from the trenches. A unique mix of cutting edge tech talks, retrospectives and Next Big Things, I'm always surprised that it doesn't attract more scientists or informaticians, after all, interaction, scalability and innovation are our currency. Perhaps it's the lack of academic rigor (replaced with a very Web++ 'hey, this worked for me, want to try it'), or an attendance list (replaced with an online directory and an after party sponsored by Facebook), but I always return buzzing with new ideas and approaches, which is worth the entry price alone.

So - if anyone else is attending and fancies a taco (or a SXSW-Scrum-style-daily-stand-up?), drop me a line.