I apologize for being quiet lately, but I have to confess I’ve been both sulking because I couldn’t go to SXSW Interactive, and busy actually doing the work- and kid-related stuff that kept me from going to Austin. By today I had gotten caught up with other stuff and came out of my sulk to take a blog tour of the SXSW proceedings.

You don’t have to go far on this tour: Heath Row is down in Austin blogging his little fingers to the bone, offering very nearly one-stop shopping for those wanting to connect with SXSW happenings. Heath, you deserve a whole six-pack of Shiner!

Here are links to some of the specific panels he’s blogged, and a quote or two of interest from each:

Paul Bausch, Anil Dash, Justin Hall, Ben Trott, and Mena Trott, Beyond the Blog - Bausch: “We need a way to get a sense of how ideas evolve and how memes move throughout communities. Before Web logs put that structure into the Web, there was no shared time. Web logs provide that.”

Mikela Tarlow and Philip Tarlow, Future Trends And The Big Picture - Mikela: “Virtually enhanced real-life events are going to be more and more where the artistry is going to exist. … In an information dense world the unrepeatable present moment will become a highly valued event.”

Karl Deckard, Cory Doctorow, Maitresse Elise, and Jim Munroe, Why I Dig Working in the Cultural Gutter - Jim Munroe: “When I write a science-fiction novel, I feel free. You get to write about robots, for Christ's sake. There's a fundamental fun element that draws me to it. I have a lot more freedom in terms of what I can do.”

Carrie Bickner, Ben Brown, and Kevin Smokler, Book Culture Brown: “Greg Knauss …did a 40 Web log tour. Every day he'd do a virtual reading and write a piece for all these different sites. He got a lot of press because nobody had ever done that before. It was a tremendous promotional vehicle, and Greg could stay at home with his kids. Smokler: That’s a more creative promotional effort than 90% of New York publishers have thought of."

Heather Champ, Jason Nolan, Katharine Parrish, and Ana Sisnett, Conceptual Firewalls - Sisnett: "If you're considering using Web logs as part of training programs or as a community-building tool, you need to consider whether the people you're serving are interested in using the tools. How do people stay in touch with each other? Is it the ideal form of communications?"

Larry Lessig keynote - “Our laws enable the most powerful in a way that will stifle and kill diverse, decentralized creativity.”

Doug Lenat, Understanding Common Sense - “Intelligence requires immense knowledge about the world. Why does natural-language understanding require huge amounts of common sense? … Intelligence -- even just keeping up your end of a conversation well -- requires having lots of knowledge and applying it fast.”

Josh Benton, Dan Gillmore, Matt Haughey, J.D. Lasica, and Evan Smith, Old vs New Journalism - J.D. Lasica: “If you're doing something more than blogging transcripts, adding commentary or any kind of synthesis, you're engaged in a random act of journalism.”

Brad Fitzpatrick, Scott Heiferman, and James Hong, Trends in How The Internet Connects People - Heiferman: “There's a difference in writing something and writing something for all the world to see so connections can happen.”

Jon Lebkowsky, Adina Levin, and Nancy White: Effective Social Networks - Lebkowsky: "If we're only going to have a democracy of clueful intelligent people who communicate well online, that's not going to work.”

David Weinberger keynote - “What does the Web remind us of? It reminds us of our selves, and of ourselves at our best.”

Richard Florida keynote - Kirk Watson, former mayor of Austin and unsuccessful 2002 candidate for Texas Attorney General (disclaimer: I voted for Watson), introducing Richard Florida: “In Austin, Texas, we debate creativity all the time.” Richard Florida: “Every single human being is creative. That's what the book says. Creativity is the great leveler. It defies race, gender, ethnicity, appearance, and sexual orientation. You can't hand creativity down to your children no matter how rich you are. If you suck at playing guitar, you suck.”

Other SXSW bloggers:

- Jon Lebkowsky, Weblogsky, on Cliff Figallo: Putting Conversations to Work -"Attention is energy. When people pay attention, the person who is getting the attention is getting energy.” Lebkowsky on Conceptual Firewalls; on David Weinberger's keynote.

- David Weinberger, JOHO blog, on Effective Social Networks panel notes and comments from others.

- A BoingBoing roundup of much of the same coverage I’ve pointed to (just in case I missed something).

- Adam Greenfield, v-2 Organisation, calls Larry Lessig "preternatural master of the Powerpoint presentation" and describes "text-messaging and the space of presence. People dangling their feet in the pool at the San Jose would message friends far afield, get messages back, and despite the minimal content of the messages themselves it began to feel very much as if the population at poolside was augmented by these unseen and welcome presences."

-J.D. Lasica, J.D.'s New Media Musings, has SXSW notes posted.