We're back in the office after having a great time in Austin, TX for the South by Southwest Interactive Conference. While there we met some pretty great people who are using open source technology to achieve greatness, entertain, take over the world and what have you.

We attended some great panels where we learned a variety of approaches to interactive technology from the importance of making your users feel like rock stars to scaling web ventures. At one panel in particular, Open source advocates like Matt Mullenweg of WordPress shared their tools for keeping sites like Flickr, WordPress, Digg and Stumble upon from collapsing under their own tremendous success. Look for some follow up posts in "Live From the Field" about some of their favorite tools of the trade.

We'll be adding to our SXSW Photo Gallery, so you might check back because you never know what you might see. Suffice it to say we had a GOOD time. I even discovered a potential new addiction, but somehow ended up with a Catster T-Shirt instead of Dogster (so if you're reading... hint hint). I love the kitties of the world, but I feel like my doggies may need me to represent. If you are at Rain City Studios, I could totally go for the Darth Vader drupal shirt too. Can't hurt to ask, right?
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Katherine Druckman is webmistress at LinuxJournal.com. You might find her chatting on the IRC channel.