I’m speaking at SXSW

Woohoo! I got some great news on Wednesday that the panel I submitted called Outsourcing 2.0 — Is the World Flat or Not? was approved and will be a session at SXSW Interactive 2009 in Austin.

I’m so excited about this. It will be my first time speaking at SXSW. I’ve been as an attendee the last three years and it is a great conference. I always learn a ton and have a lot of fun.

Ben Reece, Brian Oberkirch and I had lunch together yesterday and talked about the positive reinforcement and encouragement that our social networks provide us. Lifting up the community is something we all try to do, and we all have benefited from greatly. I felt this yesterday firsthand when I tweeted out my excitement and within an hour was flooded by warm emails, plenty of congratulatory tweets and a great blog post. It is powerful and was personally very touching to have a community that supports each other this way, as Brian said at lunch, “a rising tide lifts all boats” and that is exactly what we are doing with the NOLA tech scene.

So, thank you to all who voted for the panel, the feedback I received from SXSW really considered this highly. I strongly encourage anyone who is interested to make the trip to SXSW Interactive March 13–18, 2009. It is a great conference.