SXSWi '08:

Mediabistro's Carmen Scheidel asks Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a pressing question.

Click here to see more photos from Mediabistro's invasion of SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX

This cartoon was created on Bitstrips, one of the awesome exhibitors at the conference.

We'll be working hard to create cartoon versions of all our Mediabistro Circus speakers in the next couple months. So get ready!

Honestly, SXSW goes all out with its parties. After a day where we saw some truly inspirational panels, it's nice to unwind and talk about the day's activities at one of the many nightly shindigs.

Tonight we hit the opening Interactive party hosted by Frog Design, where green beer and Fuze beverages were on the menu. The venue, the beautiful Mexican American Cultural Center, was enormous an had people both inside, and outside in the brisk chill.

The highlight of the night, aside from Carmen Scheidel salsa dancing, were two beautiful women who happen to eat and play with fire. We shot several video clips of the pyrotechnic duo. Carmen was smart enough to get their business card (which was not on fire) for possible entertainment for Mediabistro Circus.

Below is one of the lovely ladies in action. If this fire were a lightsaber, I'd really be in love.

Blog impresario and upcoming Mediabistro Circus speaker Anil Dash made a surprise appearance yesterday as a contestant in Battledecks, SXSW's inventive game where those with a gift for commanding a room compete to see who can make up a presentation on the fly with slides they've never seen.

The early-arriving audience, of course, knows Dash as the Chief Evangelist of Six Apart (makers of Movable Type, TypePad, and Vox) and they love him, so upon hearing about his cameo, they got excited and put their little hands together. But Dash, ever the fierce competitor, muscled his way up to the podium (playing against body type) and spat into the microphone, "I'm going to walk out of here and you're going to give me the welcome I deserve!"

The crowd started to t(w)itter.

Dash then marched across the convention hall carpeting (pat, pat, pat), slammed through the double metal doors, and, in a triumphant moment, returned with his arms in the air. The man knows how to make a crowd go wild.

Dash, who was an early and influential blogger beginning in 1999 and once worked as a new media developer for the Village Voice, proceeded to hold the hundreds of blog-lovers rapt with his sendup of such slides as a photo of tech evangelist Robert Scoble with the caption "Fab or Fug?" as well as a line graph illustrating "Cheese vs. Libido"

But the judges (and crowd) found Dash's best work in response to a photo slide of a yacht on the sea: "White people," Dash said with authority, "have despicable behavior sometimes."

Erika Hall of Mule Design gave Dash a 9.75 out of 10 "to preserve his ego." But College Humor founder Jakob Lodwick gave Dash a record-busting 11.

After being presented with the award, Dash reminded everyone that in the morning there would be kickball, and we better be there! Something tells me he's going to be fierce. We're strapping on our kneepads and heading over now.