The time had come, when the hordes of men in dorky glasses shuffling through the Austin Convention Center began to be replaced with hordes of men with scruffy beards and dorky glasses. When conversation over migas con queso at Las Manitas moved from Jason Santa Maria to Peter Bjorn and John. When the conference itself stops being known as “South By Southwest” and begins being referred to as “South By” (music people, they just have so much less time, you know).

What have we learned? Well, we missed a big tradition at SXSW, the Bruce Sterling Rant, which always closes the festival (we were hobnobbing at the Helvetica party). Since he’s way smarter about this stuff anyway, and since we found excellent coverage of it courtesy of Luke Wroblewski‘s blog, Functioning Form, we’d love to close with the highlights from Bruce Sterling’s SXSW Rant, including:

2006 was the year of video. It is the stupidest of media–where a lot of dumb things happen.

Amen to that. See you next year.