SXSW All-Star Design Closing Night Extravaganza

There comes a time at the SXSW Interactive Festival after walking eighteen blocks from the bat cave to chips and salsa, then running twelve blocks for a genre-bending mojito, followed by a midnight stroll to meet your final Shiner Bock, when you discover your feet are bleeding.

Our story begins at sundown, when the line to the Blogger party spilled out on the sidewalk and around a huge agave cactus, so we ditched the cement-block beauty of Club DeVille for the cement-block beauty of the Velvet Spade next door, where the Consumating (dork dating site, name scares us), Adaptive Path and Odeos of the world bought us drinks all night.

The DeVille’s iPod DJ eventually gave way to live music on our side of the wall. Mostly, we listened closely to Aussie Virginia Murdoch (our second woman friend of the festival), PC-user Chris Fahey, Boxes & Arrows editor Liz Danzico, NY Times.com design director Khoi Vinh (name-checked as “web design super-hero” earlier in the day), Apple hat-wearing (literally) Michael Lopp and the darling Daring Fireball himself, John Gruber. Topics so gripping they required three bars and three times that many drinks to cover included (in rough chronological order): nosehair clippers, Studebakers, Delia’s, Dick Cheney, TiVo, Chris Fahey’s PC.

What’s up with nobody taking pictures at SXSW this year?

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.