Reeve, Justin, Blake from where I sat across the miraculously empty bar Saturday night.

Conference attendance at the interactive portion of the SXSW Film, Music and Interactive Fest swelled to 30,000 this year, and it showed. Walking around Austin among throngs of people with their heads lost in mobile devices, getting Red Bulls shoved in my face by one brand rep or another, battling an inbox full of one party promo after another felt like an absurd dystopia. Reality of the festival’s girth finally caught up with the years of complaints about it.

I spent way too much time in my rental car just trying to find an unclogged artery to get downtown. Once I got close, I spent too much time trying to find a place to park. And this year, I actually had places to go: I was doing tech and culture coverage online and on-air, and Team NPR was there to launch our new 30-and-under effort, Generation Listen. Thanks to the hard work of GenListen founder Danielle Deabler, NPR HR badass Lars Schmidt, the team at KUT Austin and my Austin pals Jimmy Stewart and Elaine Garza, we were able to go from zero to awesome, geek celebrity-filled party inside of three weeks. (Nerd king Neil Gaiman and his wife Amanda Palmer were there, y’all.)

Despite all the marketing-laden madness and the rushing around to finish the story for Morning Edition (which also wouldn’t have been possible without the friendship and help of KUT)… a few magic South By moments did squeeze into the schedule, serendipitously.

• Justin and I photo-boothed, which has become a real hobby of ours over the years.
• Snuck in some time on the hike and bike trail. I was reporting at the time and didn’t actually EXERCISE, but hey, my feet touched the trail, okay?
• P Terry’s! Tried the peanut butter shake. Mixed a little of it into Eva’s rice cereal and might have given her a sugar high. But I felt she HAD TO try it.
• Took two groups of friends, on separate nights, to a SXSW hideout better known as The Elephant Room, Austin’s basement jazz club that was decidedly not participating in the South By madness. And how wondrous it was, for the first group — a bunch of my favorite people from Knight and MIT — and the second, politico pals Richard Wolffe and Johnathan Kopp, who spent our drinking time reminiscing about all the ‘gates of the Clinton Administration.
• One night, exhausted by people everywhere and stubbornly refusing to stand in any line at SXSW, ever, my old friends Voggie, Blake, Reeve, Justin and I found a respite. A film about craft cocktail bartenders rented out a Rainey Street house/bar and almost no one showed up for the premiere party. We did. We found empty spaces with nonstop craft cocktails to lounge around in, and Friend Matt, who’d had a long day of speaking/presenting, joined us for some backyard chill time. Our friend Niran then showed up randomly, and so did my fave Austin gays – ex roommate Jarrod, ex coworker Tyler, and even more randomly, Bravo’s Andy Cohen, who the boys were rolling with that night.
• A quiet brunch at our Austin hosts Melissa and Brett’s house. Melissa made bacon and sausage and quiche with her homemade crust and baked french toast and a fruit salad; the Rocaps joined us in eating it, with my five-year-old Friend Ellie blurting out “bacon!” over and over. It was pretty much the raddest.
• Catch-up time with my most indefatigable boss ever, Evan. That he even found time for us to hang out despite his schedule was a huge treat.

I have many SXSW regrets this year, because there were too many events and too little time. I didn’t see a single film, which used to be my favorite thing to do during the festival back in the days I didn’t have to be accountable for my time there. I also didn’t see most of my Austin gal pals, who always provide a recharge hard to find from any other source. But the in between moments of socializing weren’t bad, and Eva was awesome to have with us the whole time. Now, I just need to go to sleep for a long time.

A new DCA-AUS flight that Southwest Airlines introduced this week may be the antidote to my yuppie plight. It’s nonstop service between the only actual DC airport (the others are way too far out*) and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. I tried it out with my longtime pal Brad yesterday, and flew back to DCA just a few minutes ago. On the return flight was US Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who volunteered for the exit row, which meant she was ready to help us all in an emergency evacuation. Luckily, there were no surprises and KBH spent her plane time just as I typically do — leaned up against the window, taking a nap.

My only travel mistake today was leaving a chicken fried steak sandwich from Dan’s Hamburgers in my carry-on until mid-flight, because the grease ended up soaking through into my stuff and the sandwich was so much less tasty cause of its short shelf life.

*As my pal and DC native Patrick Terpstra likes to say, “People in DC would rather do their taxes ten times in a row than fly out of Dulles. People in DC would rather run through flaming bags of shit than to fly out of Dulles. People in DC would rather be water tortured than to fly out of Dulles.”

How awesome are these hostesses? Let me count the ways: I learned Saturday that Melissa put together an idea board with the color themes and plans for decor (including some badass balloons she ordered from Etsy) so that all eight women could coordinate according to a general plan, Virginia had my fave chicken salad flown-in on dry ice from Shreveport, and knowing how much I love Texas BBQ, they arranged to get Franklin BBQ (best brisket in Central Texas) picked up for barbecue slider sandwiches. Laura made insane cake balls. Nisha opened up her perfect party home and headed up an “optional craft”. Crystal, knowing it has been torture for me to abstain from drinking, created “mocktails” so that no one else would be drinking, either. As a surprise treat, the girls got their geek baby-daddy’s data visualizations printed onto onesies.

Photographer Callie Richmond, who shot for us at The Texas Tribune, stopped in for photos. I’m so glad she did, because this baby shower was the shizz.

I love Austin because I actually stayed long enough to get to know Austin. I eventually came to feel OF Austin, even though the truth is, I grew up in Dallas. I am ambivalent about whether it was better as a gritty hippie town or as the more yuppied-out place it is now. I mainly love Austin because of the friends who became like family there.

Hannah is one of those friends. She’s the most-together person I know, talented in countless ways, and whenever I’m with Hannah, whether it’s for dinner or for a trip to remote West Texas, I know I never have to worry about a thing because she has a plan and a backup plan and a second-backup plan for everything. So I knew that when she married her beloved Jed, everything would be fantastic. And it was.

We were so happy to be back home for the weekend, and I loved getting to spend time with the Austin girls with whom I’ve shared so many meals — and many more adult beverages — over the years.

Every year, this conference gets larger and larger, leaving attendees to pick increasingly specific paths around its girth … Earlier in the week, I said the Interactive portion of the conference was like the Internet, only in person. But then so is the Music part: vast, increasingly centerless, a little daunting, and bound to send you home feeling like you only got a pinhole view of something you wish you could see in its entirety. And also with ads on banners everywhere — just cheaper, dirtier, stickier ones than last week.

I think it’s “cool” to complain about the bigness of SXSW in the same way Austinites say that Austin “used to be cool” the moment they got there, but has been going downhill ever since. It IS too big, but so is everything in Texas, including my high school graduating class (nearly 2,000). Everyone seemed to come out okay in the end.

A few weeks ago I had a Jaydiohead renaissance. If you aren’t familiar, some geniuses out there took Radiohead tracks and laid Jay-Z’s rhymes over them. They make for amazing mashups that for some random reason I decided to play as my life score for a good three or four days.

Then, just as I was packing to head back to Austin, I got an email from KLRU, Austin’s public television station that for decades has been putting on Austin City Limits. The community manager there said he heard I’d be back in town and would I be interested in seeing Radiohead’s first performance in Austin since 1995? And um, that they would be playing one of the best new live music venues in America?

Gee, lemme think.

I could have died happy after that show. (The boys crushed it.) And being back in Austin, connecting with friends old and new, revisiting the places I love (most of which involve food), learning lots along the way … that was all fantastic and unmissable. But then, when a few days after Radiohead I found myself with only 2,000 others lucky enough to get into Jay-Z’s 8o-minute show at the same intimate venue, I really hit some sort of karmic jackpot. Friend Chris and I were seated in an amazing mezzanine spot only 50 feet from the stage and right behind the New York Times’ executive editor (who did throw her damn hands up, as HOVA instructed.)

Jaydiohead in one week. I don’t think I can complain about anything, ever, again.

THE PREMISE: ”Traditionally, dating sites have used algorithms that rely on user profiles and personal preferences to create matches, but what if the information submitted isn’t true? Sites such as Match.com are evolving their methods to provide more accurate results – like pairing algorithms with user behavior. We’ll hear from innovators in the digital dating world and get unique insights from people who’ve searched for love online. We’ll also see how technology is changing the dating game.” - Session desrciption 

HOW ONLINE DATING WORKS: Sign up, answer questions, pay a fee and you get matches. Our moderator/tester registered for a slew of sites. Apparently, eHarmony takes the longest compared to Match.com and OKCupid, and takes much much longer than the newer sites (see below). OK Cupid is apparently pretty cool in that their questions are user-generated and their profiles include some data visualizations. And in recent years, various niche dating sites have started up, aimed at the over 50 market (OurTime.c0m), the Jewish market (JDate) and weed smokers (420Dating).

THE AGONY AND THE AWKWARDNESS: Online dating changed the way people interacted with the internet, helping usher in social networking as users became more accustomed to sharing their lives online. But online dating sites seek almost exclusively to match you up, which can be awkward. Match.com’s Mandy Ginsburg:

“They don’t do it because it doesn’t feel natural. They don’t trust that a computer will allow them to find that perfect love or spark, or it feels like it’s not serendipitous so there’s no romance … so how can we make the whole experience as natural as possible?”

Do online dating platforms need to exclusively be matchmakers? Could they just be a third social space? Just as Starbucks became a space between work and home, could the online dating sites become a non-bar or club type place where people who don’t know one another can meet?

THE NEW CYBER-DATING LANDSCAPE

Nerve Dating. Main focus is starting conversations, not necessarily matches. Users get to answer questions over time, not all at once. Your profile builds itself over that time, as you engage with different features or express opinions on various subjects. “Just as you change everyday, so does your profile, so it’s a much less static experience instead of upfront profile work you need to do,” said Sean Mills, CEO of Nerve Dating.

HowAboutWe.com. Main feature of the site is proposing a date idea. “It shifts the emphasis off do you like me or not, which is a pretty awkward thing to say … and shifts it to, do you want to go do this? You’re not rejecting someone, youre just saying that’s something I’m not interested in doing,” said Brian Schecther of HowAboutWe. It’s online dating to facilitate offline dating experiences based on the notion that the idea for a date is an incredible first impression. Like Nerve, there’s no big profile to fill out when you start. It lists people by recency and trending date ideas, so it encourages participation. Also, instead of searching for people you can search for something you want to do: Type in “sushi” and you can find all the folks who proposed sushi-eating date ideas that you can join up with. How About We is now partnering with online publications like New York Magazine, allowing the partners to implement the API.

Sparkology. An invite-only site that strives for quality, not quanity. It will likely become more open after it builds up a stable community first. A few things that make it cool: Every woman on the page when you show up is a paying member and active user — a lot of older sites host a bunch of ghost profiles or inactive profiles. Your profile questions to begin with are easy: About Me, Something You Did Last Weekend, Date Idea, Basic Stats. You can also share who you like with someone else and get a second opinion from another user. To reduce spam or inbox inundation, you also have to spend $3 to sent a “spark” message to another user. (The pricing structure is different for men and women.) Sparkology also has “life concierges” as part of its service, who encourage date feedback. After a date, you can let the concierge know if you had a good time and discuss your date’s honesty level. If the date is consistently dishonest,  the service will take action. “If you’re a liar, we have no problem taking you off our site,” said Sparkology founder Alex Furmansky.

So, given the way the landscape is changing, here are some recommendations for…

HOW TO JUDGE A DATING SITE

Ease of Entrance. How easy is it to get started on your site? eHarmony feels like work.

Perceived Value. What am I getting besides just access? Sparkology gives me concierges.

Level of Engagement. Is it natural and familiar like other sites I use on a daily basis?

THE FUTURE

We’ve seen staggering growth in online dating in the last decade. From 2005 to 2008, the user adoption rate of  online dating sites for those who are 18-29 went from 16% to 67%. By May 2010, the adoption rate was 86%. Here’s what the cultural observers out there expect to happen in this space:

1. More active participation. Less front loading and more dynamic interaction between users and the dating platforms, so that they are constantly adding information.

2. Coexistence. New dating sites and dating giants will influence and learm fron each other.

3. Evolution. Match will learn to build features like Nerve has, and better embrace social elements that are making upstarts successful.

4. Mobile dating and the Death of Desktop. 40% of match.com users access the site through a mobile device.

5. Location Based Hookups. Apps such as Grindr and Blendr help faciliate a social network that connects you with people you don’t know but are near your location. Users of Grindr, for example, can identify other users at the same block or in the same neighborhood who are interested in meeting up. We want to cruise digital spaces in the same way we cruise real spaces.

Some of these people are quoted below. But so are many others, unpictured.

AUSTIN — The sea of humanity that is SXSW has washed over Austin. So has cold rain. The weather is not only a surprise but also a real drag — the free ice cream truck is so not gonna be fun this year.

We’ll make the most of it. I’ve already been here for a few nights for the pre-SXSW Integrated Media Association conference (for public media folks) and my week is already satisfying after catching Radiohead in an intimate Austin City Limits setting on Tuesday night.

Because people are bringing the funny, I will keep a running list here of funny musings from my pals (without attributing the quotes to specific pals).

- I accidentally made out with a stranger in front of Star Bar.
- I have been in bed all morning due to extreme karaokeing last night.
- I just got rained on — inside.
- I don’t want to be dramatic but … we’re gonna die.
- Whenever I put on glasses, I just end up looking like a lesbian.
- Everyone seems to just pair some shorts with some tights and call it a day.
- How was dim sum? I was sleeping on a couch with two dogs while $&#*( was making out with some girl. I would murder a Mexican child for a Topo Chico right now.
- Far be it for me to criticize anyone else’s style, but that hair really bothers me.

The brisket from Franklin BBQ makes me so, so happy.

Dear Justin,

It has been SO LONG (okay, like three weeks) since we’ve hung out and partied together! And South by Southwest has consistently been a real championship-level debauchery event for us. Now, because SXSW itself has gotten so out of control in recent years — WTF, there’s a list and a line to get into places like Buffalo Billiards?!? — I’d love to use this time to do off-campus, meaningful connecting with some of the coolest journos and digital media folk around.

There’s also a lot of pure Austin stuff I want to do, since the last time I was in town was so short (and most of it was in Fredericksburg.) Here is my to-do list of SX and not-so-SX stuff:

1. There is a new Bush’s Chicken down on Brodie near Slaughter. Hello?! Bush’s Chicken, a staple of my post-college diet when I lived in Waco, features the best combo of chicken trips, crinkle cut fries, yeast roll, white gravy and a 32 ounce giant sweet tea drink for UNDER $7.

2. I am going to the screening of HBO’s Game Change at the LBJ Library next Sunday. The authors of the book that inspired the movie, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, will be on hand for Q/A, and YOUR employer, The Texas Tribune, is putting it on. Hope to see you. I think I will bring our favorite movie critic, Chris Vognar, if he is free.

3. We are eating the following meals for deliciousness sake: The “Regular Dinner” at Maudies. The #2 at Dario’s. The Democrat and the Fried Avocado Tacos at Torchy’s. The fatty beef brisket at Franklin BBQ. Steak Frites at Justine’s. Beef Noodle Soup at Coco’s Cafe. Chicken Tikka Masala at G’Raj Mahal. The Love Cleanse Green Juice at Whole Foods. Assorted Dim Sum with the dim sum group at Shanghai. Family-style everything at Asia Cafe. And as for new restaurants, I still haven’t tried Contigo, which Hannah raves about.

This is me and Justin and our favorite activity besides vodka drinking: Stuffing our faces.

4. My employer is one of the gazillion sponsors for a giant journalism party next Saturday. I think we should do this. All my coolest NPR pals will be there, and you remember my boss’ boss Kinsey from that night we went to the bars and taco trucks? He is likely to make an appearance as well.

5. Speaking of journalism, Poynter’s Mallary Tenore put together a long list of all the journalism-data-open web related panels to catch at SXSW. I will be making it to some of these and hoping to run into familiar faces and old friends in digital media.

6. We’ll hit a handful of private parties that I RSVPed you for as a plus one. “Confirmed attendees” include actors Leo DiCaprio and Tobey McGuire, which I’m sure you really care about.

7. I will make Reeve go running with me on the trail like the good ol’ days of 2009. He will show up under the Mopac Bridge thirty minutes after our scheduled meeting time, as usual.

8. Tuesday night I’m going to an intimate Radiohead show, the one they are taping in the new theatre/studio for Austin City Limits. I have wanted to have Thom Yorke’s babies since I was in 10th grade. Radiohead is also responsible for my relationship/marriage. In short, I love, love LOVE Radiohead. Anyway, do you want to be my date to the show?

Your pal,

E

PS. Let’s face it though, the beauty of this confab is that you should not plan for it. The night we were wandering up Lavaca and a woman in a slutty baseball outfit started throwing us cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and hot dogs, which we then took as invitation to enter some random party was one of my favorite serendipitous nights with you. And DJ Chicken George was spinning! I love that guy.

I met teenagers Rob and Marshall — and their pal Jeff Brown — in their last year of high school and my first full year in Spartanburg, SC, their home town. I was doing a story on the minor musical resurgence of Spartanburg, and the boys, who were 17-year-olds playing old Americana tunes as The DesChamps Band, were abuzz. They performed for the photog and me on Marshall’s parents back deck, and I turned a quick story, below. (This is embarrassing, as I was age 23 and sounded like a 12-year-old.)

A year later, I started my new TV job in Austin and the boys had disbanded to attend college, but never stopped playing music. Marshall had moved to Austin, too. That’s where he met Phoebe Hunt, an Austin native and one of the most talented young fiddlers around. A few months later, Rob and his buddies from college in New Orleans joined up with Marshall and Phoebe to jam, and through circumstance and serendipity (a spot opened up at MerleFest), they became The Belleville Outfit. The boys took a break from college, converged in Austin and followed their musical journey. (Spoiler alert: It worked out for them. The band was not a flop.)

Because I found them for that story when they were so young, I feel a real familial kind of relationship with some of those guys. I got to know Uncle Seth and Cousin Warren and moms and dads. Rob and I reminisced about the fall night in 2007 when the band came over to Casa Hu-Stiles at 3am after a “meh” gig to help finish off the beer and food from a party we threw earlier that evening. Queso-blurred memories.

So I’ve been a Belleville Outfit evangelist for many years, introducing dozens, if not hundreds of my pals to the group. I focused specifically on making sure friends from out of Austin got a chance to see their shows. Loved ones from New York, Washington, various places in the Midwest… they’ve all been taken to a Belleville show if they came to visit and the band was in town. (Sudeep became an instant fan and even bought some sweatbands. Lawmaker pal Mark wanted to get them to play some political events.)

Belleville is also partly responsible for my current job at NPR, and the fact we live here in Washington at all right now. I met one of my great friends and one of the biggest influencers on my journalism thinking, Matt Thompson, at a Belleville Outfit show during SXSW 2009. In one of my evangelism efforts, I had invited out-of-town pal Jen to come see the live music, and she brought her buddy Matt. It was months before the existence of The Texas Tribune (which Matt Thompson also influenced) and way before he was working at NPR. But he enjoyed the show, we remained friends, and he remembered me NPR was looking for someone, years later.

The band announced it was breaking up early last year, a few weeks after I decided I was leaving Austin for DC. After touring all over the country playing to fans old and new, two acclaimed albums, an Americana Awards nomination for Best Emerging Artists, and all signs pointing up, the group members split after Phoebe decided she wanted to go solo. The breakup news marked an end to my time in Austin in a way that was maybe more significant than actually moving away from Austin. (See/hear the goodbye show.)

Phoebe appeared at a Tiny Desk last May.

NPR holds Tiny Desk Concerts, in which artists big and small come and play acoustic by a desk at the skinny end of the fifth floor. I can only make it to a handful of them, and sometimes it’s to see artists I’ve never heard of, based on recommendations from coworkers. One day last April, my office pal said a guy named Ben Sollee was playing and that he was supposed to be good. So I went to the Tiny Desk and who was accompanying Ben? Phoebe, of the Belleville Outfit. We had a big holy shit reunion hug in front of the gathered group, which seemed quite confused.

RESERVED!?!? Oh, the outrage! (w/ young Rob)

Rob and I have kept in touch via Twitter, and this past weekend, since he didn’t have firm plans for his DC visit and I never have plans more than a day in advance, we got to spend back-to-back-to-back evenings out together in Washington. Nights filled with randomness, booze, bad music, good music, new inside jokes (Meow versus Meow has a meaning now), fake outrage over “Reserved” placards,  and a debate over whether Tim Tebow is actually in fact a virgin.

And that’s one of the reasons I love my new place, Washington. Because people happen to come visit a lot, for various reasons. And it means millions of new moments with old friends.