Tennessee pride:   Reese Witherspoon made the hometown crowd proud tonight when she won the Oscar for best actress for portraying June Carter Cash in Walk the Line. A very deserving winner and classy acceptance speech. I can’t recall another Nashville-native ever winning in a major category.

And a Memphis rap group won the Oscar for a song from Hustle & Flow, a movie set in Memphis I blogged last year. Perhaps not the greatest acceptance speech ever, but certainly one of the most memorable. And while it may come as a shock for those who know my musical tastes (more Dolly than 36 Mafia), as I saw the movie Hustle & Flow and understand the importance of the song in film, I think it was the correct choice.

Update: Big surprise about Crash winning the Oscar for the best film. I’m surprised because it’s perhaps the first time I’ve ever seen a winner in that category twice before it won. I didn’t recommend it when I saw it as it’s not an easy or enjoyable film to watch. After seeing it the second time, I decided it was a much better crafted film than I first thought — and there are certain things about it that are brilliant –  but still, it’s rather heavy-handedly didactic (or is that heavily-handed?).

I’m going to sxsw — and am a bit overwhelmed: Like last year, next weekend (through Tuesday) I’ll be attending the interactive part of South by Southwest (or, as those roman numeral-loving kids call it, SXSW XX). While the event is informal and unpretentious (even the “superstar” panelists appreciate how much smarter the folks in the audience are), the size of the event has grown so that it can be somewhat overwhelming for those, like me, who are “on our own.” I’m on no panels — I attend for the conversations. (Actually, I’m not technically on my own, as Austin-based Hammock Publishing’s Summer and her husband, Cole, have volunteered to once again take me on my annual trek to one of the area’s famed eating establishments. And now that I’ve learned they’ve added a Beta festival related to gaming this year, I’m thinking of recruiting the 15-year-old in my household to accompany me.)

The SXSW folks do a lot to foster community before and during the event (they’ve got some great web-based pre-conference schedule and networking tools on their website) and I found last year that Flickr and Technorati tagging helped to connect me with folks who I knew only through blogs.

However, with the size of the crowd growing from large to massive, I’m getting a bit overwhelmed with how to go about meeting up with folks in a way other than serendipitously — which is my usual approach. Any suggestions for someone who, despite attending the conference last year, still feels like a complete sxsw interactive newbie?

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