Good grief.

But in 2010, I didn’t hear the word even once. [And the people rejoiced.]

No, this year was all about helping the planet, deepening relationships, telling stories, finding your passion, solving problems and understanding each other. Your basic save-the-world stuff.

Just look at some of these panel titles:

• How to Spark a Movement in the 21st Century
• Games for Good
• Haiti Crisis Camp: Techies Unite for Earthquake Relief
• Don’t Stop Believin’: Singing our Way to Changing the World
• RT: I’m Going to Kill Myself. Preventing Suicide Online
• What Guys are Doing to Get More Girls in Tech!
• How Nerds Can Foster Democracy in Local Government
• Kicking Recession Ass With A Killer Company Culture
• It’s Time to Save the World with Design Thinking

 Even the business sessions seemed to have a heart:

• Millionaire or Artist? How About Both?
• Unsexy and Profitable: Making $$ Without Hype
• The Socially Conscious Geek: Makin’ Money While Doing Good
• Shameless Self Promotion Without Looking Like an @#$%^&!

 I’m not sure what brought on this shift, but I love it.

There were less self-promotional pitches in the Q&A times, less shoving business cards in your face, less bickering between panelists. Even the corporate lounges had a feel-good vibe: AOL’s Seed Lounge asked people to share SXSW stories and photos online, and the Pepsi Refresh project offered up $50,000 for the best digital social change idea.

I’m sure some of my impressions are simply a result of the panels I self-selected. And I don’t want to sound as if I’m opposed to all talk of making money—I think it’s a valid and necessary pursuit.

But I certainly haven’t built my own career around the biggest paycheck possible. And I don’t go to SXSW to make money. I go to learn, get inspired and connect. Judging from this year’s conference, the world is with me.

Bonus: Books to Change Your World

A list of titles suggested by SXSW presenters and attendees:

• And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey, by Studs Terkel
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
• Ed Emberley’s Drawing Book: Make a World, by Ed Emberley
• Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, by Nancy Duarte

Stay tuned this week, as I’ll be posting recaps, insights and resources from panels, including fabulous visual thinking stuff from the Visual Note-Taking 101 panel and Dan Roam’s Blah Blah Blah: Why Words Won’t Work; thoughts on better storytelling from The Future of Context; How to Make a Viral Video and more.

Artist Austin Kleon's interpretation of the "Try Making Yourself More Interesting" panel, a standout from SXSW 2009. I'm looking forward to Austin's "Visual Notetaking 101" session this year.

One of the things that I value most is that my SXSW experience managed to hit some high, soaring, inspiration notes while also giving me practical insight and tips. After the conference I reported back to my team at McCombs on my 5 big takeaways. Normally I wouldn’t share year-old notes, but these still influence me and my work on a regular basis, so here goes:

1.) Web site: The Big Picture
Alan Taylor runs the Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” photography blog, and he gave one of my favorite presentations of the conference. It was surprisingly moving–he had the whole room in tears as he explained a photo series of cancer patients–and totally unexpected. For me, this was a quintessential SXSW moment: a passionate person sharing something he cares about and using technology and communication to connect people and move the world forward. And as a magazine and blog editor, it encouraged me to remember the power of great photography and that even business stories can be visually compelling.
 
2.) Celebrate our Success!
This was a small point made in a panel about agency-client relationships, but it really stuck with me. Too often we are already on to the next thing, and hardly take time to pat ourselves on the back, beyond perhaps a passing “Nice work!” e-mail. We need ritual and ceremony to celebrate the completion of major projects. I’m still working on this one, but I did convince our magazine team to get out of the building for a 30-minute Starbucks break after we published our first issue of a new online version.

3.) People respond to being part of something bigger than themselves
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s keynote was a memorable highlight and Zappos seems to be a model of how to do company culture right. He talked about how for most people, happiness is tied directly to a higher purpose. For that reason, Zappos aims to move employees from job to career to calling.

I’ve tried to keep this in mind as a higher ed staffer. I mean I know we’re dealing with tight budgets, no pay raises, layoffs and unlimited bureaucracy, but it’s not like we’re stuck selling appliances! We are serving instutions that provide enormous opportunity for people and set them on a new life path. We need to tap into that inspriational side of our jobs more often.

4.) Social media allows for accidental learning.
I heard this nugget during a student panel about social media in the classroom, and it has sort of become my guiding principle in how I think about higher education social media. I know our followers and fans don’t read every word we say, but if I can trickle into someone’s news stream and get them to click on a link where they all of a sudden find themselves reading about how to be a better manager or learning about a student’s study abroad trip, then that’s a success.

5.) Be amazed.
I forget who showed this fabulous clip of comedian Louis C.K. complaining to Conan O’Brien that everything is amazing but nobody is happy. Frustrated your cell phone is slow? “Give it a second – it’s going to space!” The in-flight internet is spotty? You had to sit on the runway for 40 minutes? “Oh really, what happened next? Did you partake in the miracle of flight?”

Those words have popped up in my head often when I get pouty about truly insignificant things.

I have no idea what gems await me this year at SXSW Interactive. I’m hoping to engage my creative side and get tips on visual thinking, engage my geek side and check in with some science panels and engage my it’s-good-for-your-job-and-don’t-limit-yourself-it’s-more-interesting-than-you-would-expect side by visiting some business sessions. But whatever I learn, I promise to share here!

Any fellow SXSW attendees out there? Do any of last year’s lessons still resonate with you now? What are you looking forward to this year?

P.S. – A huge thanks to Austin American-Statesman tech reporter Omar Gallaga for including me on his list of 20 people to follow during SXSW Interactive. I’m quite shocked to be included with such a sparkling group, but I will do my best to deliver the goods!

Yesterday's Sweet Leaf Tea lid perfectly sums up my life right now. Who needs fortune cookies anymore?

I’m a lucky one. Part of the privileged few. A golden child. You guessed it—I’m a native Austinite.

Not only a native Austinite, but a South Austinite. Even more authentic!

My youth was filled with trips to Barton Springs and Fiesta, when it was still called Fiesta and held on Laguna Gloria’s storybook grounds. During the summers, I learned snorkeling and repelling at the Austin Nature Center day camp. My parents had season tickets for UT baseball and Lady Longhorn basketball games, so by the time I entered UT as a freshman, I had spent countless hours on campus.

I dined on Milto’s, Dan’s Hamburgers, Eastside Cafe and Nuevo Leon. I developed an alarmingly high tolerance for spicy foods. I partook of Austin City Limits and KGSR against my will, before I realized how cool they are.

I wondered about mythical places like The Arboretum and Pflugerville, and dreaded the intersection of South Lamar and Oltorf, the scene of a creepy mural on the side of a taxidermy shop. You know the one!

As I grew older, attended college, desperately searched for employment, got married, bought a house (in South Austin, natch) and adopted a dog, Austin remained home. It was a large and vital part of my identity, of how I saw myself. Austin and I were inextricably connected. It was my city. Austin was easy and charming and cool and perfect. It was the envy of all other cities! I never wanted to leave. Who leaves an oasis?

Then, after 28 years of blissful companionship, I got out. Packed up and left.

My husband was accepted to the master’s of landscape architecture program at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and we decided he needed to pursue that path. It was an agonizing decision because it meant leaving everything and everyone both of us knew and loved. But it was an easy one in that we felt 100 percent conviction that it was the right thing to do.

We’ve been in Tucson just over two months now and have been delightfully surprised by so many things: The striking friendliness of nearly everyone we meet; the glory of a sun-washed mountain and wide-open sky; the sheer abundance of locally owned pizza shops.

But the biggest surprise, the thing I truly never expected was this: I don’t miss Austin.

Don’t get me wrong—I very much miss my friends and family. And when I think about our lovely little house, which we still own, or missing the birth of my best friend’s baby, my heart aches. But I’m not longing for the city itself.

It hit me when I traveled there last month for work. (I’ve kept my job with UT’s business school and work from home in Tucson.) I couldn’t wait to get back to my city, hit the regular stops and spend time with my friends and family.

But from the moment my plane landed, I felt off, somehow. I wasn’t overwhelmed with kiss-the-ground gratitude at being back in the world’s greatest hometown. Suddenly I felt like an outsider, an out-of-town visitor passing through.

I spent 28 years cultivating and clinging to my citizenship, and it took less than six weeks for it to disintegrate.

And you know what? It’s kind of a relief. I don’t think I could survive three years in Tucson if Austin still had its hooks in me. I’m thankful that my new city is one that’s easy for me to like, and I’m excited about coming to feel more at home here in Tucson than I already do. I don’t want to live my life just filling time until I can get back to Austin.

Austin is a special place and I love it dearly. It is so much a part of who I am. But I’ve realized I’m in a season of my life when I get to allow another place to become a part of me and shape who I become.

I’m a lucky one, indeed.

Things I’ll Miss About Austin

1. Galaxy Cafe chicken chipotle wraps and french fries (both the regular and -sweet potato variety)
2. Alamo Drafthouse
3. Driving by the lake everyday
4. Working on campus
5. Food served from trailers
6. KGSR
7. All the weird murals
8. The most amazing friends and family a gal could ask for

Things I Gladly Say Goodbye To

1. The death-tunnel known as I-35
2. Spending 1 hour+ in the car everyday
3. Kerbey Lane and Magnolia waiters
4. An alarmingly unbalanced hipster-to-normal-person ratio
5. It’s not the heat, it’s the HUMIDITY

Things I Learned in the Move

1. When handed a walkie-talkie, I MUST talk trucker.
2. Harry Potter books on iTunes are insanely expensive. For $50, you’d better have Daniel Radcliffe, Robbie Coltrane AND Alan Rickman recreating Hogwart’s in my back seat.
3. Some parts of West Texas are exceptionally beautiful. Also, some parts are El Paso.
4. Most gas stations sell t-shirts with American flags and spray-painted tigers but not crossword puzzle books. As engrossing as tiger tees may be, they are a sorry means of keeping me awake on road trips.

Things I Already Like About Tucson

1. Flat roads and wide bike lanes. EVERYWHERE.
2. An apparent obsession with pizza. One spot near our house has three pizza places on one corner. Clearly a town with its priorities in order.
3. The mountain view out my front window. Yes that’s it below. Yes.
4. Really really really nice people. I mean really. I think it’s all the sunshine.
5. Two words: Spring Training. Hopefully Tucson can keep it around.
6. Anonymity. No one knows us here, no one is missing us or needs us. That can be lonely, and I’m sure it will soon change, but right now it’s kinda fun to just be on our own and start building up a new life.