A little about the experience. Firstly, the beauty is that our hotel is a road across from the convention centre. The convention centre is easy to navigate, although you do tend to rush to sessions, not to have the doors closed in your face. I managed three sessions yesterday. 

The first a Content Strategy session, hosted by Margot Bloomstein was a full house, and whilst she raised interesting points, admittedly there were no profound lessons. Well for me, and that's because I play in the space. For someone who doesn't, the interesting points she raised were:

• Message architecture should be confident, simple and inviting. 

• From a design perspective, content should be anticipated and the layout should support the content, broken up with bulleted lists, hooks, description splits and posted reviews. 

• In strategy, the first question is what content already exists, is it current, appropriate and relevant, always bearing quality in mind. 

• From an SEO perspective, translate meta content for tone, not just for keywords

I liked the point she raised about planning for the expiration of content - something I believe is always forgotten. And there is little worse than arriving at a site with dead content. 

I then moved across to Brian Solis' session. It was good. Someone likened him to a tele-evangelist. The topic covered most of what is in his new book, Engage. What was great was the panel, which included Dennis Crowley from Foursquare, Jeremiah Owyang of Web-Strategist and Frank Eliason of ComCast. They spent time discussing relationship management and whose responsibility in the corporate it is. CRM becomes Social Relationship Management. I often, and I wonder if you do too, get the feeling that the bigwigs change the goalposts too quickly. Spratty says I must use the word amorphous. Its as if they are adapting to keep up. And I find it disconcerting. I think its because it seems that their position as 'thoughtleaders' means that they continuously have to produce content to keep them current. Or popular? Or is it just because this industry is all about continuous evolution? Not sure. What is evident though is that the people needing to hear it are corporates. Service divisions of corporates. 

Finally, Heidi Patmore and I went to the Time, Social & Location talk. It was a bit vague and surface level. Allan Kent called it first-base. The best part of the discussion was meeting and standing next to Matt Galligan of Simple Geo, who I hope to interview over the next few days for his thoughts on time, social and location and how we should be developing for the SA market. We discussed Waze and how despite being a great product they are not sharing their data. Which is a big debate, and one I hope to drill more into.  

Justin Spratt made the Mark Cuban vs. Avner Ronen (Boxee) debate, and the most important thing that stood out to him was when the Mark Cuban reminded the audience to follow the money. The debate should be up on YouTube soon. There was a false fire drill during the session where attendees were evacuated and brought back in. Andy Folk summed it up his thoughts aptly. 

Other highlights included the fantastic dinner sponsored by Vinny Lingham and Yola hosted at a restaurant again, across the Road, Fogo de Chao. What a treat. Its a Brazilian steakhouse and the service and attention to detail are amazing. You have a 'coaster' in front of you. One side is green, the other red. If you want meat, place it green side up and the carvers will bring their dish to you and slice right then and there. We ate like Kings. 

I was also taken on a quick tour around the city (the University football stadium seats 100 000 - the 2nd biggest in the country - and that's University), was treated to a P Terry's burger and double thick chocolate shake.  Austin is beautiful, the sky is so big. Pics to follow!