So, SXSW Interactive is good and over. The panel went well (or so they tell me), I met some nice folk, and drank some darn good beer.

Unfortunately, things weren’t completely rosy. I made a couple of critical errors which slightly marred an otherwise brilliant weekend:

Don’t hand out the wrong business cards (as in, somebody else’s)

SXSW is a business card trading frenzy. So, a good idea is to make sure your business cards are your own. Mine weren’t.

I was sorting through my remaining business card supply half-way through the conference, and was horrified to notice that a handful were labeled “Kathy Donaghue”, a former FreshBooks co-worker who’d left the team back in August. I guess our cards got mixed up some time ago, and I hadn’t bothered to check them before handing them out. So, if you’re back from SXSW and wondering who the heck Kathy is, look no further – it was me!

MacBooks don’t have VGA-out

Unlike 99% of my web-developer peers – I don’t presently own a laptop. So I borrowed my colleague Sunir’s MacBook for the trip. As a PC-user-4-life, it didn’t occur to me that MacBooks don’t have VGA out – you need a separate adapter. So, before my presentation, I actually borrowed a second laptop just to play the slides – a Dell PC running Windows Vista (!). My street cred dropped 50% instantly.

Remember to introduce yourself during your own panel

Yep – no joke. We were about 20 minutes through the panel before I’d realized that, during introductions, I’d completely forgotten to introduce myself, or FreshBooks. Months of organizing, planning, and slide-preparing and nobody even knew who I was. Bummer!

(If you’re reading this now, I was the guy on the right.)

Bring a phone (that works)

My mobile phone company, Virgin, doesn’t offer roaming. With no connection to the outside world, I was always tethered to someone who did. Not being able to find your friends, hand out your number, find the latest party, or Twitter, was a complete drag. Never again!

Anyways, all things considered, I had a great time, and let’s face it – these aren’t big deals. Still, next year, I’ll be way more prepared … maybe.