I recently guested on Feast of Fun, a delish gay podcast hosted by the adorable Fausto and Marc. That’s Fausto’s sister above who came to their queer meet up at this years SXSW. We talked about canv.as, Color, and what makes web apps, sites , parties and the Internet great : collaboration.  Of course we meandered into Ani DiFranco, Kirstie Alley, Rosie O’Donnell and how to pick up a nerd.

I was also part of a Business Insider piece about SXSW, written to justify partying as work. SXSW has had a huge impact of my life  and my work. It has certainly got some new issues but I still found it really worthwhile and energizing to be there.  The place now does have massive attendance and it’s crawling with marketing and old school media companies trying to be all Internet cool now. But I actually found that I learned something from this. More on what that is soon.

I hosted this conversation at SXSW 2011 with Melissa Gira Grant, Cindy Gallop Jeff Jarvis and many other participants formerly known as the audience.

There has been a real backlash against openness as the word “oversharing” implies. As CNN noted, I think an “oversharing” accusation is often another persons way of saying “what you are saying is making me uncomfortable.”

Handling out feelings and learning how to be in public space together is what much of my work is about. I believe it’s a lot of what the shifting economy is about too. As I told Umair Haque in our TummelVision conversation: “We’re not going to think our way out of this economic/cultural place. We’ve got to feel our way out.”

The End of Shame conversation happened because it was the one Melissa most wanted to have and it was one of the bright moments of SXSW for me this year. It was a room of incredibly smart and interesting people who taught us more than we shared. And we know how to share.

Girl Walk // All Day

A recent delightful collaboration between remixing dancer Anne Marsen, videographer Jacob Krupnick and of course the music of mash up maestro Girl Talk.

Collaboration has been the key to indie success in the era of the web. It’s the key to how we make now: with each others stuff: music before us, an “audience” of co-creators. What’s the key to great collaboration?

I’ll explore at SXSW 3/15 11:am with amazing panelists, genius Allee Willis (September, Neutron Dance), Mary Jo Pehl (Rifftrax) and Kenyatta Cheese (Know Your Meme, Rocketboom) and you baby, you. I run “panels’ like I run my shows which means they are large, intimate conversations and we get into the nitty gritty. No turning away from what’s unsaid.

Allee alone is working buying a ticket to Austin and a hotel room for 2 days. Seriously. She’s one of my great creative inspirations and I couldn’t be more excited and honoured to have these folks together. Do not miss this conversation we’re craving.

Featuring: Gina Trapani, Jeremy Keith, Robin Sloan, Negin Farsad, Mike Mosalom and the people formerly known as th audience.

What follows is an ungrammatical list of sorts. It reflects the elated tiredness. This is why I’m waiting until after a short break to energize and collect my thoughts to dig into the deeper stuff about SXSW and the video.

Here is a short, hazy trip through my happy mind:

Launched a new web site for The Heather Gold Show, 4 shows in 2 cities. Great, packed shows. One was live-blogged on Valleywag twice as it happened and was declared “The best panel at SXSW, ever,” one show included getting to sing Flagpole Sitta with Jonathan Coulton, then following on the show withSean Nelson, one of the guys who wrote it.
We will have some great video up soon.

 8 tacos. endless numbers of great geeks and conversations, 1 movie about Humboldt County (so-so), 1 short video made in our apartment last summer about mannequins (awesome),