I'm getting ready to head out on Saturday to the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. SXSW is one of the two leading Web 2.0 conferences (humility prevents me from naming the other one). I'll be blogging the heck out of the conference; you can keep up on the SXSW category page here on the InformationWeek Blog.

SXSW is actually three conferences in one: The interactive conference, which is the one I'll be attending, as well as conferences on music and film.

I'm looking forward to panels on online communities, blogging, virtual worlds and the 3D Internet, open source business models, and user-generated content on the Web. Speakers include journalist Dan Rather, and futurist and science fiction writer Bruce Sterling.

Sterling is delivering a rant. Says so right there on the SWSX Web site: "Bruce Sterling's SXSW Rant.".

So far, I've got meetings lined up with executives from Rave Wireless; RSS vendors Pheedo and NewsGator; Web publishing company Lulu; Wikia, which is Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales's commercial wiki venture; and Mozilla, which makes the Firefox browser. Monday night, I hope to hit the dinner with blogger Robert Scoble, but I don't know what time to show up.

Mostly, I'm looking forward to the things that are always the best parts of any good conference: Dropping in on good panels on the spur of the moment, random meetings with smart people, and other ways of stumbling over great ideas.

If you want to get together at SXSW, call me at (213) 514-5597, which rings both my office and cell phones. Feel free to call me at the conference itself, and we can just set up a meeting right there on the spur of the moment.

By the way, the phone number in the previous paragraph is from Grand Central. Their motto is, "One phone number for life." (Or it used to be that -- doesn't seem to be on their Web site anymore.)I reviewed the service Feb 2, and I'm still happy with it and still using it; InformationWeek has already changed its "contact us" page to give out that number, and I asked to have new business cards printed with it (although they won't be here in time for SXSW, alas).

And now I have to reschedule a dentist appointment for Tuesday afternoon, because I won't be home then, I'll be in Austin. Oh, rats.