We just spent a few days in Austin, Texas (one of my favorite cities in the US) at the SXSW Interactive Conference. We met a lot of great people doing exciting things and had A LOT of fun.

One of the highlights was our own Top Dog Ted’s panel on DIY. The panel took place in the one of the bigger auditoriums and more than 500 people attended. Ted recruited some excellent panelists including Gina Trapani from Lifehacker, Lynda Keeler from Delight, Matt Mullenweg from Wordpress and Mike Hudack from blip.tv.

The panel covered many of the aspects early stage projects and start-ups need to deal with. Topics covered the full spectrum from how to decide what projects to take on to when and how to compensate employees to how to deal with success. One really interesting discussion was how to deal with internet success that hasn’t yet translated to financial success. All the panelists had great, practical advice for the audience and were also very inspiring. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next internet phenomena was being planned and inspired from someone sitting right there in the audience.

One final note and that is hats off to Ted. I saw a lot of panels over the four days and Ted was the best moderator of all of them. In fact, I heard people buzzing about that panel for the next two days. Lots of praises, lots of great feedback. Nice job Ted!