This year is my third time at SXSW. I've enjoyed both previous trips, but the big difference between year 1 and 2 was in the nature of panels and keynotes I chose to attend.

In 2009 I gravitated towards the familiar, topics I was already deeply into, or thought I should be better equipped around. I kept meeting the same (great) people I already knew, hearing the same (sometimes great) case studies I'd already heard. Made me feel like I knew what I was talking about, but left me feeling uninspired - I somehow came back knowing less than I went with.

In 2010 I decided to deliberately seek out topics, panels and people that were completely off-radar for me. Talks about robotics, best practice workshops on UX, discussions around the publishing industry and its future, panels on game design, case studies of how mobile's exploding in Africa. I came back feeling energized, excited, and a little humble (and I still saw all the same people I would have seen at the more usual panels at the crazy parties in the evening . . . they were usually whinging about how vanilla their day had been).

So my one piece of advice for SXSW first-timers is simple.

Seek not what you know, but what you don't know.

Provoke serendipity through running into your discomfort zone.

Remember innovation happens at the intersection of disciplines, not within them.

Chance encounters with random new people can lead to the unimaginable (including, but not only, wonderful late-night burrito trucks).

See you at Town Holler on Sunday. I'll be the one looking confused but happy.

"It is hardly possible to overrate the value . . . of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Such communication has always been, and is peculiarly in the present age, one of the primary sources of progress." (John Stuart Mill)