It was just off the plane at LAX when the urge to trade business cards took hold...

So begins our sordid tale of nerd debauchery here in Austin. The San Francisco Bay Area is representing to the fullest extent of the law here in Texas, and we've had a hard time keeping up on all the panels featuring Bay Area blog superstars. Even Jeffrey Zeldman's keynote address on Saturday, which was a one man show, featured Zeldman name-checking Heather Champ and Derek Powazek and calling Matt "WordPress" Mullenweg out of the audience to talk about his experience attending South by Southwest, which inspired his effort to build a better blogtrap.

After missed flights, delays, and a PowerBook that decided to stop booting up once it left Apple country for the hinterlands, we finally landed in Austin just before midnight central time. Crashing at hotel a friend was staying at, we managed to at least log in to Gmail, only to find out about the flamers from Friday. Yeesh. We leave the city for a few hours, and all hell breaks loose! We walked a few blocks up from the hotel to the Continental Club, where both blues and booze were flowing from the tap. Austin closes early, like us -- what's discouraging is that their groceries stop selling liquor at midnight and one on Saturdays, so the San Francisco tradition of sneaking out at 1:45 to grab some beers for the afterparty is out of the question.

More free food, booze and cigarettes after the jump.

Saturday morning we woke up and munched on a free breakfast at the hotel, walked over to the convention center to register, watched the kickball-kickoff sponsored by the SixApart crew at a downtown park, dropped into the opening keynote and then a barbecue lunch with Gothamist, LAist and the brand-spankin'-new Austinist, we had pretty much forgotten all about it and were ready to take on the conference. What did we miss Friday night? The annual "Breaking Bread with Brad," where the star turn of the night was an appearance by none other than Malcolm Gladwell. Of course, all he wanted to do was talk about living in New York and finding out where the good parties were -- so please, people, don't immediately start asking him about "connectors" and "thin-slicing" and the like. He may have Sideshow Bob hair and a couple of NYT bestsellers on the books, but he's just a person looking for booty and free booze like the rest of us.

Being newbies and dedicating our coverage to San Franciscans in town for the event, we dropped by Kevin Smokler's "Getting the Most Out of South By Southwest" panel. We were encouraged by Austin blogger David Nunez' guide to "Getting Over Yourself" at SXSW, and we were happy to exchange orange smiley-face stickers to past on our credentials with Matt Mullenweg and signify that we're willing to chat, even if we have no idea who you are. One of Kevin's best suggestions was to make sure you found out about the "off-schedule" events, which are the informal cigarette breaks, lunches, dinners and parties that are organized by locals and attendees alike. We suggest that people check out Austinist for the dope, seeing as how editor Austinist Ben was blogging from the conference on his Sony Clie and, as a local, knew which bars to avoid.

Our mission, of course, was to get as stuffed and smashed as possible on the corporate dime. Our press credential managed us access to the "Platinum Lounge" at the conference center where we scored two beers before the panel. Nearby was a cigarette company handing out free packs of cigarettes -- we'll take two, please! The Luck Lounge was home to another open-bar, and not one of those crappy drink-tickets-well-drinks-only events. We're talking all the free Makers Mark you could quaff. Upstairs, Gothamist Jake and I shot the s**t with Jeff Veen and the Adaptive Path crew. In Jeff's words, "I knew you'd be here, there's bloggers and beer!" That's when Gawker, nee Gothamist, scribes Lockhart Steele and Andrew Krucoff showed.

Always on the mission to show the world how we do it in EssEff, we 'isters dragged Krucoff and Steele (which would be an awesome name for a seventies cop show parody) over to Austinist Ben's recommendation the Velvet Spade. This was one of those "off-the-schedule" events that Kevin was talking about. Of course we bought our Gawker friends drinks, and buttered up their egos a bit, and then set about drinking them under the table. We can assure you -- for all the talk, the New Yorkers were a bunch of total lightweights, and while Austinist Ben and I hopped into a cab to head back to his place and polish off a half-case of the Beast, they went shamefacedly back to the Hilton to cry themselves to sleep. Pantywaists.

Crashing at friend of SFist Topaz's "compound" on the outskirts of Austin, we had a converted schoolbus with a queen-sized bed all to ourselves, and stayed there until noon on Sunday. Our priority was getting the laptop back to firing on all cylinders, and we were woefully unsuccessful. So we walked to the Montopolis stop on the Capital Metro, stopping to feed some goats (yes, goats) on the way. After a quick fifteen minute ride on a clean bus with a friendly driver that cost of all of fifty cents, we were back downtown. While we missed most of the day's panels (including Gladwell's prezzo -- don't worry, everyone and their mother is blogging this thing, as we weren't in the building more than a few hours before someone saw us on Flickr) we did manage to catch Matt "Metafilter" Haughey and Craig "Craigslist" Newmark dicussing "How to Grow Online Community." Matt felt that he was "where Craig was in 1997," though we think he's underestimating. He felt that keys to good online communities were to have "as few rules as possible," and to keep an eye on discussions, also known as "Spot the assholes." Craig agreed, saying that the best policy was to set up a simple, clean system and then just "get out of the way."

Friend of Austinist Courtney, who's based in LA but was invited to cover SXSW for the Austin Chronicle, tipped us off to yet another free booze and food event -- a tribute to Townez Van Zandt -- this time at Maggie Mae's on sixth street. This was actually a SXSW Film event, but we waved our invincible press pass and got in. The film crowd has a higher ratio of both women and fauxhawks, and are a little more obsequious in their schmoozing techniques. One guy, though, loved our t-shirt, though for probably all the wrong reasons. After stuffing our maw with brisket, we were too tired to hit the big Fray party, and instead headed back to the crash pad for some beers around the fire with some locals. It had been a long forty-eight hours, and we needed our sleep if we were going to catch all the Bay Area panelists on Monday. Tune in tomorrow for our continuing coverage!

Thanks to everyone we met, and everyone we knew and said hello. If we forgot you, just remind us and we'll make sure you get a namedrop. All this free booze is making us forgetful!