AUSTIN - I woke up at 3:45 a.m. Saturday morning. That is not a time of day I have been familiar with since college (or maybe that last time I had to make a pre-dawn flight out of the Portland International Jetport.*)

Waking up at that insane hour would be difficult enough, but facing the day ahead made it seem more like a sucker's tightrope walk. By my own plan, I would leave Portland at 6 a.m., get into Austin for South by Southwest Interactive at 11:30 a.m. and hit the ground running, prepared to start writing up blogs and blasts on the Twitter Wire.

What makes it more crazy is the fact that I'm parachuting blind. Not only have I never been to Austin, I've never been to SXSW before, and all I know is that it's apparently a beast. How so? They openly tell newbies such as myself to take it slow:

And they are not lying. Ever swam in the ocean and felt the threatening pull of undertow? The water grabs at you, almost jumping on you, in an attempt to take you away.

SXSW can feel like that... least at the moment. How else can you explain an event that doesn't just lay siege to a city (granted, a happy and willing one), and lives on some many other planes # Twitter, Facebook, Meebo, not to mention the text/mobile world.

There are the posters for shows, side meetings, product demos, parties, games, BBQ adventures. There are the people, the developers, artists, curious onlookers, web geeks, entrepreneurs, Twitterati…and that's just who you pass in the hallway.

And my plan is to drop into this and pull my "multimedia magic act" from the same script I've used before?

Not so much.

So what is going to happen? I'm not entirely sure. There's going to be plenty to write and talk about over the next few days. There's going to be lots to share, but if I have any hope of using 1/8 of what I learn here back at Press Herald Plaza, I'm going to need to take a step back and listen, not just report.

There's still going to be Tweets, lots of 'em, and regular updates to the blog # but nothing live and completely unrehearsed # these discussions probably deserve a little better than me shooting from the hip. (That's what Twitter's for, friends)

Here's what I'm going to be up to this afternoon:

• Listening to Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh
  
• A session on The Future of Social Networks

• Politics, Technology and Pop Culture

• The 10 Worst Social Media Campaigns
  

And as always, if you've got suggestions for what I should check out, let me know in the comments!

*Can we please not call it that until we have more international flights coming though? Also, is it just me or does Jetport have the wrong tone? You expect to see Tony Stark at a Jetport

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