I was thumbing through my notebook looking over what I had written about South by Southwest Interactive and came across this:

"What the hell just happened?"

Good question.

It's been over 24 hours since I departed Austin and left SXSW behind and I'm still not sure what I just covered, or more honestly, what I was just a part of.

It's not exactly a conference or a convention in the true sense (though there is lots of business card swapping). It's not a straight-up trade show (though there is plenty of schwag to go around). It's not a festival (not enough hippies sleeping in tents...yet.)

But here's an theory I'd been mulling over the past week: SXSW as summer camp.

Think about it: There's the tribes that sprout up because of shared interests, the spontaneous friendships, the mind-boggling social events, the learning of new skills and discovery of new interest and a general disconnection with your life at home.

And just as soon as it starts, it's over.

I made reference in one of my earlier posts on SXSW that I was just trying to keep my head above water, and that didn't stop the entire time I was there. For folks who haven't been to SXSW, that may be tough to realize. But the fact is there's something compelling going on all the time. If it's not a panel discussion on the future of online video or a primer on going solo in a lousy economy, there's thousands of interesting side conversations that can easily creep up on you.

I had as much fun talking (and learned as much or more) with people I met as I did sitting in on a panel. How else can I explain talking about the need for more challenging tasks in video games and gender stereotypes in gaming with people from a panel on social media and racism?

Or talking with a non-profit manager and a pair of interactive designers about "the monkey sphere," or the idea that there is an actual limit on the number of relationships a person can keep up.

There was also the free entertainment. Of course there were plenty of parties with free drinks (and I'm still not sure how companies are footing the bill for an open bar in this economy), but there is also the randomness of being at an event where you can run into a guy playing his iPhone like a recorder. Or trying to keep count on the number of social media marketers/consultants you meet and how many different definitions they have of what they do.

And of course there was the unintentional comedy that came to life anytime someone asked what I did. Judging by the change in tone from most people you would have thought "I'm a journalist" was the same as saying "I have cancer."

But for all my joking I can't just write-off SXSW Interactive as a playground for people dancing (drunkenly) on the next online bubble full to bursting, the entrepreneur-adventurer class or corporations trying to catch on to the next "big thing."

Amidst a crashing economy and living in an industry trying to convince people it's not dead yet, I felt good about the future for once.

And that's thanks to SXSW.

The sense of the possible is something that seems to come in reach at SXSW, if only because it's willed into existence for five days by several thousand people.

If there was a reason the people at SXSW seemed to be immune to the economy, as one person said to me, it's because they have 4 - 5 jobs.

It's the idea that whatever is happening online (and we don't entirely know what that is yet) is something big and connecting people in ways society never could have guessed.

New communities are being built online, and there are amazing opportunities there, to bring people together, to explore new technologies, to solve society's problems...and yes, to make money.

I kept thinking of a point that Clay Shirky made in an otherwise aimless panel: The internet "is the only medium where teenagers are running home to start writing."

That seems like a situation pregnant with opportunity.

And that's what brings it all back home to journalism. Maybe Tony Hsieh's talk jolted something in my brain, but despite the gloom and doom, SXSW has made me think there could be a future in journalism.

It felt fitting (and sad) that at the same time the geek set (and a minor collection of journalism/media ) were gathering to discuss where technology is leading us, that one of the country's oldest newspapers announced it was going all-online.

From most of the panels on journalism, there was one theme we should all be familiar with: technology is blowing up the old way of doing business and along with it our traditions, rules and everything we've become accustomed to or comfortable with.

In a session called Digital Tsunami: Breaking News at Breakneck Speeds, the big question wasn't how the internet and new media affect news organizations, it was how they can adapt. There was a comment from the discussion I saw making the rounds on Twitter that rattled around my head, "every cell phone is a media outlet now."

If SXSW is any indication of where technology, new media and social networks are going to take us, it's clear that newspapers are going to get left in the gutter soon.

Maybe that means it's time to start adapting the strategies of an online shoe seller, a photo-sharing site or a community blog.

Maybe that means we have to take the readers, users, or whatever we are going to call them, along with us on this crazy ride, and say as calmly as we can "we're not sure how this is going to end, but we'd like you to come along and help us."

In one of the last panels I saw before leaving SXSW, Hulu CTO Eric Feng's had an analogy for his online video site. He called it "an underwater pyramid." What Hulu users see is only see the tip, not realizing how much there is just below the surface.

I'm still trying to figure out why he didn't go with an iceberg for an easier analogy. I'm still trying to piece it all together. I'm still trying to figure out how I got lucky enough to get a ticket to this mind circus.

The internet's been called a lot of things - the information superhighway and a giant pornography repository to say the least - so why not an underwater pyramid?

At SXSW I think I saw the tip. Hopefully it's time to start exploring beneath the waves.

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