Certainly this is a networking nirvana. But for many of the 15,000 who came here to also learn, they wandered aimlessly looking for a decent seminar, workshop, or panel, of which there were few that truly delivered. Even Guy Kawasaki trashed Twitter’s CEO, Evan Williams, for his boring Keynote interview, of which more than half the room packed with 2,000 people walked out.

Too bad.  Chris Brogan’s post today addressed this. Hopefully the powers at SXSW will get the feedback they need to have this venue expand appropriately and fix the problem for next year. The opportunity is awesome. There are just obvious challenges to face when something this big grows so fast.

I remember one particular Jetsons episode as a kid. It showed Jane’s hectic daily duties of  button pushing overwhelming her to the point of a nervous breakdown. Now, I rarely questioned the futuristic lifestyle of the Jetson family, but I clearly remember having a hard time with this one episode. I just couldn’t get my head around the concept of button pushing being so stressful.

Ok, maybe now I get it. Maybe Jane Jetson is our modern day online interactive cross-channel digital marketing communications expert trying to find a beginning and end to her day because the work is always on. Maybe her button pushing involves css, html, php, ajax, analytics, link building, directory submissions, keyword analysis, and checking her good old fashioned email. But then she also has to update her Facebook, write a new Blog post, send a dozen Tweets, another dozen Re-tweets, join a new Linked-In Group, comment on half a dozen relevant blog posts, and respond to the alerts talking about her online.

And we wonder why so many businesses resist embracing today’s interactive online world. The main reason why we marketing companies are so engrossed in it is because we have to be. We need to be there, ready to serve our clients, when they finally fully understand that the old world of advertising and PR is dead. We need to be their guiding light that can take all this confusion and turn it into extra money on their P&L.

It is exciting to some of us because the transparency and truthfulness required for marketing success today is what we’ve always wanted. But the process of sharing this information also means substantial sales increases for Advil and Tylenol.

So the next time you get overwhelmed from our new world of marketing, do what Jane should have done. Ask Rosie to get you a Martini and take Rastro on a nice long walk.