This year at South by Southwest Interactive, I

Ate a five-course local dinner one table from Jake Gyllenhaal at delicious WINK restaurant. Despite the sketchy law offices, bail bonds for sale, dark alleys and many cops on our walk to the restaurant, I have no regrets about being a pedestrian anywhere for as long as possible. And JG is way more attractive in person than the movies (even my husband agrees).

Met Marissa Mayer, talked about iterating a product quickly with analytics. Told her we had similar paths to programming and that I’m grateful she shared her story with the internets. After this my life was complete, so I fully indulged in not attending very many panels the rest of the week.

Met Jane McGonigal, started reading her awesome book Reality is Broken complete with Fiero autograph, and thanked her for yet another demonstration of how technology can change the world for the better. The book is changing my life already.

Met the technical and talented team Linda and Karri of Rails Girls, who host awesome Ruby on Rails workshops in Finland, commiserated, and hopefully shared some of what we’ve learned at Girl Develop It.

Met Accosted and introduced myself to Jennifer Lim, CEO of Delivering Happiness and original Zappos culture book writer. I forgot to tell her and Tony Hsieh that I reference the hierarchy of happiness on a regular basis and am so, so into them.

Met awesome hackers of all sorts and learned some cool hacks at Hacker Underground, including how to leave commands out of your command line history and how to get even more food in your Chipotle burrito.

Launched a startup of my very own, with Sara Chipps and Pamela Fox: http://stashyourstache.com.

All in all, had an awesome week. Excited to be back in NYC and hoping our weather can compete with Austin sometime soon :).