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I came into Austin without appointments and booked sessions. Back in October, I had this strong notion that I had to go. 14 years ago, I lived in Abilene a few hours north of Austin so revisiting would mean many meetings with people I love and places I knew from my youth.

Still, when walking into the Austin Convention Center to pick up  my badge for the (South by Southwest) SXSW Interactive late Thursday evening, my legs shook and at the same time I wanted to scream of joy. I challenged myself to get here. I wanted to face the knowledge in my industry and by the unknown. I desperately needed to recharge batteries. I came because the time had come to chase new dreams and to find new horizons.

A week since SXSW Interactive conference ended and I am still digesting.

What a wonderful beautiful world of possibilities I took part in.
What a creative melting pot of creativity and welcoming spirits.
What a mix of great people off all ages, nations, gender and backgrounds getting together to share ideas for social change, for new horizons in business and simply connecting with each other in easy conversations.

You can join the SXSW spirit. Together we can make this world a better place. Tell and communicate your stories offline and in social media. Dream the dream. Be proud of who you are. Go get it. You just connected with the future.

Be inspired as I was by this Keynote by Baratunde Thurston – How to read the word

Åland’s Social Media Guru Mats Adamczak writes about SXSW here (in Swedish)

A blog post in Moosylvania.com -What Austin Taught Us: Key Takeaways from SXSW

The Chamber of Commerce in Göteborg writes on their blog (in Swedish)

Baratunde Thurston SXSW 2012

Downtown Austin by Mats Adamczak

This is the day, I send my biggest #High5 to all the women around the world. You rock. Especially my mentor Ulla-Lisa Thordén, an EU ambassadeur for female entrepreurship as well as for the Hunger Project. Today I join in with her and many around the world to raise awareness for this fantastic social good cause. Follow them on Twitter @hungerproject

“The Hunger Project firmly believes that it is absolutely essential to cause a society-wide change towards gender equality in order to end hunger and poverty.”

I will go looking for talented women, inspiration for social good causes and great new initiatives here in Austin, Texas and the South by Southwest. Follow me on Twitter @awoque @victoriaahlen. The delegation for the Chamber of Commerce in Göteborg tweet as well under the #westswesxsw. I will also do live broadcasts on Bambuser. Stay tuned

Hello Abilene/ACU and Austin/SXSW, looking forward to meeting you on March 4-19. What sessions do you think I should attend? What question would you like answered? I promise to share my journey here on the blog and of course on the Awoque Facebook

On Sunday my US adventures begins. I will start by visiting ACU to meet students, PR professionals, faculty, lecture and go looking for social media creativity. The award winning ACU Connected awakens my curiosity. I will share my findings with you.

On March 9, the conference South by Southwest starts and a delegation from the West Chamber of Commerce will go looking for answers to:
- How can to Göteborg / western Sweden become Europe’s number one meeting place for creative and cultural industries? Here is a short interview with the project leader Sandra Norberg (and Erik Nissen) from October at Handelskammardagarna:

How are you? Kind of missed you during almost 4 weeks of offline mode.

Welcome to a brand new year with Awoque. This year we will aim to work harder and inspire you every step of the way to use social media to increase motivation, sales and honesty. Lots of #High5:s in store of course. As white as the snow falling outside my office window as clean is my mind. I charged my batteries with a fantastic vacation in gorgeous Sri Lanka. I will share some of my ideas from the trip later on during the week.

In March, I am off to South by Southwest to get inspiration, find new trends and interview people. Of course, I will share many stories with you here on the blog. If you have a specific question you would like to have answered or a new technique you want to find out more about. Get in touch and I might be able to help you. If you live in Sweden and want to travel to SXSW with Handelskammaren read this blog post>>