Is this really Austin? What gives with the rain and cold? Again, the day was full of umbrellas, cold feet and a very crowded convention center. No one wants to venture far due to the wet chilly stuff.

My 10 Highs & Lows for Saturday (Day Two) of SXSW Interactive

1. I found a free parking space. Yes! Some lots and hotels (can you say Hilton?) were charging $40 per day to park. Can you say price gouging? Free is good! Close to the convention center is even better.

2. Google and Blackberry have commandeered Red River Street with incredibly cool venues. Giant Google map symbols (the red balloon-like things) provide great picture ops! Bing and Nike have taken over the lots on Congress and 4th with stunning visuals and games.

3. Bud Royer himself of Royer’s Round Top Cafe was holding court at the very red, but very cool Ask.com venue at the Hilton. He was giving away his legendary free pies and marveling at an iPhone that had filmed him and then projected it (in amazingly high quality) on the wall. But alas, as was to be the story of my day, just as I was next in line for a free Ask.com hoodie, I was informed they were closing until tomorrow at 11am.

4. My sidekick, Vince Marotte, and I then headed over to the registrant’s tent and gratefully ordered up our free drink of the day. The tent is sponsored by Monsterenergy.com and the drink of the day was Sweet Tea vodka and Monster juice. Yum! We also snagged two free cans of Java Monster Kona blend. Wow! First time to have Monster drinks at SXSWi. They are delicious!!

5. @Monsterenergy retweeted me and said thanks for the mention on Twitter. Yes!!!

6. Sing this 70’s melody with me…”Lines, lines, everywhere lines, blocking up the hallways and breaking my mind.”  We stood in a very long line to see Frank Abagnale of “Catch Me If You Can” fame only to be turned away because the room was at capacity. Again, at a high-tech conference such as this, you would think you could do session registrations ahead of time. Very frustrating!

7. We wandered into the Ogilvy Notes room next door, noticed someone was about to speak, found a cool couch, and settled in. It was an author’s room, and we heard Mark McDonald The Social Organization (Details for the speaker and session are HERE and follow the twitter feed HERE) and Jonah Sachs Winning The Story Wars (Details for the speaker and session are HERE and follow the twitter feed HERE) speak. Jonah had me when he began talking transmedia and Joseph Campbell. I also snagged copies of the Ogilvy Notes for some of my fav sessions. Wow! They are impressive!

8. Transmedia and empathy are the two buzz words of #SXSWi for me. Shameless plug, look for my latest book to be about empathy and it will be released globally later this year.

9. Vince and I then split up, and, since part of my day job is consulting and helping websites build their online reputation, I walked to the Radisson ballroom (yes, the rain had let up and it was actually a very enjoyable walk) to hear Google’s Matt Cutts (a tech hero of mine), Bing’s Duane Forrester and Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan for a session titled Dear Google & Bing: Help Me Rank Better. (Details for the speaker and session are HERE and follow the twitter feed HERE). Very informative and the session highlight of the day.

10. The biggest high so far and something that could probably only happen at a conference like #SXSWi, Matt Cutts himself thanked me on Twitter for digging up a You Tube video of his that he had mentioned and tweeting the link for the session attendees. Yeah baby!!

More tomorrow…