Originally submitted by Mary Shaw sometime during the festival (we may never know precisely when)…

Greetings from beautiful Austin, Texas. I’m writing from Maria Maria’s, an inspired Mexican restaurant reminiscent of the kind of place you would find deep in interior Mexico.

The ambiance is Mexican cool, with lots of dark woods and cozy, large leather seats. A metal sculpture of a mesquite tree is in the center of the bar area and the entire restaurant is al fresco – no windows.

But enough about the ambiance. I’ve been making an annual pilgrimage here since 2006 to help keep my user experience and general web skills current. There are literally 1200 speakers here this year. Choosing which sessions to attend has been both a joy and a challenge.

As I write this, I’m watching hundreds of Facebook developers make their way into the bar next door. Apparently they don’t like Mexican food, but they love free beer. The line wraps clear around the block.

Besides the constant party scene, the festival offers tons of opportunities to learn from interactive thought leaders from all over the world, including social media icons Gary Vaynerchuk and Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter.

This year there is a heavy focus on customer experience and content strategy. There’s also a lot of buzz around sketching proposed user experiences on paper with the client very early in the design process. The overarching theme is collaborative iteration and the improved products that result when ideas are clearly articulated, communicated, understood and refined from the get-go.

Kinda sounds like the continuous thread we constantly talk about here at Gabardine. This thread often begins as a simple spark of an idea and then, by virtue of true collaboration and discussion, weaves itself into every piece of a brand’s messaging and subsequent collateral, whether it’s an on or offline experience.

This openness and transparency only happens when everyone gets a chance to contribute. The more clients and agencies engage in open and honest discussion around business goals and customer needs, the stronger all of our communications will become. And that’s a great thing.