The Driskill Hotel, a Romanesque brick and limestone hulk at the corner of Old Pecan and Brazos streets in downtown Austin, is the closest thing the Texas capital has to old-world glamour. The hotel also happens to be haunted, supposedly, by the ghost of the man whose portrait hangs at the stairs to the bar just off the lobby: Colonel Jesse Driskill, a cattle baron who made a fortune during and after the Civil War peddling longhorn to a famine-stricken region. He then squandered that treasure on the construction of the Driskill, sparing no expense to make it the grandest hotel in the West. The colonel might have liked the crowd on a recent Friday evening. It was the first night of South by Southwest Interactive, the annual tech conference, and profiteers and dreamers were packed cheek to charger.

The selvedge denim and Timbuktu messenger bags and plastic festival badges stood out in the dark-paneled, tin-ceilinged room, normally a place inhabited by local deal-makers, legislators, and the occasional high-end prostitute. Perhaps because the cocktail prices feel like home—and also perhaps because it offers more electrical outlets than the average bar—the Driskill is a favorite spot for the New York tech world when it relocates to Austin for five days each March. I learned this from Mark Peter Davis, a red-haired leather-jacket-wearing venture capitalist. “We’re all New York posse,” he explained with a sweep of a hand toward the gaggle he’d been trying to maneuver into the corner my friend and I were occupying. Davis, a successful investor with a well-read blog whose personal website explains, “I breathe start-ups,” had struck up a conversation with an eye toward a hostile seating takeover. “Are you gonna be upset if my friend from Inc. comes and sits here?” he asked, indicating the precise chair I was sitting in. “She’s posse.”

“Dude, I just gave a very brief speech about the growth patterns of technology.”

Luckily for us, Jason Saltzman, Davis’s heavily tattooed friend, had missed the cues. Saltzman, whose website declares that he owns “the most badass coworking space on the planet,” bought us whiskeys and was soon yelling things into my tape recorder. “Innovation,” he intoned. “Collaboration!” Then, the hard sell: “Write about me! I deserve to be written about!” And so, Davis made peace with our determined inertia. He began holding forth on how I, as a first-time attendee, ought to approach the proceedings.

South by Southwest Interactive is in some ways a lot like the Internet itself. There are endless options all competing for your attention: hundreds of parties, both official and unofficial, 30,000 other attendees to meet, and more than a thousand panels on topics ranging from “Getting Started With Angel Investing” to “The Comfy Chair! Are We Sitting Too Much?” Nearly everyone who’d been to the festival before, I’d discovered by then, had a meta-reading of it and advice on how to game it. Aggressive networkers print out and memorize pictures of particularly important people with whom they hope to mingle. Some recommend breakfast meetings for clear heads and clear agendas; others say the evening is the best time to network, over beers. In Davis’s estimation, it’s a mistake to set foot in the Austin convention center for the official programming or to attend any of the sponsored parties. “That part’s a waste of time,” he said. “I like sitting. Sitting and drinking are my things. ... During the day, sleep, exercise, management, getting lunch with some people. Just doing normal things here leads to meeting interesting people.”

Davis wandered off to appease his Inc. editor, and Saltzman turned his thoughts to a favorite South by Southwest subject: the revolutionary potential of South by Southwest. “The reality is that these people are going to change the world,” he said, looking around him. “Technology as a growth pattern has grown exponentially in our lifetime to where we’re going to be solving some serious fucking issues and living forever. I know it’s a crazy thing to think about, but we’re solving the world’s problems.”