Having been in Austin, Texas for a few days now, I’ve witnessed one of the greatest social gathering of tech-minded people to ever happen, once a year at South by SouthWest Interactive.

The killer app this year is undeniably… the same as last year. It’s Twitter through and through. In the context of a conference where thousands of people are milling around between panels, looking for each other and the Next Big Thing, Twitter is the killer app. It’s assumed and expected amongst all attendees that, just as we have a little heart pumping on the inside of our ribcage, we all have a Twitter username.

However, the observation that I found most interesting is the energy everyone put into communicating what they were hearing. The Zuckerberg keynote got the room buzzing and, in no time, even bloggers who were nowhere near the event were getting the echos of a poorly led interview. In previous years, it would have at least taken a few hours until someone did a write-up of the keynote, but with these social devices and the perfect system to communicate short snippets of information, it was broadcasted as soon as the sentiment arose amongst the crowd.

I’m at risk of pointing out the very obvious here but the Blackberry - probably the most common phone here at SXSW - is mindblowingly business-focussed. Even the font is dry, harsh and doesn’t make the faintest attempt at being visually pleasing. It is a stark, utilitarian device in contrast to the iPhone’s soft, rounded curves and swish user interface - the other baby of the conference. While each device has its pros and cons - attempts at typing while walking on an iPhone very much results in an epic failure - it’s fascinating that this geekfest brings together the two polar opposites, the functional and the creative, in one place as the two most used devices.

What they have in common is that they bring people together socially. From Ballroom A to the depths of Room 19-B, and from Austin to the rest of the world, they make communication easy. Comforting to know that even geeks need to be social too, no?

Today, we’re in Austin, Texas. It was an interesting, somewhat snow-laden journey, but now, we’re here for South by Southwest Interactive, the True Spring Break for Geeks. It’s only just getting started, but already, I’ll spare you the Texan hat and rodeo jokes, and I’ll only say that the hospitality of people here is larger than life.

Over the next few days, we hope to meet as many fellow gadgeteers, usability rockstars and design geeks as possible, by attending panels and joining conversations on topics we all love, then sprinkle the lot with a few heated discussions over beers in the evening. (See how much we sacrifice ourselves for you, our users?)

This is, of course, a call to anyone attending SXSW to get in touch so we can meet, but also an invitation to join us on Monday night at Mobile Monday Austin, where we’ll be giving a little Taptu demo, in the company of James Pearce from dotMobi, Brian Fling from Blue Flavor and David Gill from Nielsen Mobile. It’s all happening at Austin City Hall, within spitting distance from the Conference Centre so why not pop by? (RSVP recommended)

Ready for more networking, learning and exchanging of ideas than ever before?