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SXSW Interactive is now over and with it comes a big long exhale. For those who were here who I saw, it is always good to catch up and meet new people. For those I missed, let’s connect online somewhere.

This year I came with one goal in mind: to find a job. I didn’t come for the parties. I didn’t come for the constant, lame fist pumping and business card sluttery. I came to find a job. To that end, I did not get a badge. That may seem counter-intuitive but, in fact, worked tremendously in my favor. Every day of the event, I tracked down people who I thought could help me in some way. Shameless? Perhaps. The reality is that karma is always something that goes around.

The most expensive question you can ask a consultant is, “What else do you recommend?”

This seems like a simple thing. At least if you’re a consultant. Potential clients approach you and they know they need something done. They may have a good idea of what that something is and they may even be able to provide a wish list of things to get done. However, for all that preparedness they ruin it all for their budget by asking, “What else do you recommend?”

Now some consultants do business this way. They are paid to help the client understand their needs and map out a solution. However, understand that this is a very expensive proposition in most cases. Hours of meetings and calls and emails exchanged back and forth can go into defining the scope, as we call it.

TechCrunch 50 startup and runner-up Threadsy reached out to me earlier to look at their service. I’m not usually one to do that but I had some time and their street cred seemed legitimate (TC50, etc).

The service is an aggregation tool that pulls email accounts (Gmail, Yahoo, even IMAP to name a few) together. I couldn’t get my IMAP email account functional but that could just be me. It’s been awhile since I had to configure email addresses manually. My Gmail account imported successfully without any special configuration.

Next week begins the 2010 edition of South by Southwest (SXSW) with the Interactive and Film festivals. This will be followed in the following week by the legendary music festival. As a veteran of SXSW (This will be my fourth year), let me share my tips from a Pro standpoint. Mind you, these tips are an aggregation of lessons learned over the years. Many new people come every year, and most have no idea what to expect. You can review my SXSW power tips from last year.

This post is a guest post from Sandy Smith, a hiring manager and PHP developer at Forum One Communications in Alexandria, VA. It was originally an email to a mailing list in response to a job ad posted by a recruiter. The job requisition was worded in such a way to make it sound like the recruiter wanted someone with every web-tech skill and a “mastery” of it for about $75,000 (USD), a salary that is extremely low in the Washington, D.C. area. His response was so good that I asked if I could reprint it. He obliged.

So, random thoughts from a hiring manager, speaking entirely for myself, not for my company (My team has no open positions, though Forum One is hiring):

By now, if you follow the technology world at all, or if you use Gmail, you’ve probably noticed a new thingy released by Google in the last few days. The thingy is called Google Buzz and it is billed to be a “status update” tool to allow your friends to know what you’re up to?

Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s supposed to be going after Twitter or some nonsense like that.

I enabled Buzz on my Gmail account and then promptly disabled it (you too can disable it, if it’s already turned on for you, by clicking on the “turn off Buzz” link in the footer of your Gmail account).

I’m going on record today to say that Google Buzz is and will continue to be an absolute failure. The reasons why are fourfold…