You pick the panels at SxSW

Two years ago, I first heard about South by Southwest. 2006's event was dominated by Twitter, which, at the time was a new social messaging system that connected people and ideas. In Austin, Tx. that year, everybody was Twittering. Everyone had a voice, and it was easy to pick and choose which voices you wanted to follow.

That openness has spread directly to the panel selection for 2009 at SxSW. Now you and I can help decide on the content of arguably one of the biggest community-driven events in history. Enter the SxSW Interactive Panel Picker:

Even if you don't have to vote for every panel, you can search for topics and explore which talks are related to those topics. You can search for a speaker's name or a company's name and get multiple results.

When you click through the panels, you can read a description of the panel, see who's speaking, and read any comments that other voters have left.

Even if you can't make it to SxSW in Austin this year, it's still fun to see what's going on.