It’s not just been parties here in Austin for the interactive festival. I’ve attended lots of panels and exchanged lots of cards. Above is Dan Rather, veteran US TV news journalist.

Today i saw a keynote address by Will Wright, he’s the brains behind games such as Sim City and The Sims. He showed off his new work-in-progress game called SPORE. It’s incredibly ambitious, following the history of evolution. You start as a single celled organism in the primordal soup then progress to a more complex animal. Your species eventually becomes intelligent and you craft a society which leads to a space-faring civilization. Wild stuff.

That’s Kathy Sierra above who i know from her blog Creating Passionate Users. She dishes out good advice.

This was a panel that included three Aussies i knew. It was about rising the career ranks.

This is Douglas Coupland. The man wrote Generation X and Microserfs. Very cool dude.

Phil Torrone of MAKE magazine. The magazine has all sorts of fun DIY MacGyver like contraptions to build.

And that’s Amanda Congdon probably the best known videoblogger. I think every geek here has a crush on her.