It’s always exciting coming back to Austin. As a once long-time resident of the River City, I’ve come to think of Austin as my “home town”. Having lived in Dallas for the last six years or so, the return to Austin is laden with a sort of nostalgia usually reserved for returning to your childhood home, the kind that mixes a comfortable familiarity with a sort of gnawing discomfort at the changes that have slowly overwhelmed your memories.

SXSW is something of a double homecoming for me. The last time I attended SXSW, it was as a volunteer, stage managing for music acts at a bar downtown. The experience of building relationships with bands and their managers all over the world was one that stuck with me, and gave me a new perspective on dealing with people from various cultures.

This time, I’m getting to experience the conference from end-to-end from an attendee standpoint, so I can share that experience with you. Understandably, it might be difficult on the surface to see the value of reading a bunch of Pepsi employees talking about panels and parties and movies and music. But the true value of the SXSW experience is that it takes place outside of the walls. It is a moment in which we can capture the ideas and passion that are driving the creative to transform markets and create new markets. In the end, these are the things that are going to allow Pepsi to move our business into the future, and hopefully more adeptly than our competitors. My hope is to help capture some of that, as well as the fun and excitement of the event itself, and share it.

Cheers from SXSW.