So I was reading a blog today, and it asked the musical question, “Does SxSW matter anymore?” And I said, Huh? What on earth is SxSW?

Apparently the name stands for “South by Southwest”; and it’s some sort of blogging/social media conference. The post showed a “famous picture” from 10 years ago, which it describes as showing “just about every significant blogger at the time all gathered around one table.”

Hmmm. Fascinating. You know, I’ve had a web presence since December of 1996. I remember when blogging got started. There was a time when I had the most popular Alexandre Dumas page on the World Wide Web. The Times of London once linked to my web site in an article on Patrick O’Brian. I don’t mean to imply that these pages were anything special; just that it was a really small pond.

And yet somehow I never heard of SxSW. Funny.