Finding Furry Creatures at SXSW 2015

I traveled to SXSW 2015 with my client Domain.ME. Their expectations? Party like a rock star, celebrate #MeDay and lounge (when I say lounge, SXSW style, this means visiting lots of brand lounges. The PayPal lounge was my personal favorite). Sound like a cushy gig? Actually, it was exhausting. It’s taken me a full week to recover and I even set some serious ground rules for myself to prevent me from over-doing SXSW. For example, I announced early on that I gave up alcohol for lent (well in truth, I gave up alcohol for lent until 6pm in the evening) and I would turn down all those offers for free food, drinks and apps.

SXSW can be overwhelming, so it’s important to set a focus around a topic or a track you’d like to follow. My travel partner Leticia Barr decided to follow the Social Good track and spent a lot of time at the SXgood venue set up for that. My roomie, Heather Whaling really focused on entrepreneurship to help bolster her already super successful firm, Geben Communications. I decided to focus on furry creatures. As such, I set time to meet or interview any of the furry creatures I met at SXSW. Here are my highlights:

Here I am at the Mashable house having a little chat with Morris the Cat from 9Lives. Key takeaway? Beyond meow, cats don’t have a lot to say. (And yes, he was a real cat!)

Got to meet Cookie Monster and share some memories from my very first job way back in the days working on Sesame Street. Cookie did not remember me, but he did encourage me to nom nom.

Spent some quality time with the HootSuite owl (both in the Hootsuite lounge and on the streets of Austin). Shared my true love for the platform and we did some serious hooting and hollering together.

Squirrels can be, well a little squirrely, but this one stopped me outside the convention center to share his love of books. While I’m not a fan of squirrels (in my mind, they are urban rats), this one was a book worm like me, so we cuddled up with a book together.

Lastly, I took a tour of the convention stalls. Ugh, convention halls with the endless rows of booths and those booth people acting like carny hustlers, beckoning you to visit to get a free sticker, candy, or download another useless app! I was about to bolt this bad booth experience when I bumped into the adorbs Betsy Fore looking like a 1950’s star in a cute doggy adorned pinafore. She has just launched this truly cool product called WonderWoof. Small, stylish, and looking like a bow, it attaches to your pup’s collar. WonderWoof allows you to track all your mutt’s activities through an app, so you can make sure your canine is getting enough sleep, exercise and kibble to get him through the day. While WonderWoo is not a furry creature, the product she offers is ideal for my furry creature, so I devoted my one videotaped SXSW interview to woof!