So I wasn’t able to go to SXSW…

I had planned to go to SXSW this year.  In fact, I had planned to go to every SXSW for the rest of time as soon as I came home from last year’s SXSW.   I had the absolute best time at that conference last  year.

So I was all signed up to go to this year’s party conference.  I signed up for just about every event/party/session I could for the weeks leading up, thanks in large part to @tessa and @kerylyons.  I was going to be bunking with @davis_danny of Proving Ground.  I was going to eat at the Jackalope with @jmart730 like we did last  year.

Fortunately we have a slew of Engaugers at the event, tweeting and posting their brains out (like this one by @kaitlyndennihy‘s trip to Facebook’s Austin office).

The worst part of not going to something as epic as SXSW is the constant reminders all day, every day, of all the awesomeness that is going on.  And if you were planning on going right up until the last minute like I was, you’re also getting all the reservation reminder emails and tweets about the cool stuff you should be doing.  Constant.  Reminders.

Oh but the purpose of this is not to throw a pity party for me.  Plenty of people didn’t get to go to SXSW this year.  And I’ll be there next year, count on that.

No, the purpose is to explain briefly why I wasn’t able to go and why I’m good with it.

Recently I took on a new role at Engauge as president of the agency.  Of course I’ll still be overseeing the innovation side of the agency (a combination of the Technology Team and the Digital Innovation Group).  That’s a passion area for me that I couldn’t turn off if I wanted to.

In this new role I’m responsible for the day-to-day operations of the entire agency.  All services and all offices (we have offices in Atlanta, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Austin and Orlando).  It’s a big job and I’m completely consumed with it already.  And I use consumed in a good way, like I’m thinking about all the things we can do to make Engauge even more badass and it gets me all revved up.  If you read my blog you know that things like culture and leadership are huge for me.

So when I was put in the role on March 1st, I knew some things would change.  I didn’t know at that moment I’d have to miss SXSW, but some things came up and I had to.

And that’s ok.  Because I have some amazing people attending from Engauge and I’m confident they’ll soak up all the incredibleness that they can and come back and share it with me and the team.  Although this isn’t really a delegation thing, I’ll still make the correlation.

One of the traits I think any person in leadership needs to embrace is the ability to delegate.  For whatever reason, I’ve always been able to delegate.  Put people around you that you trust and it becomes much easier.  I’ll likely write a post on delegation at a later date, but the point is, I’m 100% comfortable that our Engauge peeps are going to kick some serious SXSW butt, with or without me, and that made my decision not to go that much easier.

Still hurts, but I’m excited for the others and looking forward to their updates.

Now I just need to try to get the Jackalope to open an Atlanta office.