Getting ready to catch a plane tomorrow for one of the longer conference junkets I've been on in a while. First stop, San Francisco, where the intimacy of the ARGFest-o-Con kicks off on Friday and through the weekend before heading into the chaos of the Game Developers Conference next week (where I'm going to soak in the independent games movement for a few days.) From there, it is straight from San Francisco to Austin for SXSW where we have a few things going on, from another panel about alternate reality games at SXSW Interactive to our Sunday night mashup party. Intrepid indieWIREr James Israel also debuts his newest short, "Face Value," and Eugene Hernandez will also be kicking in for the film conference. Whew! Already looks like a tremendous opportunity to catch up with all kinds of old friends from a variety of media (as well as soaking in some fresh inspiration from IGF.)