AUSTIN, TEXAS -- Author and SXSW expert "rocker" Tim Ferriss' first bit of advice was how to drink properly, meaning how to party at SXSW events without getting a hangover that would prevent you from rocking even more. Ferriss offered tips that likely transcend overindulging at SXSW, including "eating avocados," drinking "low-cal" margaritas, and "eating burnt toast." The latter, he said, is a good substitute for activated charcoal, which is known to help people suffering from hangovers.

There are more than 200 million beer kegs floating around the U.S. and Daniel Gutwein isn't sure if anyone knows where they are located. Enter iKeg, an Intel app that tells where the kegs are located and know much beer remains in each. It's for real. Sensors identify the location and contents of the kegs. Intel Director of Retail Analytics Daniel Gutwein told OMMA SXSW attendees Friday while talking about the Internet of things.

AUSTIN, TEXAS -- Al Gore ended his opening speech at SXSW Interactive here with some media spin, and a bit of politicking too. He spoke about the transformation of our media society from the era of print to television and now the Internet as coming full circle in terms of democracy. Put aside the non sequitur he made about radio being a tool for fascism in "Hitler's Germany," Gore said, "We have moved from one media ecosystem to another." Gore said the era of print enabled "democracy" to emerge in America, but that the era of television was a step …

At the OMMA show at SXSW, Vinoo Vijay executive VP and CMO at TD Bank, said the strategy in the new media era requires knowing where to play and how to win. It seems simple, but it's not, he said. It requires listening to the customer and knowing what to provide them before they need it.

AUSTIN, TEXAS -- That's pretty much what former Vice President turned media tycoon and global climate change activist presented during the opening session at the SXSW Interactive festival. Give him credit for staying on message, but he offered little new insight on the media angle behind the climate change problem, other than to update it with some recent data showing the planet is heating up.

AUSTIN, TEXAS -- The image is the view of planet earth from Apollo 17, and SXSW Interactive opener Al Gore used it to, well, bring his climate change message home. Gore used the image, and other images of earth from space as a way of using media to make something that is abstract -- and ironically -- distant to many people. Gore also showed one from the space shuttle of the earth's atmosphere from space, graphically illustrating exactly how thin it is.

The biggest ovation during Al Gore's SXSW Interactive speech here this morning, was when he pointed out that beloved investor Warren Buffett recently dumped his position in Exxon Mobil. Gore's point is that Buffett is indeed a shrewd investor and implied he sold his Exxon Mobil shares because he sees a turning point on carbon fuels.

In the age of social -- when every consumer can broadcast their opinion to the world -- there's no separating real-world from digital brand management. "What happens in the store [no longer] stays in the store, Laura Gordon, VP Brand Innovation, 7-Eleven, told attendees of OMMA at SXSW, on Friday. For car dealerships, for instance, "The conversation is happening whether they want it to or not," said Russell Wager, VP of Marketing for Mazda USA. As such, "You just got to focus on how you treat every customer," Wagner said. Another option is trying to drive the consumer conversation by …

7-Eleven will launch an electronic bill pay app that lets consumers pay for purchases with a swipe by linking to their bank account, per Laura Gordon, VP of brand innovations at 7-Eleven. She spends every day redefining convenience for the thousands of customers to spend about 2.5 minutes per visit in the store.

I'm not suggesting you should judge a trade show by its press room, but I was struck by the sight of a lone iconic object sitting on a table in the SXSW Interactive press "suite." I'm not sure if the event organizers placed it there to be ironic, especially since it's red and looked like a Hollywood version of the White House-to-Kremlin hotline, but there it was in all its rosy glory: a landline telephone. Equally ironic was the instruction sheet sitting next to it explaining how to use it.