I wasn’t able to join my intrepid colleagues who ventured to Austin for our annual digital innovation fix at South By Southwest. And while I’m missing the fabulous fete thrown by Frog design, morning muffins fresh from the hotel breakfast buffet, and jockeying for a seat at the keynote – I’ve got a front row, no carbon footprint seat to SXSWi content from the comfort of my New York City abode.

Thanks to twitter, I’m in the thick of the conference virtually. My TweetDeck is buzzing with reports from every session as I follow the bouncing #sxsw tags. I can tell which speakers are worth “listening to” as the volume of tweets increase and the speaker’s words begin to flow in a continuous stream, 140 characters at a clip.

I sit in my comfy armchair and multi-task, simultaneously fighting the online crowds at Target’s Liberty of London launch while I also play Austin traffic cop, sharing which rooms are filling up and who’s holding seat for whom. I’ve also been doing a little match making as I tweet forth meeting places to introduce my friends to each other.

About the only thing I can’t do is hike over to the Austin Whole Foods (corporate HQ) where my nose tingles as I encounter small mountains of fresh bread, my eyes dance across rows of glistening berries, and my foodie soul swoons at the high alter of food merchandising excellence.

So if you find yourself, like me, grounded and not able to attend that next big conference in person – don’t despair. Situate yourself in a comfortable place, get the wifi tuned up and line up your columns and hash tags in whatever twitter console you choose. Because the next best thing to being their in person is participating 140 characters at a time!