We have asked some of our friends and colleagues who attended technology and new media conference South By Southwest Interactive (SxSWi) to share their highlights and takeaways from the conference, which wrapped up earlier this week.

Today we share the first part (of four) by guest correspondent Susan Bratton:

Susan says: SXSW is “old home week for the social media set.” With an exhibit hall, bar camp-style conference content and too many parties to count, a very tech-hip crowd descends on Austin.

I had the good fortune to be asked to produce a series of podcasts for Powered, Inc., an Austin-based creator of communities for big brands (disclosure, I’m on their advisory board) called “Community Powered.” I interviewed fourteen of the most highly considered luminaries/speakers at SXSW about the intersection of brand and community.

These are the insights I thought particularly powerful from my experience. I think you’ll find some great advice, ideas for consideration, differing viewpoints and some technical tips to help you stay on top of the social set-changes.

I interviewed:

Patricia Martin, founder of LitLamp Communications and author of “RenGen”
Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of AllTop and author of “Reality Check”
Lee Odden, CEO, Top Rank Online Marketing
Angela Benton, Founder and Publisher, Black Web 2.0
Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies, MIT
Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs
C.C. Chapman, co-founder of The Advance Guard
Dave Taylor, founder of AskDaveTaylor.com
Rohit Bhargava, SVP Strategy and Marketing, Ogilvy 360
Tara Hunt, Marketing Lead-Partner Platforms, Intuit
Cathy Brooks, Consultant, Other Than That
Dave Evans, co-founder of Digital Voodoo and author of “Social Media: An Hour a Day”
Aaron Strout, CMO, Powered, Inc.

I was able to contrast the responses to a select handful of discussion points across this group of deep thinkers, pundits and technologic experts.

The interviews are short – focused on these five questions:

When you think of brands/companies who have a well-executed social media strategy, who comes to mind — and why?
If a company wants to create a solid social networking community around their brand, what are the most important things they should know/do?
What one pearl of wisdom can you share for a brand [that’s] just getting started in social media marketing?
What area of social media really turns you on right now?
What are the two things you are focused most on accomplishing at SXSW?

I noticed some similarities among responses, but not as many as I would have expected. These pundits definitely have their own, unique perspectives — and sometimes disagree.

Some shared perspectives:

• Blogging continues to rule.
• Twitter was the crux of a lot of conversation.
• Facebook Fan Pages were spotlighted.
• And what excited me most was the mobile social application space.

In the next installment, we’ll get to the heart of the matter, and talk about corporate blogging, and tracking your reputation online.

Guest correspondent Susan Bratton is the CEO of the Personal Life Media network. I know her through the time I spent on the board of the Association for Downloadable Media (ADM), where Susan is Vice-President of the organization. She was also instrumental in setting internet advertising standards in helping create the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

Susan’s interviews will also be blogged by Aaron Strout, CMO of Powered here.