I’ll start with a confession: I’m a day late with my blog.It’s Sunday morning and after two packed days of sessions and even longer conversations with our team, my mind is swimming with possibilities. I’m not sure what my biggest takeaway is so far, but I am definitely starting to see themes emerge. SXSW is known as a center of tech activity and forward thinking. Certainly I’ve heard the words AI, automation, and cryptocurrency more in the last three days than I have ever before. But as I sit here in the bustling coffee shop thinking about this experience, I can’t help but think about the importance of something non-techy, basic, and analog if you will - that is the importance of building positive relationships to influence a community.One of the great parts of SXSW is the opportunity to interact with literally thousands of people from around the world. There are headline-grabbing speakers, and some of the most intelligent people I have ever heard speak.If you get to the stage fast enough after they are done, you can interact with them for a few minutes. I’ve done this a few times and I have had the opportunity to share what our team is doing here, and the response so far has been genuine interest and curiosity from all these speakers.So far they are often talking from a personal or corporate perspective on a topic (note – the City Summit starts tonight). Afterwards, I’ve had the chance to ask them to interpret what they said for a community perspective. It’s started some great dialogue and sharing of business cards to continue the conversation.For a community, I think relationships are essential to its success. You can have the most advanced technology in the world, but if you are not able to build bridges and work collaboratively with other people to accomplish things then you won’t get very far.For me, the best part of this trip isn’t the content or the speakers (though I think they are all pretty amazing, too). The best part is building relationships with the group that we are traveling with.This is the just the start of a journey, and we’ll be in the trenches together for the better part of the next year. Listening, brainstorming, and collaborating with these fantastic people energizes me!I’ve been in this community for nearly 4 years, and I think Mansfield is pretty amazing already. There are many people who care so much about making it a better place, and they roll up their sleeves to help. From generous businesses, to generous citizens, there is a lot to celebrate about the community that we live in. But we can always get better, and we must get better.If we do this right, those of us on this trip should represent just a small section of people who will be involved on this project. This could be far larger than what the Chamber or the Foundation, or any other organization represented here could do on their own.We’re planting the seeds, and building the new bridges that will help reimagine Mansfield for the 21st century! Stay tuned….and get involved!Stay tuned and follow the progress via #SXSW419. And watch for more blogs at richlandsource.com/rising_from_rust/sxsw.