5 things we learned at SXSW Interactive

Austin, Texas (CNN) -- Even when pared down to just its Interactive portion, South by Southwest can feel like a huge and amorphous thing -- sort of like, as director Hugh Forrest says, the Internet itself.

This tech-themed gathering has exploded in the years since the term "dotcom billionaire" became a career goal for any 20-something with a computer and an idea. The Interactive portion of the festival now draws more than 30,000 people each year, more than both the original Music portion of the festival and Interactive's older cousin, Film.

With that growth has come some meaningless noise. If you wanted to see a grown man in black fingernail polish swing on a wrecking ball like Miley Cyrus or hear a big-money venture capitalist attempt to rap onstage with Nas this week, you could.

But beneath the noise, there's still a lot of signal.

All-night parties and desperate sales pitches aside, South by Southwest is still where some of the digital world's smartest people come to talk about ideas that will guide agendas for years to come. It's where trends crystallize and where nascent startups take flight.