At SXSWi, Mark Himmelsbach, BBDO’s SVP and Director of Digital Strategy participated on a panel discussion on community building for non-profits and then took some time to interview one of his fellow panelists, Scott Orn, founder of Ben’s Friends. Scott explains what inspired the creation of Ben’s Friends, a social network for people with rare diseases, and how grassroots community building tactics keep it thriving.

Can't get to SXSW? As a part of our exclusive SouthXProxy coverage on The Digital Lab, we¹re sending a proxy for you to SXSW Interactive in Austin. Experience the most popular interactive conference in the world from home or work at SouthxProxy.com. Day and Night, our Proxybot will be tweeting and streaming live video in HTML5 so it can be viewed on your mobile device.

Still looking for that all encompassing recap for THE tech show of the year: SXSW 2011. Well look no further. We're happy to share what we thought were the top 10 lessons from this year's 'Davos of Digital' in the thought paper below. Read, discuss, apply and iterate.

Although SXSWi is a done deal for 2011, we still have fond memories of the seminal digital event of the year. In our next installment of the SXSWi recap, we’re featuring the feedback of more of our dynamic staffers who were present for the tech fest to share what we thought were the best highlights of the event as well as the things that could be improved upon moving forward.