SXSW is over (at least for most of us geeks…it’s still going strong for the rock stars). The ends of things always seem worth recapping, so that’s what I thought I would do here.

What was the biggest thing that everyone was talking about at SXSW this year? At least at the sessions I went to, I’d say it was the disappearance of the internet from our lives and what it will mean for everyone. Not that it will cease to have a presence in our lives, but exactly the opposite — that the web’s pervasiveness and its full integration with other technology is nearing a crucial point, after which we will gradually start forgetting it is there. With the internet having been a novelty for the past decade, this paradigm shift will have a huge impact on advocacy organizations and campaigns (and everyone else). Like the telephone and TV before it, simple use of the media will not establish anything special. Using the internet well will increasingly have more to do with being clever and with serving constituents, and it will have less to do with buying the fanciest new tools.

I think the chances are good that if you’re reading this, you can already imagine a dozen different ways in which this is happening. The line between the internet and the rest of life is getting very thin already.

In my life this past week, I’ve been sending SMS and IM messages to Twitter.com, which then updates everyone in my friend network with 140 characters (not 160) about what I’m doing. They get alerts on their cell phones, RSS readers, and on the Twitter website at the same time. Parties I went to this week were organized on Facebook. Passwords for parties were distributed to cell phones using SMS. I looked up locations for events on Google Maps using my cell phone, and I sat next to the people who work on Google Maps as we watched Stamen Design’s map mashups displayed on an overhead projection (projecting an animation from their website, not a DVD). I called home and the office on my cell and over Skype interchangeably, and I was as likely to chat with someone on IM or send them a text message as I was to call them. I connected to the internet with my laptop over wi-fi when I could get it, and through my cell phone via Bluetooth when I couldn’t.

If this isn’t your life, don’t worry — it shouldn’t be, and you’re not out of any loop either. This is just evidence that the internet is nothing more than a tool. It is beginning to be used in whatever way will help the user’s life, and this is a good thing. It’s being used a lot less for novelty’s sake. Looking back over this past week in light of the conversations that were had at SXSW, these experiences all look like evidence for the changes that were being talked about at various events. In my life, the internet is now more of a tool and less of a destination than I had even recognized.

The rise of online social networking communities is another great example of this trend. People aren’t coming online to social networking sites to experience the web. They’re coming online to extend their experiences in life. The internet is adding to their lives just like telephones and TV’s have for years. People don’t get online because a guy named Tom made a cool site called MySpace. They get online to interact with other people. MySpace simply helps them do that.

So what does this mean for advocacy organizations? Or for campaigns? I would say it means a lot, and that it will radically change the way a lot of organizations think about online strategy. Building a website or doing any kind of online outreach will have to be done with these ideas in mind (if you haven’t been thinking of these things already). As time progresses, constituents will have little reason anymore to go to your website just because it’s there. But they will use it if it can help them in some specific way. If you’re wanting to get started in this direction, it might be worth considering what your web strategy would look like if it "ignored" the web.

Keeping up with the Joneses will not feed success in this paradigm — and hopefully that’s welcome relief. Using the social networking example again, you should not feel pressure to build an online community just because they’re hot right now. However, you might feel inclined to build one if there is a real-world community of people that would benefit from having more flexible access to each other. Providing them with social networking tools could be a real service.

This task of identifying a need among constituents and filling that need should become an important priority for online planning. This is why we have been building more and more intranets for clients — they might not have a lot of sex appeal, but they make team members’ lives better.

And then there is what not to do... If we’re going to learn any lessons from the past, we might do well to look at the things that make us hate our telephones and TV’s the most: telemarketers and commercials. This is not just about hating advertising. At a more basic level, we don’t want to have our time wasted. We don’t want to be hooked up to our devices any more than we have to for them to improve our lives.

The message on this point was loud and clear at SXSW, from political strategists to online entrepreneurs. As soon as our tools start becoming burdens, users don’t want anything to do with them anymore. People will appreciate it if you make coming to their website worth their time by giving them something useful they can’t get elsewhere. They’re less likely to get excited just because you have a neat Flash animation or a link to your Flickr account (which you're not using).

After a week of conversations that ranged all around this issue, the consensus was clear: there’s some really good news here for nonprofits. In too many cases traditionally, advocacy organizations have been late catching on to technology trends. A big part of that is cost - building a fancy new website is expensive. Thinking in new and creative ways about how to use technology is free and it’s available now. Advocacy organizations won’t have to be late on this one.

For more ideas on this front, check out NTEN and the Progressive Exchange listserv. Both are doing great work on strategy for non-profits.