It's been a couple days now since Flosstradamus finished off the Forward Music Festival with a sweaty dance party at the Majestic Theatre, and Killdozer roared through their encore at the High Noon Saloon Saturday night. Now that I've had a couple days to recover from the intensity (16 bands in two days, and I wish I could have seen more), I wanted to share a couple reflections about the festival and covering it.

Having interviewed several of the organizers for last week's cover story on the festival, I was going into it with a high level of confidence. The five organizers are an incredibly talented and dedicated group. Still, I was expecting there to be some kind of minor catastrophy -- a band not showing up, a scheduling meltdown or a ticketing fiasco. Because this was their first shot at organizing a festival, it seems inevitable that there be a few bumps in the process.

I was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly everything went. Really, the only criticism I can make of the whole weekend was that the schedules they printed off were nigh impossible to read unless you were standing in direct sunlight. In a dark club, black print on a blue background is simply illegible.

Some of the shows I attended ran late, leading to some very tough decisions -- Detroit Cobras or Dan Deacon? -- but this seemed to be the exception, not the rule. Besides, juggling the travel schedules of 72 bands has so many uncontrollable factors that a few adjustments seemed entirely within the realm of acceptability.

These are only tiny details in an otherwise very successful weekend: excellent selection and variety of bands, very well-prepared venues and an admirably seamless production.

What's been on my mind, though, has nothing to do with the quality of the festival but rather with the way festivals like this should be covered. I experimented with some new ways to cover the shows and I'm conflicted about the results.

At the suggestion of one of our web editors, I "twittered" the festival on Friday and Saturday evening. Twitter.com allows you to publish up to 140 characters of text at a time onto the website. You can publish information at your computer or send texts from your cell phone that get instantly published online. It's a little like Facebook, but without any features except the "What are you doing?" question. Your friends follow your feed either online or via texts on their phones.

I sent updates via my cell phone to the 77 Square Twitter page. Stuff like Definitely a lack of gem encrusted sweaters at the majestic. Cmon people. Dont let leslie hall down! Put on your finest. and Blueheels lead singer has a drink cozy attached to his mic stand. Nice. and High places is like a drum circle on crack. Really diggin it.

It was fun. I got into it. Who knows how many people actually read it. When it comes down to it, social networking technology like this is just as effective as the the number of people it reaches.

I also took photographs. Now, I'm clearly not a great photographer, but I did my best to capture a picture or two from each band. I spent a lot of time fiddling with my little camera, trying to get the right settings to capture scenes on dark stages with unpredictible and uneven lighting.

But is this the best use of my time? Is this the best way to review a show and report on the experience for people who weren't there? When I'm pecking away on my old-school cell phone to send a text, when I'm spending 20 minutes to get just a couple passable shots of Dillinger Four, how does this change the way I review a show? Am I missing out and observing less or am I reaching more people by using a variety of technology?

As I looked around at the audiences, I saw so many people taking photos and recording videos. There was definitely no shortage of visual documentation going on at the Forward Music Festival. But what about observation? What about reflection?

Journalists now have a plethora of ways to get information across -- Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, vlogs, blogs, photo galleries, podcasts and good ol' fashioned writing. Our task now is to figure out how to not get overwhelmed by the options. There's a balance to be found between using technology just 'cause it's cool and using it because it actually advances storytelling and reporting.

Because I was taking time to Twitter and take photos, I didn't have as much time to take in the scene. My notebook was the usual jumble of observations, but there wasn't a lot to work with. It was stuff like this: get a job hippie, this freak, reminds me of the Clash, What's a suburb about an hour away from here? MKE. Oh snap, m-f'er. seething, raging. There's cheese curds everywhere. And the horse you rode in on!

Let me tell you, at 3:30 a.m. after you've just spent an hour and a half editing photos, you need all the pages of notes like that you can get to write a review. Looking back on it, I wish I could have written more in my reviews of the Forward Music Festival. There were so many bands I left out in the interest of saving time as I wrote the review up for deadline.

Let me make this clear: I'm excited about the possibilities that new technology offers. I'm definitely not anti-Twittering. I want to learn how to take better photographs and edit them more efficiantly. It's all about balance.

Weekend-long festivals like the Forward Music Festival can be a challenge to cover. There's just so much going on. And so many possibilties for how to review and cover it. Check out, for instance, the live webcasting that Austin City Limits is planning this weekend with sponsorship from AT&T.

I'd like to report on shows in a way that's interesting, useful and entertaining to readers. So, what's important to you? Do you Twitter? Do you like live-blogging? Or would you prefer a longer piece that's written after the event? Please discuss.

Above photo is of fans at the Dillinger Four show Saturday at the Orpheum Stage Door Theatre.