South By Southwest Interactive, the great conference for geeks, digital minds and internet aficionados is coming up. And of course we'll be there again, just as we represented last year at South By Southwest!

Last year, we asked Gary Vaynerchuk, Leah Culver, Dave Morin and Violet Blue to design some chocolate bars, and those were a great hit (just click on the links and read the fun stories). This year, we're also bringing with us:

The Robert Scoble Chocolate Bar

Robert Scoble tried our chocolate at SXSW last year and liked it (see his tweet about it), so he was game to have his own chocolate bar this time around. It's a balanced combination (just like his reporting) of Milk and White Chocolate, with Honey Wheat Flakes and Roasted Cashews because they're delicious, and Chocolate Sizzle Rocks because they're delicious and fun!

Chocolatunde Bars

Baratunde Thurston created the Chocolatunde Bars within a minute of me reaching out to him - a very solid and delicious combination of Dark Chocolate and Cranberries that shows that Baratunde is not only a politician, techie and comedian, he's also someone who knows good and healthy food!

@DENS' Chocolate Bomb Dance Party Adventure

Dennis Crowley is one of the founders of the must-have app Foursquare. He gave his chocolate bar not only a very creative name (explanation follows, I hope), he also made it especially delicious: Dark Chocolate with Strawberry Bits, Vanilla and M&Ms. I can't wait to steal one of those for myself.

The Chris Dixon Chocolate Bar

Chris Dixon is one of the people who are really driving the personalization of the internet, and so it makes perfect sense that he would personalize his own chocolate bar. It's so caramel: He chose White Chocolate with both Caramel Chocolate Drops and Caramel Pieces. You love caramel, too? You should get one.

Notice something? No one of our celebrities picked Milk Chocolate! That was the same last year. Milk chocolate is the favorite type of chocolate of most people. Maybe liking Dark or White Chocolate is correlated with success in the digital world? We will explore - and report!

The chocolate bars will be given away by the celebrities themselves, or by me. Follow @chocridotcom on Twitter or chocridotcom on Plancast, and you'll know where I am and where there's a chance for some free customized chocolate bars.

All the celebrity bars are of course also for purchase on our SXSW Chocolate Bars page, so you can preview and/or buy them!

See you at SXSW. We're excited, are you?

p.s. The gentleman in the picture with the curly hair is actually a bit of a celebrity himself: He is one of the co-founders of Bump, the iPhone app you have to have under any circumstances if you want to meet anyone at SXSW (and if you don't, why are you going?)!

For those of you who've never been - MakerFaire is this crazy and huge event, where "makers" and curious people come together. Makers exhibit bikes that look like fish, merry go rounds that are powered by jets, and Coke and Mentos fountains impressed the crowds. And we were there!

We had such a great time! We had a little table set up with a few of our 27 billion customized chocolate bars that you can make on our [site](http://www.createmychocolate.com, and we had a chocolate fountain along with some toppings, so people could make a "mini custom chocolate bar" in a cup! We also sold many of our pre-customized chocolate bars - with dark chocolate definitely being the crowd favorite at MakerFaire. We also met Jordan, who took up the challenge to eat the undefeated Firemaker - and didn't even break a sweat! Strong man, that Jordan.

One of my personal highlights at MakerFaire was also Jules Pieri's talk on Citizen Commerce - she mentioned how many young entrepreneurs, who a few years ago would have flocked to IT and software companies after graduation - are now attracted to innovating physical "things". And how social media fueled citizen journalism - and now citizen commerce. Everyone is now involved in making things, and in curating things. This spoke from my heart, because a) I used to work for a software company, and b) Yes, you who are reading this are an example of a citizen who is part of commerce - you're creating your own product on our site! Thanks @JulesPieri, not only for talking about it, but also making Citizen Commerce happen at Daily Grommet - a website taking videos of innovative products that you should all check out.

Last but not least, chocri won an Editor's Award at MakerFaire! Sooo proud. It even had a little comment "You rock" on the back of it. And CNet mentioned us as one of the 10 (ten!) highlights at MakerFaire in a fun slideshow. Maybe the nicest thing though was this little boy who, after trying our chocolate, said "This is the best substance I have ever tasted.". In exactly those words. Yes, "substance". Thank you, smart boy.

We have perfected customized chocolate bars. We're getting really good at having tastings. Now we just have to figure this picture-taking thing out... Nevertheless, I of course want to share how our tasting this past weekend went!

The W Hotel at Times Square was so kind to host us on a (busy) Saturday night. The Living Room Lounge was beautiful. We had our own corner and set up a table not only with delicious chocolate but also with our fresh-off-the-printing-press banner that Build-A-Sign made for us (a separate post on that tomorrow).

While we were setting up, regular guests of the lounge started coming by and checking the chocolate out, and soon a nicely sized crowd both of chocri connoisseurs and newbies was tasting our new recommended creations and meeting Michael. I'm glad everyone got to meet the inventor of design-your-own chocolate bars - as you can see in the picture on the right, he really loves his chocri bars (I know how he feels).

We were able to share some of the new Recommended Creation concepts with you. As you know, we care a lot about Open Innovation, and in that spirit we put a few bars in front of you to get your feedback. "Pure Relaxation" was one of the favorites, "Pure Sex" will get a little more of a spicy kick to it, and the "Beautiful Skin" Chocolate Bar (loaded with toppings that are good for your skin) was a huge success as well. More on that later!

For now, thank you all for coming. We love meeting you in person, and we had a great time hanging out with you and eating chocolate. Thank you also for all your advice on creating the perfect recommended creations! More images can be found in our flickr album. Until next time!

UPDATE: The winner of the three chocolate bars from the random drawing was Andy Shaffer. Congrats!

chocri People in New York - I have wonderful news:

a) chocri founder Micha is coming to New York this Saturday (May 22nd)

b) We are revamping the Recommended Chocolate Bars and need help tasting them

Which means: PARTY! We hereby invite you to our tasting in New York, this Saturday at 7pm in the Lounge of the W Hotel at Times Square.

We expect the event to fill up fast, and people who rsvp'ed on Facebook will be given preference once that happens. RSVP on Facebook

Come start the night with free chocolate and classy drinks in a beautiful lounge. I'm looking forward to meeting you there, and I know Micha is, too!