I’ve received the good news that Hope Garden has been selected as a finalist in the Experimental category for the 2006 SXSW Web Awards. This is a huge event attended by over 5,000 of the best interactive people in the world. The awards show will be Emceed this year by the hillarious Ze Frank.

Hundreds and hundreds of innovative web designers and developers from across the globe submitted websites in this year’s competition, all sites that have been launched or completely redesigned in 2006.

Please hook myself, Richter7 and BSD Medical up by voting once per day (as is allowed) for the Hope Garden for People’s Choice Award. And tell all your friends to vote too.

Members of the online public can vote once daily until midnight on Friday, March 2. The site with the most votes takes home the trophy and bragging rights at the SXSW Web Awards Ceremony on Sunday, March 11.

I’ve never been to SXSW as I’m typically drawn to the Flash and design focused conferences like Flash Forward, AIGA and FITC (where I’m heading in April). But this gives me a great excuse to head back to Austin for another fun filled weekend and I’m (hopefully for sure) bringing my buddy Dallas. Hooray for free passes. I’m especially looking forward to meeting all my fantasy football buddies and seeing if they can talk as much smack in person. And probably meet many other friends for the first time in person.

Wow this is an insane list of speakers.