SXSW
On Wednesday I got back from the USA, where I’d been for just over two weeks, spending most of that time in Austin, TX.
I was there to attend the Music, Film and Interactive portions of South by Southwest (SXSW for short, or – for those really in the know – simply “South by”).
What is SXSW? From Wikipedia:
South by Southwest (SXSW) is a set of interactive, film, and music festivals and conferences that take place every spring in Austin, Texas, United States. SXSW first began in 1987 and is centered on the downtown Austin Convention Center. Each of the three parts runs relatively independently, with different start and end dates.
The music event has grown from 700 registrants in 1987 to nearly 12,000 registrants. SXSW Film and SXSW Interactive events attract approximately 11,000 registrants to Austin every March.
I’d heard lots about SXSW from various people over the past few years, and since my interests span Music, Film and Interactive I didn’t need much persuading to go this year.
2 weeks is a long time to be away from the office, but I figured it would be time well spent if it enabled me to learn some new things and get inspired.
SXSW delivered. It was time well spent. I learnt lots of new things, thought about some current things in a different way and it inspired me lots and lots. It reminded me why I set up Acknowledgement in the first place and reinforced how privileged I am to work in one of the most exciting and fastest changing industries in the world. Austin also provided an ideal change of scenery that enabled me to have some thinking time around the future direction of the business and indeed the industry as a whole.
SXSW is big. Too big in fact to cover in one blog post, so I’ll be making several posts over the coming weeks talking about different aspects of the festival, and what I found interesting or memorable. And what I think could be done better. Having lost my SXSW virginity there are also some performance tuning issues from my side I want to hone for SXSW 2011. I’ll be sharing those on this blog too.
I even took some video footage when I was out there, so I’ll edit some of that down and post so you can get a taste of the general setup and atmosphere.