Hugh Forrest — Growing the SXSW Mega-Conference

Director at South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival, Hugh Forrest has overseen it from its inception in the mid-90s to see it turn into a mega-conference, hosting a sitting President of the United States as keynote speaker.

Director at South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival, Hugh Forrest has overseen it from its inception in the mid-90s to see it turn into a mega-conference, hosting a sitting President of the United States as keynote speaker.

This episode of Non Breaking Space Show is sponsored by:


SVG Summit — A full-day, virtual UX design conference on SVG that you can attend online on February 15th. Free recordings with registration at SVG Summit. Use discount code NONBREAKINGSPACESHOW for 20% off.
CSS Dev Conf — Conference dedicated to CSS and its super friend technologies like JavaScript, Sass, NPM, and more. A limited supply of Early Bird Tickets go on sale soon. Register now!
UX Design Newsletter — A weekly free newsletter containing a collection of tutorials, articles, and videos about frontend design and development, plus tips on how to bring better engagement to the multi-device world curated by Christopher Schmitt.
Feed.Press — Hosting and feed support provided by Feed.Press. Sign-up today and try FeedPress on a 14-day trial (no contracts or commitments). Use promo code NBSP during checkout to get 10% off your first year.

Jump to a conversation on…

1:00 Launch in 28 days and they are on schedule
3:15 Weather is nice and weather conditions in Austin
5:07 Why did you decide to have multimedia with music?
6:40 What’s the comparison between music and interactive at SXSW?
7:20 Interactive portion is more appealing, but music is more attended
8:50 Interactive probably wouldn’t have survived without the music event.
11:00 70,000 people are projected to attend and future growth projections
12:20 Even though a lot of people attend, the creation is still the focus.
15:00 “Second Story” panel
15:45 The coolest thing you see at SXSW is something you weren’t even expecting
16:40 Hallway discussions that are completely unplanned, but they are sometimes better than the panel
18:01 How you get introverts in the industry to network?
19:45 How do you define a meetup?
21:30 Speaking submissions need to be submitted 8 months ahead of time. About 4,700 people request to speak.
23:50 Accounting for hot new technologies is part of the process.
25:10 The submission process was used only with Interactive, but migrated to music and film.
26:35 Video has to be submitted when requests are made to speak
28:50 So many people have a TED or TEDx video to look at.
32:12 5,000 max submissions that panel pickers go through, what the process is to weed out submissions and vote for submissions
33:05 What is the process for submitting a talk to SXSW Interactive?
38:45 What are unique challenges for SXSW?
42:25 How much effort was it to book President Obama last year?
45:15 SXSW is only a month away. Prices are at walk-up price now.
48:48 Bots are the new things that are going to be a big thing coming up
50:25 Wrap up and closing

Sponsor Details

SVG Summit — A full-day, virtual UX design conference on SVG that you can attend online on February 15th. Free recordings with registration at SVG Summit. Use discount code “NONBREAKINGSPACESHOW” for 20% off.
CSS Dev Conf — Conference dedicated to CSS and its super friend technologies like JavaScript, Sass, NPM, and more. A limited supply of Early Bird Tickets go on sale soon. Register now!
UX Design Newsletter — A weekly free newsletter containing a collection of tutorials, articles, and videos about frontend design and development, plus tips on how to bring better engagement to the multi-device world curated by Christopher Schmitt.

Feed.Press — Hosting and feed support provided by Feed.Press. Sign-up today and try FeedPress on a 14-day trial (no contracts or commitments). Use promo code “NBSP” during checkout to get 10% off your first year.

South By Southwest
SXSW Interactive
Interactive
History of SXSW
Pandora
Spotify
Fairmont Austin
Second Life aka Second Story
Meet ups SXSW
SXSW Entry for Speakers/Panel Picker
Ted Videos
SXSW Advisory Board
SXSW Voting
Video of Obama at SXSW
Article on Obama at SXSW
MeerKat
FourSquare
Attend SXSW/Pricing
Talkabot Conference