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. 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