Sxsw interactive how many attendees

This was, of course, before Uber and Lyft left the city earlier this year. I was experiencing firsthand the most unfortunate slice of contemporary Austin life. The sprawl, and the lack of transit alternatives, is by far the worst possible problem facing the city. It was an incredible success—people remarked they had not seen roads so empty since the s—and somewhat of an epiphany for many Austinites. SXSW offers Austin a unique gift—a temporary prototyping lab for future growth.

Designing for a downtown that swells by , people for 10 days every spring allows the city to test extreme cases for logistics, housing, and, most critically, mobility solutions.

The size of the conference, and its urban-scale interaction, is important. The leaders were ostensibly there to solicit the tech community to tackle civic challenges—with their own brand activations to boot; you could visit city-themed houses like WeDC or ChooseATL —but also to see how SXSW makes Austin a hotbed of urban innovation.

The city is functioning much the way the festival was originally meant to by bringing together creatives to collaborate. Development vs. Public assets vs. Smart density vs. As I rode the B-cycle bike share north over the Congress Bridge last spring, on my way from one activation to another, I saw a skyline that has been shaped by 30 years of welcoming new ideas to the city—and plenty of room for more.

Editor: Sara Polsky. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. An Interactive Badge provides valuable opportunities to interact with other attendees and speakers outside of Conference sessions.

Mentor Sessions offer one-on-one coaching by professionals from all areas of the tech, film, and music industries. Advance registration is required so stay tuned for more information on how to RSVP coming soon. As part of the Conference, Professional Development will feature learning and accreditation opportunities across the range of industries represented at SXSW. From Continuing Legal Education credits to cloud services workshops, this track provides in-depth and specialized education.

Come boost your professional credentials and leave with the documentation to prove it. Beyond the Conference, meet attendees and companies from the world of tech in person at the Trade Show. The Trade Show is the hands-on, experiential showcase that brings the conference conversations to life — in no other place at SXSW will you find this many creative businesses and organizations together in one place.

Reinforcing that mantra to myself and to others, "How do we need to structure the event that will continue to encourage forward-thinking people to come to the event and lend their expertise? Photo Cred: Fast Company If you weren't producing events, what would you want to be doing?

Going to an event! I would be doing more creative writing, reading, and absorbing of popular culture. What do you think has kept you so interested for so long? What keeps me interested and involved is the positive feedback that you get from attendees. If they've had a strong, enjoyable experience you get people telling you that this is the highlight of their year.

That's a pretty powerful narcotic in terms of reinforcement. Essentially, we work all year on putting together one event. It's a long, slow slog, but when people have a positive experience that is really powerful. The biggest change is that we've been lucky enough to continue to grow during that time period.

People have the ability to make more connections, attend more panels, networking events, and parties, which are all good things. Plenty of people will say that there is also more noise at the event and it's sometimes harder to find people you want to meet, and they're entirely right because it has gotten to be a much bigger event.

We thought achieving scale was difficult and then we realized that scale makes it even harder. Now that you've reached this size, how have the operational problems changed for you and your team? As much as the event has grown, and as much as that creates new and different challenges, we're still fundamentally doing the same thing that we did twenty years ago. We are providing the platform where creative people come together and make new connections that can hopefully take their careers to the next level.

We're just doing that on a bigger platform now than we ever had before. We're trying to build a captivating, invigorating, inspiring experience for attendees by creating an atmosphere that attracts as many of those very creative people as possible. If you can do that, then you have something of value and size is ultimately irrelevant on that. Photo Cred: The Daily Dot What is your favorite part of the entire production process throughout the entire year? Is there a certain moment?

Over the last few years, we've gotten organized enough so there will be a day in the mid-fall where we will announce anywhere between seventy and eighty percent of our content for the upcoming year. That's a fun day. Revealing what you think is going to be really exciting, presentations or panels, showing the depth and breadth of the event. We create a lot of buzz that way. As well as, the first day the event starts, simply because you've been working a long, long time on this thing, you're past your second wind, or third and fourth wind.

You'll get re-energized by the passion of the attendees, so that's a neat thing also. What do you think is the most underrated aspect of South by Southwest?

I think that with South by Southwest or with any event or with anything in life, we tend to focus on the big names, the sexiest aspects of the event. At this point in our progression, we're lucky enough to get more big names than we ever have had before. That's a really neat thing, but I think the heart of any event is the smaller connections that you make. It's hard to make that sound all that sexy, but the people who get the most out of events like South by Southwest, like TED, are the people who try to meet as many people as possible.

You never know where those connections will lead to. When you're hiring, what are the three most critical traits you look for in a new team member? Tim Ferriss interviewed Kevin Kelly in a podcast where he talked about attitude being more important than aptitude.

Aptitude can be trained and developed, attitude can't. I agree. I'm looking for people who have energy and enthusiasm. We're an exhausting event to work on. We have a lot of challenges, we deal with a lot of people who can be hard to deal with. I'm also looking for people who are intellectually curious. In most cases, that means they read a lot whether that's books, magazines, articles online, but ultimately people who are interested in continuing to learn and stretch their boundaries.

What do you look for in speakers or panelists? In many ways, the traits that apply to the staff also apply to the speakers. A speaker who's got a lot of energy and can deliver an entertaining speech is a lot more interesting than a speaker who's really smart, but really boring.

Also, somewhat of an unwritten policy we have, we don't like to work with jerks. If someone seems unpleasant to work with, it's generally my call to stay away from them. We have enough headaches already, so we're not looking to radically absorb those headaches with people who have unreasonably big egos. We're looking for speakers who have a unique, engaging take on current events.

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