South by South West festival: Tyneside to Texas
Posted on Thursday, 24th March 2011 by B.Darlington
It's been 1 week since I returned from the heat and wonder of SXSW – enough time to begin to digest my first US festival. Haus were privileged to be invited to go to the Interactive strand of SXSW, as part of iShed and Arts Council’s Creative Producers Development Programme (read more about this, the other delegates, and the producer's Summer School in our previous blog post.)
SXSW Interactive is five days of compelling presentations from the brightest minds in emerging technology, a plethora of exciting networking events hosted by industry leaders, a trade show, plus showcases of the best new digital works, video games and innovative ideas.
Part of the reason SXSW was so intriguing to me is because it is an incredibly different beast to the European festivals I’ve visited and worked on. The sheer scale was overwhelming – the list of sponsors, the size of the team, the attention to detail. It is no doubt because of this that the festival is such an elegant and well-oiled machine. Speaking as someone who works on the logistics of festivals, SXSW is incredibly impressive. With this in mind, it was also interesting and pleasing to hear Bruce Sterling (an Austinite himself) in his rousing closing keynote, recommending to repeat SXSWers “if you have done 5 or 6 of these, let me give you some advice - I think you need to go to Europe” – listing a handful of festivals, name-dropping our friends at FutureEverything in Manchester.
This year Southby celebrated its 25th anniversary, and we’re told attendance figures were at an all time high. I’d be fascinated to know how many thousands attend SXSW in some form during the festival. Looking at the demographics for 2010, just the conference element of SXSW across Film, Interactive and Music had 36,771 attendees. 14,251 were Interactive conference participants, and 12% of these were from outside of the US.
I initially went to a run of sessions on business development, marketing and copy-writing, but of these only one was stand-out: Hold on Loosely: How Loose Organizations Work. The format of the session was useful as it was a moderated discussion, but led by those in the room. We covered a variety of topics: shared vision, remote working, co-working spaces, separating work from life, collaboration. Hearing people working in a similar way to us, discuss their own problems, as well as successes, had an honesty to it which I had been looking for.
Papa Sangre is a game in sound without graphics, and the world's first real-time generative audio-only virtual world. The Papa Sangre panel at SXSW Fun with the Lights Off: Interactivity Without Graphics was one of the strongest I saw, and combined the elements I was looking for – being both inspirational work and an in-depth dissection of the philosophy behind the project, and the process of its creation. The panel did not shy away from talking about the challenges and elements that did not work, which was refreshing. You can find the podcast here.
I also enjoyed the Edinburgh, Austin & the Future of Festivals session, though perhaps mainly useful for a UK audience. It touched on an interesting point about Edinburgh Festival being a very democratic space, and revealed that SXSW has much stricter rules about things like guerrilla marketing, and protects the brand more closely; begging the question whether there is less room for human spontaneous experience in Austin. I was also fascinated by questions raised about whether we should be creating more digital content to be enjoyed remotely, or whether this dilutes the idea of being there in the moment, as an exclusive experience.
With hundreds of sessions and events to choose from, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. I created a schedule before heading to Texas, and I’d definitely recommend this to any future SXSW goers. I used SCHED* - a simple interface, that worked well on mobile and was good to share. Inevitably, like me, you’ll veer off schedule, influenced by colleagues’ recommendations, which unearthed some hidden gems. It’s important to use Twitter to keep an eye on which sessions are getting good feedback, so you can always change your mind and head to something else. Even with my British manners, I learned not to be afraid to leave a session.
There were a few times during SXSW that I was able to remove myself from the Interactive action, and experience something different. One such event was the premiere of Sound It Out, a documentary by Jeanie Finlay about the last independent record shop in Teesside. The film was a joyful and touching look at “thriving against the odds” and the demise of independent record stores. Hearing North East England accents and attitudes, a huge contrast to Texas, I felt a little bubble of pride inside. Tweeting about the film, the joke was obvious – to travel thousands of miles to Texas, to see a film about Teesside.
This became an analogy for me for the whole trip. One of the most striking and exciting parts of the visit was being part of this Creative Producers delegation, introducing me to a new network of producers based in the UK. Why go thousands of miles to make connections with people living in the same country as you? Aside from the incredible benefits of being given the chance to experience something like SXSW, this distance from our normal environment pushed us together, gave us something which we would not have found if we had simply met in Bristol for the summer school. Even the common criticisms of some of what we saw at SXSW (techno-evangelism, everything-is-awesome, or a lack of critical discussion) gave us a starting point.
The delegation are all at different stages in their career, and the value of the experience and knowledge in the group is immense, and made me feel invigorated. I look forward to blogging about our summer school in late June. SXSW was a great catalyst for thinking about what kind of work excites me and where my producing ambitions lie. Something which, caught up in the day to day back in Newcastle, I don’t always allow myself the time to do.
(Photo above: CC, Filippo Gianetta, 2011)