2. What is SXSW?
Apologies if you know what South by South West is. I'm going to assume here that you don't, as I didn't.
SXSW is an enormous conference and festival. It's not clear how many people attend, but it's around 100,000.
It's in Austin, Texas. Not a place I'd been before. But if you have, you'll know it's very cool.
It started over 30 years ago as a music festival, because of the very strong music scene in Austin. There are dozens and dozens of venues, and the number of acts is now into 4 figures. Cinema was added in the 90s, and then 'Interactive.' there's also an education conference that starts and finishes before everything else.
The action centres on the Austin Convention Centre. The conference centres of 4 nearby hotels are taken over, as well as other venues, bars, restaurants, parks, parking lots, practically everywhere. The picture is of the view from the bridge between the convention centre and the Hilton hotel.
Roads are closed. and filled with people wearing conference badges walking everywhere, or else riding scooters. every hotel in town is full. All the restaurants and cafes are full. there is a line at every Starbucks all the time. You can chose from 30 different things happening each hour, all day, every day. There are movie premieres every night, with stars and red carpets, and hundreds of other films shown at theatres all over the city. And then at the conference, people come with ideas to share. Ideas about culture, art, business, tech, the future, money, health, wealth, happiness, and everything else you can possibly think of. People come from all around the world to listen to the ideas, to hear the music, watch the movies, and meet you and each other.
It is quite, quite crazy, and quite wonderful, and hopefully with this blog you will get a tiny little taste of that for yourselves.You'll read more about all the bits I mentioned above, but tomorrow we'll start with the first person I saw, Priscilla Chan talking about the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
SXSW is an enormous conference and festival. It's not clear how many people attend, but it's around 100,000.
It's in Austin, Texas. Not a place I'd been before. But if you have, you'll know it's very cool.
It started over 30 years ago as a music festival, because of the very strong music scene in Austin. There are dozens and dozens of venues, and the number of acts is now into 4 figures. Cinema was added in the 90s, and then 'Interactive.' there's also an education conference that starts and finishes before everything else.
The action centres on the Austin Convention Centre. The conference centres of 4 nearby hotels are taken over, as well as other venues, bars, restaurants, parks, parking lots, practically everywhere. The picture is of the view from the bridge between the convention centre and the Hilton hotel.
Roads are closed. and filled with people wearing conference badges walking everywhere, or else riding scooters. every hotel in town is full. All the restaurants and cafes are full. there is a line at every Starbucks all the time. You can chose from 30 different things happening each hour, all day, every day. There are movie premieres every night, with stars and red carpets, and hundreds of other films shown at theatres all over the city. And then at the conference, people come with ideas to share. Ideas about culture, art, business, tech, the future, money, health, wealth, happiness, and everything else you can possibly think of. People come from all around the world to listen to the ideas, to hear the music, watch the movies, and meet you and each other.
It is quite, quite crazy, and quite wonderful, and hopefully with this blog you will get a tiny little taste of that for yourselves.You'll read more about all the bits I mentioned above, but tomorrow we'll start with the first person I saw, Priscilla Chan talking about the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
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