Reflections from a Post-Peak-Pandemic SXSW Interactive
Me enjoying a panini at the JW Marriott Starbucks and leaning into my SXSW aesthetic.
I attended SXSW Interactive this year as a ceremonious act.
So much had changed since the world shut down three years before. I wanted to feel the energy and optimism of a crowd that’s metabolizing the past and are looking toward the future. The timing felt right to get out there and see what has changed and what we’re building toward as a society. Afterall, SXSW has been known to be quite the stage for showcasing the best and brightest innovation. And I hadn’t been back in the mix in a few years. This would be my 5th SXSW Interactive as an Austinite of 17 years.
As it turned out, much like with everything else we’ve experienced in “coming back to life” post-peak-pandemic, it feels like the city of Austin and its patrons are in a slow build. This SXSW Interactive was not an epic release or fierce embrace of the new. It was contemplative. It had more pockets of quiet and at the same time it was dissonant with people having more individualized experiences versus collective community moments.
Through the whiplash of societal change over the past three years, everyone is thoroughly programmed to be cautiously taking the next step, and the experience of SXSW Interactive 2023 was no exception.
I was a little bit surprised. After all, ChatGPT had turned everything upside down in November 2022. I fully expected AI to dominate the conversation, and it did. But it felt very retrofitted, not catalyzing — mostly because panels and speakers were locked in August, well before the big waves of AI announcements last fall.
No one announced something substantial or brought anything markedly new to the larger cultural conversation about AI (but I’ve been a hound for this info recently, so I’m admittedly a hard audience). GPT-4 was announced on the last day of Interactive, four days after the co-founder of OpenAI had a featured panel discussion on the main stage, and when the bulk of Interactive attendees were on a plane home. The discussion amounted to a lot of theorizing about what AI could mean for us in the future, and this felt a bit empty because no one really knows the implications yet. We’ve only reached the tip of the iceberg.
AI topics sprinkling into the panels were a great distraction from what we were decidedly NOT talking about en masse though: Web3, Crypto, NFTs, Teenagers’ toxic relationships to social media were very much “old news” convos. It’s apparent that the rate of media exfoliation has increased and the half-lives of innovation buzz are shorter.
I found out about Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse from someone I sat next to at a keynote and from there watched it become folded into the panels I attended. The festival was iterating in real time and simultaneously holding its breath. A big part of Kara Swisher’s conversation with Kevin Systrom, who was promoting his new media company called Artifact, was the fact that 100% of his money was currently locked in SVB (everything is cool now, he got his money back). Between SVB and the AI pontifications it felt very much like I was attending SXSW Interactive in the eye of a storm.
From the inside of the eye, one of the most interesting and refreshing themes I observed more than a few times across the sessions is that there’s finally a consensus that brands following every single meme and TikTok trend to the ends of the earth to “connect” with fans is over. Thank goodness. Movements > Trends FTW. We’re finally exhausted and realizing there’s no ROI in making a spoof of the Corn Kid to try to sell washing machines (this is a fake example. Whirlpool don’t come at me).
More than in years past I watched the festival move and shift like an organic organism. Everything was more off the cuff. And somewhere among the twists and turns of the Interactive content tornado through a newer-looking Downtown Austin, it dawned on me that it feels like there are a few keys to SXSW’s future success in a city/world that has irrevocably changed since the “before times”:
1. Cement good talent first, and let the content come second. The media’s atmospheric conditions WILL change 17 times from Summer 2023 (when panels will be picked) until March 2024. And it will be more important to have the right voices to carry the torch of the moment. Kara Swisher should be there. And Ezra Klein. And Baratunde Thurston. And Derek Thompson. And Sam Sanders. And Casey Newton. They’ve all been to SXSW before, but just make sure they get on the plane next year and let them write their interview questions from a window seat. Make the titles of panels editable until two weeks out from the event — people are probably not in the app “favoriting” panels and making a SXSW schedule (read: personal spreadsheet, lol) earlier than that anyway. Revamp the panel picker process.
2. Fold in some mandatory demos or big tentpole moments. Like, I know SXSW isn’t CES, but every time we’re excited about SXSW Interactive is when Twitter is being launched for the first time, Edward Snowden is Skyping in, or some other exclusive moment is happening that becomes an ice-breaker conversation with the stranger you meet over a Mikes Hard Lemonade in the Registration Lounge. To be clear, the best part of SXSW is serendipity and riding the wave of the moment, but we also aren’t flying from every corner of the world to just “float around” for a few days either. Ebb and flow. We need some anchors. We need to feel like we were a part of something. This year felt really devoid of anchoring moments that made us all feel like we were in collective community with each other. It kinda felt like every person was having a very individualized SXSW experience.
3. Embrace the evolving downtown geography and landscape. We might as well make the most of what the great cranes in the sky have forged over the past few years. There are so many new “spaces” within downtown now. Austin is more three-dimensional than how the same bars on Rainey get “transformed” or going to a meet up on the rooftop of Speakeasy on Congress Avenue with different CORT Furniture rental layouts that makes it feel the same but different.
I went to many spaces I’ve never been before and at times it felt like I was in a millennial-chic West Hollywood clubhouse. And I also found an amazing street taco at a newer gritty mezcal bar. Places that were once parking lots are now high rise buildings. The point is that there’s so much more potential programmable space than in years past. The growth of Austin can be a contentious topic among Austinites, but the fact of the matter is that this infrastructure is now here.
But that doesn’t mean there needs to be endless sensory-exploding brand activations to fill the void. Reimagining the space of Austin and the festival growing alongside the city means we could flex in other creative ways that festivals have never dreamt of before.
We could have quieter recharge zones (sure, this could be funded by someone like Google Cloud, so that we can keep the economy of SX flowing), international art installations, areas to meet up and connect with culturally relevant niche groups (Copywriters who use ChatGPT share their ways of using it with one another via Open AI? Succession fans predict how season 4 will end and get a surprise visit from Brian Cox via HBO?), or more mini screenings of films to diversify the limited screening areas (versus everyone taking a bus to South Lamar to stand in line at Alamo Drafthouse and not making it into the screening).
More Austin spaces mean more moments for serendipity and connection that don’t have to happen at a massive scale, which can foster more moments of authenticity.
One of my favorite unique installations this year at SXSW was a tiny room on the 4th floor of the Convention Center, called Plant Wave, where you had to take off your shoes, walk into the darkness, and sit on pouf listening to music created by a device that translates real-time data from living organisms into music. I recharged so hard. I was able to hydrate and return to panels with renewed gusto. I achieved balance at SXSW, people. Why aren’t there more diversified experiences that cut through the noise? Sometimes it can simply feel like brands are suburban neighbors trying to one-up each other’s Christmas lights display.
I digress.
The geography of the festival is one of the things that makes it a unique experience that piques the curiosity of the whole world. The idea that a collective passion like music, film or technological innovation can unite people and take over an entire city is something that no one city has been able to successfully scale or replicate. Austin has had decades to iterate on this type of event and has an opportunity to own SXSW more fully and thoughtfully alongside their festival partners.
In sum, it feels like we’re on the precipice of a new SXSW — for better or worse. I’m very curious what next year will hold. I feel optimistic that the fest will ultimately find its bearings, as it has for the past few decades. And I’m excited to get an Interactive Badge in the future.
But what remains clear is that what worked in the past in Austin may not be the formula for what will be sustainable in the future. The infrastructure of Central Austin is physically different, the rate of innovation and subsequent media cycles have sped up faster than what can be planned for a large-scale event, and if people are venturing outside of their homes to travel they want to feel like they are experiencing a unique moment of connection, community and opportunity — not a perpetual feeling of FOMO while being glued to their phones desperately trying to find where the “energy” of the fest is located via their Eventbrite RSVPs. We can doom scroll The Verge to catch breaking news we’ve missed on our phones at home. Many of us follow up-to-the-minute great podcasts that can run circles around some of the panel content.
I think that in the future it will be important for SXSW to focus and harness what’s so great about the world converging on Austin, Texas. Celebrating the bleeding edge of innovation in community with peers is what SXSW Interactive is all about at its core. And as the landscape of what we’re celebrating changes physically and technologically, the festival should evolve to meet the moment alongside the changing world.
