South by Southwest is back for its 37th year, and while it might not quite be back to pre-pandemic levels of downtown activity, festival organizers are optimistic about the turnout.
In a recent interview with Austin Inno, SXSW Co-President and Chief Programming Officer Hugh Forrest shared a few insights about what attendees can expect this year.
"It will definitely be bigger than last year," he said. "Particularly a bigger percentage of international attendees, which is great. … I don't think that it will be as big as 2019, or what we would have been in 2020. We're getting close, but we’re not there yet."
Forrest pointed to "lingering Covid stuff and a lot of the big tech companies aren't having as many people travel as they had pre-Covid." He added, "We had about 15 years of pretty much uninterrupted growth, and it's gonna' take a while to build that back up again."
SXSW has traditionally been one of Austin's biggest and most lucrative events, with an economic impact that rivals the Super Bowl. The festival generated an economic impact of $280.7 million in 2022, according to a study by Greyhill Advisors, $75.2 million less than the $355.9 million generated by SXSW during 2019. The 2020 festival was infamously canceled in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, while the 2021 event was held entirely virtually.
The 2022 economic impact was the lowest recorded by the festival since 2013, when an estimated $218 million of economic activity was generated.
Nonetheless, Forrest is confident that SXSW is doing better than many other events in terms of attendance percentage.
"We had to take a couple of years off, and our staff lost a little bit of muscle memory there," he said. "But it's good to be back."
Look back: SXSW 2022
He also discussed the impact of SXSW's recent ownership change: Penske Media Eldridge acquired a 50% stake in 2021.
"They have been good partners to work with," he said. "They've helped us organize some things that maybe were not as organized as before. They love the content. … It's generally been a really good partnership."
Forrest sees the partnership with Penske as an opportunity to push more of SXSW's content out throughout the year, not just in March.
He also hinted that crypto will make an appearance at the festival, but not as prominently as in 2022, when Blockchain Creative Labs was one of the conference’s most prominent sponsors and non-fungible tokens — or NFTs, unique digital items like artwork — were around every corner. Blockchain Creative Labs, for example, confirmed that it won’t be at the festival this year.
Forrest said attendees can expect artificial intelligence to overtake crypto as the hot new theme of 2023, with featured speakers including OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman and Jasper co-founder and CEO Dave Rogenmoser. OpenAI's ChatGPT has taken the tech world by storm in 2023, while Jasper became one of the fastest companies ever to reach a $1 billion valuation after raising $125 million in October.
SXSW is known for surprise performances and product reveals, making some of its most exciting content a little tricky to predict. Part of the fun is deciphering the coded language and watching exhibits rise in the days and weeks leading up to the festival. Austin-based Icon Technologies Inc., for instance, has developed a reputation for making waves with surprises at SXSW. In 2018, the company came out of stealth mode with a bang by winning a SXSW Accelerator Pitch award and unveiling its initial prototype 3D-printed home. The startup revealed in 2019 a next-generation 3D printer dubbed Vulcan II.
Interviewed at the time, CEO Jason Ballard offered advice about how a company can break out during SXSW: "It is helpful to participate in the SXSW channels. We participated in the official Pitch contest. I think it would have gone different for us if we had only had our own little private event," said Ballard, who also advised companies to "pull out all the stops."
It appears Icon and Ballard are heeding that advice in 2023: an image of a mysterious Icon building project at The Long Center for the Performing Arts recently popped up on Reddit, while the company is presenting a panel entitled "A Moonshot for Affordable Housing" that will include a "call to action on the future of accessible housing" and include a discussion of ways to reach a "vision of a home with construction costs under $99K."
City permits and a deluge of recent announcements from companies and performers show that the area around the convention center along with Rainey Street, Red River and a large swath of downtown will feature restaurant and storefront takeovers by big brands, large civic organizations and flashy promotions.
A few examples:
• California-based 3D tablet maker Leia Inc. plans to display a uniquely Austin 3D sidewalk chalk art installation by Texas artist Jan Riggins on Saturday, March 11, outside La Condesa at Second and Guadalupe streets.
• Energy drink maker C4 Energy will have a smart house at Fair Market at 1100 E. Fifth St. that will feature a creator’s lab where people can create graffiti-style streetwear as well as an immersive video experience.
• Leaps by Bayer plans to have an experience at 75 Rainey St., which is usually a food truck court, that aims to let people experience the rush of landing a biotech moonshot through an escape game.
• And workplace communications platform Slack, which is a major SXSW sponsor this year, will take over a downtown parking lot near Third and Congress for most of the week and fill it with lounges and product promotions to engage festivalgoers.
Map: Austin Inno and Austin Business Journal compiled the below info of notable — but not exhaustive — activations for SXSW 2023 using public documents and company announcements. For more info on what's going on at the festival, check out the official schedule.
Responding to concerns following some unruly street racing in Austin in recent weeks, Forrest emphasized that safety has been a paramount concern for the event for the last decade.
"Providing an experience where people can enjoy Austin, enjoy South by Southwest and do it in a safe way is always extremely important to us," he said. "We've worked very closely with the city. We've worked closely with state and federal agencies also to ensure that we can have the safest experience possible for all our local and out-of-town attendees in 2023."
SXSW 2023 will feature more transportation-related content, with Volkswagen and Porsche returning as the top-billed automobile sponsors.
Expect to see the automakers grappling with technology's role in the future of the industry. Some of the most buzzy highlights from January's annual CES event in Las Vegas included new electric vehicles and color-changing car technology. And don't forget, Volkswagen used SXSW 2022 to unveil its all-electric Volkswagen ID. Buzz. That vehicle is back for SXSW 2023: Volkswagen will be displaying both its ID.4 SUV and ID. Buzz in front of the Rollins Theatre, part of the Long Center.
Volkswagen is sponsoring the transportation track at this year's festival, including a panel about autonomous vehicles in cities and another about advances in automotive software.
Porsche is hosting a variety of panels and exhibits at its Porsche House, which will be set up at 400 Congress Ave. Topics include vehicle design, automotive software, motorsports and the future of transportation and e-racing. The automaker's Porsche X Collaborations Unseen exhibit will feature exclusive cars designed by a collection of artists.
While some sponsors from last year won't be returning, Forrest noted that turnover like that is normal.
"We’ve seen more interest from transportation companies getting involved with South by Southwest, as well as some of the traditional consumer products," he said.
With SXSW set to kick off on March 10, Forrest and his team are putting the final touches on the festival's organization.
"Some better organizational processes have made the run up to March easier this year than in the past," he said. "We're feeling pretty good."
