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[Music Intro]
There are a lot of reasons why Austin is a great place for SXSW.
Probably the foremost of those reasons is just that there's so much creativity and
creative people in Austin, and that's again what we've always tried to emphasize is the
bottom line of SXSW
Interactive, that people are doing
very, very creative things, it just happens to be new media or new technology
that they're using as a means to this creativity.
Interactive was traditionally the smallest aspect of SXSW and
probably would not have survived some fairly lean years if not for SXSW music
paying a lot of the bills.
That said, we have been lucky enough to experience a lot of growth over the last
5 years, and we now have
more registrants than
music or film,
so that's nice to see. I mean, it's very nice to be a part of that growth after struggling
through some very tough times when we were trying
everything and not growing a whole lot.
At SXSW 10 or 15 years ago, we had tons of bands coming to
Austin with a suitcase full of CDs, and they wanted to get a CD to the A&R
person, who was probably, ya know, having drinks all day at the Four Seasons.
Because of the nature of the content industry changing,
that's not so important anymore. I mean, people can -- bands can load their video
up to YouTube and get exposure that way
but I do think that whole model has changed a little.
So we've got all these VCs now in Austin, in March, and all these
young entrepreneurs coming to town with their business plan and trying to get
that in the hands of VCs,
trying to kind of find the same equation that we had with music before. But again,
this is all good things. It's great to have that
energy, that excitement, that anticipation that people can come to SXSW
and they can make the connection that will, you know, change their lives
forever.
South by Southwest to remain relevant, always has to be fluid, always has to change,
and always has to try
and stay ahead of the market, as opposed to trying to
emulate what we did 5 years ago.
The fact that Twitter, you know, was here in 2007, and has become such a
huge thing in the succeeding years
has ah...
you know, has helped us grow a lot, in the sense that lots of startups, lots of
potential startups, lots of aspiring entrepreneurs
uh... think that SXSW is the place to go to be discovered, and to
become the next Twitter.
We've seen
other high profile launches here, particularly in 2009, uh...
Foursquare launched here, as did Gowalla.
Lots more in 2010 and 2011, although these are --
most of things are companies that we may not have heard of yet, and again, that's
kind of the pattern with SXSW:
something launches here,
it gains traction with this somewhat-insular, cutting-edge
tech crowd. It won't necessarily spread to the more mainstream crowd for a couple of
years. So I think we'll know
later in 2012-2013 which of the companies from
2011
that launched at South by Southwest are particularly hot. Austin is great place
to visit. There's
great weather here in March. It's the best weather of the year, I think.
It's not too hot yet, it's not too cold. There are lots of great restaurants
and lots of great things to do. And you know, we spend a hell of a lot of time
working on panels, working on trade shows, working on other programming,
yadda yadda yadda, and try to make that as good as possible and hopefully that, you
know,
uh... meets the expectations, satisfies, however you want to phrase that,
for our registrants, but, you know, in reality, that's only half the battle. What
sells a lot of people is just coming down and enjoying Austin and enjoying again
the food, or the people, or the restaurants, or the vibe. It's such a
different city than so many other places, and again: we couldn't
pull this off anywhere else, I don't think.
Some of the things that I'm most excited about in Austin now, and again this kind of from a
bigger-picture perspective is just
the amount of startups here, the amount of startup energy here,
the amount of overall tech energy here. And I also
really am excited by how these kind of more traditional industries and organizations,
such as the City of Austin, such as the Chamber of Commerce,
are realizing
how much potential there is there, and how much potential there is for the future
of Austin. There are a lot of ways that Austinites can take advantage of the
event. Uh...
If people in Austin have the resources and interest in registering, it's
again a great way to learn what is coming up in the technology world. Someone
mentioned to me this summer, that they go to SXSW Interactive to see
what will be hot in 2 years, so
I think that's a great description of the event. I encourage all of Austin to
take part and take advantage of just the
creativity and energy and excitement that is in the air during
SXSW. Again, it's just that mix of so many creative people and so
many ideas,
uh... and so much new energy. It just is a very special time of the year.
I think Austin is just
supportive and there's a community presence here that uh...a lot of cities
don't have. And again,
Austin is a vital part
of the SXSW success story.