South By Southwest is composed of three different parts: Interactive, Music and Film. SXSW Interactive is the largest attended portion of the conference at over 37,000 attendees compared to 30,000 for Music and 20,000 for Film. But whenever I bring up SXSW, most people first associate it with music, not Interactive. Today, I want to clarify exactly what SXSW Interactive is and why it’s more than just a cool music scene.
What is Interactive?
Today, you can find topics for just about anything digital. There are individual tracks for marketing, design, development & coding, government, health, style, sports, the tech industry and many more. Everyone now uses digital to conduct business and interact with customers. If you use a computer for any aspect of your business, Interactive has knowledge and insider information to offer you.
Community and Access
The sessions also provide access and insight from some of the best minds in the country. Want to learn more about future trends in social media? Great news, you can hear about them directly from people who work at Facebook. What about ecommerce? Employees from Amazon will be speaking too. What about tech and gadgets? Pull up a chair and learn from Google and Samsung. The quality and amount of information is unparalleled.
Walk Away with the Big Picture and Detailed Insight
The most interesting thing about SXSW is the juxtaposition between the macro and micro viewpoints at the conference. On one hand, you walk away with a bigger picture of how tech, entertainment, marketing, media, etc. are all interconnected. You get a bigger sense of your industry and your place in it. At the same time, you also get micro with specific insights from sessions or the new person you just met and connected with on LinkedIn. Everyone walks away with something different at SXSW. The best parts of the experience aren’t what you expected or planned for.
Check out this video and others from the SXSW team to learn more about the conference.