Insiders share their SXSW tips in a hangout #SXSWsurvival
Veterans of the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival joined Mumbrella today for a hangout to share their tips on how to survive the huge festival and maximise your time in Austin.
Mumbrella editor Alex Hayes was be joined by director of digital at Clemenger BBDO Melbourne Roger Box, managing director of Affinity Luke Brown and Austin native Caitlin Smith, head of APAC sales at Bazaarvoice, who shared their tips for attendees to maximise their time at the festival.
http://youtu.be/QNeK6Gnq89g
Unfortunately due to a sound issue we have had to cut the first nine minutes of the conversation.
The festival attracts more than 25,000 people to the Interactive stream, with more than a thousand speakers including some of the top names from Silicon Valley and the global marketing community.
Digital technology agency Affinity’s Brown is hosting a workshop at the conference on how to measure digital marketing, and it is the fourth time he has attended the event.
Box is a veteran of several major international conferences but cites SXSW as the forerunner in terms of inspiration, and it is also the second time he is returning to Austin.
Smith is an Austin native and head of sales for the online recommendation engine’s APAC division, and will share her tips of where to go and what to see while in the capital of Texas.
SXSW runs from Friday March 13 and wraps up on Wednesday March 18 Australian time.
Mumbrella will be at the festival providing coverage and analysis of the event, as well as a daily live video hangout with special guests wrapping up each day of the festival every morning.
Veterans you say? So going for the second time is a veteran? Misleading headline. I can give everyone a free tip as someone who has been 8 times. The Fonz has jumped well and truly. Don’t bother. It’s now very self congratulatory, full of recycled ideas, overblown, littered with attention seekers, and of little value. Unless you just want to party of course, then it is effing sensational. And yes, I am the idiot in that it took 8 visits to go before I realise what a waste of time it was. Thought the Texan rump was delicious.
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@Dolly Pardon it may not measure up to the earlier times you were there, but it is far from irrelevant and a waste of time. Its hard to navigate, and yes they’re are a lot of attention seekers etc., but there’s still a lot of great, great content. Its far more worthwhile than going to 10 or 20 local AU events/festivals/bootcamps, and far more cost efficient. And it absolutely craps on Cannes for relevance. But Cannes wins on attention seeking, self congratulatory idea recycling ad guys.
And the festival actually finishes Sat 21st. Unless this industry thinks Film and Music, and the many topics within that are increasingly convergent with Interactive, are irrelevant to what we do.
And yes it is lots of fun.
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Stay in a downtown hotel if at all possible, avoid the shuttle services, prepare to wait in enormous lines to get into any party/venue/gig, always have at least 1 if not 2 backup speakers for each session and be prepared to bail after a few minutes in and race to your second/third choice when you realise the speaker/topic is not as engaging as you thought, get there at least a day early so you can actually get into the best BBQ and/or Mexican restaurants and no line badge pick up. Sorted.
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