SXSW stays course, continues growth

Kathryn Calder of The New Pornographers performs at Stubb’s BBQ during SXSW in 2006.

Hundreds of people will hit the streets of downtown Austin this weekend for South by Southwest, the 10-day festival showcasing music, film and interactive conferences held in mid-March.

What started as a music-only festival has since expanded to include film and interactive events. People and artists in the three industries can mingle and learn from each other during the conferences held in the Austin Convention Center and showcase their work at the festivals held throughout downtown Austin.

Louis Black, editor and co-founder of The Austin Chronicle, launched SXSW with Chronicle publisher Nick Barbaro in 1986. The men got the idea from co-worker Roland Swenson and booking agent Louis Meyers. The four of them worked together to put on the first SXSW in March 1987. Although they were only expecting around 150 people to participate, Black said more than 700 came.

“It was meant to be a regional event for five or six states,” he said. “But it was national almost immediately.”

Black suggested they name the festival after Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” though he gave no reasoning behind his decision.

Although Meyers left Austin in the early ’90s to head the Folk Alliance in Nashville, Tenn., the other three are still involved with the event. Swenson, who had previously managed bands and music clubs, became the managing director for SXSW and continues to be one of the front men while Black and Barbaro mostly deal with logistics, Black said.

Through the years, SXSW has had an array of celebrities give the conferences’ keynote speeches. This year’s interactive conference will include a keynote interview with Evan Williams, CEO and founder of social-networking site Twitter — which he launched at SXSW Interactive in 2007 — and soul singer-songwriter Smokey Robinson will speak at the music conference.

Black said the music and film events have grown substantially since the festival’s inception, but the most interesting and profound growth has been with SXSW Interactive, which showcases online innovations and video games from Friday to Tuesday.

“Interactive, in the last three years or so, has probably been the biggest of its kind in the world,” Black said.

Beth Krauss, spokeswoman for the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau, said registration for the interactive conference is up almost 40 percent from 2009, surpassing the 10-percent increase from 2008 to 2009.

“It used to be that music was the biggest, but now interactive is growing much more,” Krauss said.

She said people have begun to use personal media for professional purposes, such as marketing themselves to companies, which has contributed to the heightened interest.

According to a 2009 report by independent consulting firm Greyhill, SXSW events injected $98 million into the Austin economy.

Elizabeth Skadden, an artist and UT alumna, said she started going to the music portion of SXSW in 1997 because she was too young for most of the music showcases held in bars.

After turning 21, she said she started going to the music showcases but began taking more of an interest in the free, unofficial music shows that SXSW attracts.

“I like the free shows because the bands play for longer, and there were more bands that I liked in a row,” Skadden said. “It was a lot of friend’s bands, and they would all play the same day.”

Todd Patrick, an organizer and promoter of independent music shows in New York City, has put on the best free and unofficial SXSW shows for the past four years, said Geneva Hopson, a studio art freshman at UT. Earlier this year, Patrick announced that he would be putting on a three-day show in Mexico, dubbed the MtyMx All Ages Festival of Art and Music, as an alternative to SXSW.

“I definitely thought that there would be some kind of void, just because those shows are so fun and have become a standard,” Hopson said.

Hopson bought a bus ticket to Monterrey with her friends for Saturday, March 20, the first day of the Mexico festival. Since then, Patrick announced that he would be putting on unofficial SXSW shows next week leading up to the music festival in Mexico.

As free shows gain popularity, so does international interest in SXSW-sanctioned events.

The event now has offices in Ireland, Germany, Australia and Japan to help people register for SXSW in Austin.

Tracy Mann, spokeswoman for MG Limited, the public relations firm that markets SXSW internationally, said overseas interest began to increase in 2000.

Mann said about 5 percent of the current registrants are from outside of the U.S. She said they come to SXSW to make connections for potential American record releases, find booking agents for U.S. tours and to meet the best in the business.

“Austin has a lot of elements of what foreigners think of as American, like the movies and the American cowboy,” Mann said. “But then they come here, and they find out Austin is a super progressive city and people are friendly and outgoing.”

Despite drawing attention across the nation and around the world, Black said SXSW has stayed true to its original purpose of helping artists showcase their work and learn more about the business.

To help accommodate the music segment of the festival, City Council changed the outdoor-venue permit ordinance Feb. 11, said city planner Clara Hilling. Hilling said the permits, which normally expire the day after an event, are now good for four days. She said she has received 33 requests for a permit for next week. The permit ordinance will expire June 30 unless City Council votes to continue it.

SXSW Interactive will be held Saturday through Tuesday; SXSW Film will be held today through Saturday, March 20; and SXSW Music will from Wednesday to Sunday, March 21.

Every Sunday following the music conference of SXSW, industry heads, entrepreneurs and festival badge holders come together in a vicious softball game, full of cheating and barbecue, Black said.

“From the very beginning, it was one of the smartest things we did,” Black said, referring to the barbecue. “We are bringing together all these people in a unique circumstance.”

SXSW Over Time
November 1986

* Friends Roland Swenson and Louis Jay Meyers approach Chronicle editor Louis Black and publisher Nick Barbaro with the idea of holding a music conference and festival.

March 1987

* Swenson, Meyers, Black and Barbaro hold the first SXSW on Thursday, March 12. Thanks to an advertisement and story in Billboard magazine, 700 people show up — 550 more than expected.

1993

* Gov. Ann Richards gives the keynote address.

1994

* SXSW Film and Multimedia Conference is added to the event.
* Singer Johnny Cash gives the keynote address.

1995

* Multimedia becomes its own event, separate from film.

1997

* SXSW Interactive Web Awards begins, which honors the best new Web sites and innovators showcased at the festival.

1999

* Multimedia becomes SXSW Interactive.

2006

* Screenburn at SXSW, a video game element, is added.
* SXSW Interactive begins asking for input about what kind of programming should be showcased, which later adopted the name SXSW PanelPicker and is used for all three components.

2007

* Evan Williams launches Twitter at SXSW Interactive.

2009

* Microsoft BizSmart Accelerator is added, showcasing web innovation and products.
* The American premiere of six-time Oscar winner Hurt Locker at SXSW Film.