SXSWaves goodbye

Farewell, SXSW Sydney. We hardly knew how to find ye.

Three years into a five year contract with the NSW Government, the Texas-based festival of ideas, film, and music has pulled the plug on its antipodean adventure.

The conference was in a tough spot. 

Yes, the location sucked - no one who lives in Sydney goes anywhere near the ICC unless they need to, and it shows. Yes, attracting high calibre speakers to the edge of the world is a challenge. Yes, sponsor cash became sparser in an age of budget scrutiny.

But those are easy answers.

The future belongs to the curious, SXSW told us. Except if you are curious enough to splash out at least $1000 on a ticket (or more likely, convince your employer to do so), you’re probably also curious enough to read and watch a lot of similar content through the 51 weeks of the year the conference isn’t on.

That makes it incredibly difficult to put together a program that offers anything new. By the time you come up with a topic, craft the narrative, pull together a panel, and arrive on stage, it’s likely someone has already deconstructed it. The world has moved on. 

You need look no further than the propensity of nearly every session at last year’s hoopla to discuss AI, despite the ubiquity of analysis around the topic dropping into inboxes and feeds every single day.

This isn’t just a problem for SXSW. We’re no longer used to waiting for anything. Why endure the delayed gratification of annual events when you snack on near identical insight any time you want? 

Still, if you need a reason to cancel a major event, “prevailing market conditions” beats complete moral failure any day.