SXSW Interactive grows up, faces social backlash

Is the South by Southwest Interactive Festival - which last year passed SXSW Music in paid registration to become the largest leg of SXSW - fighting for its soul?

In the space between the time when the fest began to be known as "spring break for geeks" (around 2008) and last year when Jolie O'Dell, a tech writer for social media news site Mashable.com, lambasted it as a fest with "Too many people, not enough tech," something changed.

SXSW Interactive, which began in 1994 as part of the "SXSW Film and Multimedia Conference," has grown in recent years. A lot. Last year's growth rate was nearly 40 percent, and early estimates suggest it could grow that much for 2011.

The growth, which at the festival has manifested itself as long lines for RSVP-only parties, packed-solid keynote presentations and a scarcity in downtown hotel rooms (Austin brother, can you spare a futon?), has created a backlash among some longtime attendees as well as newcomers turned off by the crowds.

But just like an underground band that suddenly got mainstream success, it's not lacking for fans. The convergence of popular culture and tech culture - those smart phones, those apps, those status updates - has transformed Interactive from a funky tech conference that always welcomed digital artists, porn stars and sci-fi writers into a social event.

With the exception of the massive TED conferences and Apple's new product announcements, it might be the nation's largest tech social event. The waves and waves of people can bring down a cell network, as they did with AT&T's hapless wireless tubes when iPhone became popular in 2009. They can spread the gospel about a little-known, new technology beyond the fest, like when Twitter landed like an atom bomb in 2007. They can ruin the fest for attendees like O'Dell, who on March 16, 2010, posted that she'd been harassed, stolen from and turned off. She vowed never to return.

Critics and curation

Although some defended the fest, a raft of bloggers and commenters chimed in about the rise of so-called social media douchebags, the fawning among attendees over Twitter celebrities (Ashton Kutcher, Justine "iJustine" Ezarik) and all the drinking, hard-partying and boorish behavior that goes on at the fest.

You'd think it was a convention for Hell's Angels the way so many bloggers write about the festival. "How to survive SXSW Interactive" is a popular topic among tech blogs in the weeks leading up to the fest.

For their part, organizers say they were already responding to criticisms about crowding and the festival's identity even before tech blogger Robert Scoble posted a December piece calling for smaller, more intimate "micro-events."

Hugh Forrest, director of SXSW Interactive, says that decisions about how the fest is organized - like spreading it to 10 separate campuses with specific themes - is meant to help attendees find smaller groups of people with whom they have more in common. A series of 65-70 daytime meet-ups will work toward that goal as well.

Although the fest has been focused on curating the programming and getting the stage set, it's also trying to encourage attendees to be more aware of the choices they have, whether it's the hundreds of panels or the plethora of parties.

"One thing we're really trying to emphasize is that SXSW is what you make of it," Forrest said. "If you want to go to parties with 1,000 or 2,000 people, we'll have those. If you want to go to smaller parties or go out to dinner with new friends, there's plenty of that, also."

Grow up

Instant-communication tools such as Twitter and location services such as Gowalla and Foursquare have ironically made the festival more connected, but they also are more apt to create swarms of people and to reduce the festival into hotspots and 140-character sound bytes.

Forrest and veteran attendees say the best way to avoid being a SXSW Interactive casualty is to be in the moment (heads up from the Droid screen, please) and to have a solid plan of action, with the option to bail on it at a moment's notice to spend time with friends and new acquaintances.

Wesley Faulkner, a tech worker and entrepreneur who has attended the past few years, spends two months setting up his schedule using online tools like Plancast.com. But once the fest starts, he plays it by ear, especially if things get too crowded.