1. What is the South by Southwest Festival - SXSW'09

What is the South by Southwest Festival, also known as SXSW? This is certainly the first question posed by those who do not know or have just heard about it.

It started in 1987 in the city of Austin, the capital of Texas, and has its origins in the previously held Austin Battle of the Bands. This festival was organized as a response of the local musicians to the difficulty felt in making their work known to the American music industry which was mainly concentrated in the West and East coasts of the country. Through this event the organizers were able to attract their attention to Austin.

In 1994, the framework of the music festival (SXSW Music) was expanded with the addition of the cinematographic (SXSW Film) and interactive/multimedia (SXSW Interactive) components, thus keeping up with the developments occurring in the entertainment industry and with the beginning of the internet era. Since then, these three are still part of the festival, and although the music remains as the most important one, the cinema festival has gathered worldwide recognition and the interactive component, mainly through Internet and Gaming, has filled a gap and is creating a bridge between all areas.

In 1996, although with a smaller span than the SXSW, the Festival North by Northeast (NXNE) was created with NOW magazine. It takes place annually in June in Toronto-Canada, and is intended to be an extension to the Northern side of the American continent of the of the SXSW concept, also including the same three areas.

This year South by Southwest will have its 23rd edition with the acronym SXSW’09. The SXSW Interactive Festival will be the first to start, evolving from the 13th to the 17th of March. The SXSW Film will also start on March 13th but it lasts until the 21st. The SXSW Music starts on Wednesday the 18th of March and continues until Sunday the 22nd of March. It is the latest that will receive my full attention as stated by the goal that I described in post nº0, discover what makes five of the best Portuguese music bands to go across the Atlantic and join this event.

More than a common music festival where the bands play one after another and introduce themselves through their music, it represents a meeting point between different groups of people connected to music, cinematographic and entertainment industries and where they share ideas and establish connections that will allow each entity to develop its work. During the festival it is possible to find in Austin, musicians, producers, A&R, programmers, cineastes, photographers and many more, either by personal interest or liking, or corporative visitors and looking for business opportunities.

The live presentation of the bands occurs in the numerous bars, coffee shops and concert halls abundant in Austin. Some of these exhibitions are of restrict access while other shows are free. At the Austin Convention Centre, numerous conferences will be held promoted by the organization of the festival, as well as meetings about specific subjects, exhibitions and social events in order to meet the objective of bringing together the different participants of this sector. Some of the festival sponsors and participants also organise their own side events.

Because of the large number and diversity of the events included in the SXSW’09, some of them very interesting, in one of the following editions of these Austin Chronicles I will take some time to present some of them more thoroughly.

PFor the time being, to finish this description of the SXSW festival and to put in scale what I described, it is enough to state that in the 2008 festival there were almost 200.000 visitors, the majority of them between 20 and 40 years old. Approximately 1.800 shows were held in 83 different stages and there were 14.000 people present at the conferences and shows, of which about 30% were from outside the USA. The press coverage was guaranteed by 350 media partners including daily journals and magazines, webzines, TV and radio stations, as well as numerous references in Blogs or social Websites such as MySpace, Hi5 and Facebook among others. As a footnote, when I was searching some of the information above, I realized Twitter was presented for the first time to the public in the SXSW’06, three years ago!