The countdown to South by South West (SXSW) Sydney has already begun. The legendary US festival, which converges tech, music, screen, and gaming industries, is setting up outside of North America for the first time in its 35-year history. And lucky us—it’s Sydney they’ve plumped for.
From Sunday 15 through to Sunday 22 October, over 1,000 talks, film screenings, music performances, and gaming sessions will take place throughout the Sydney CBD and central suburbs. The festival aims to showcase inspirational thinkers, creators, innovators, and performers, with opportunities for attendees to network, discover and shape what’s next in culture, tech, and the creative economy.
Hugh Forrest, co-president and chief programming officer for SXSW, joined the festival’s team in its formative phase, just two years after their inaugural event in Austin back in 1987. He’s seen a crowd of 700 expand to an international attendance of 300,000 at the last edition.
Recent festivals have witnessed the launch of companies and concepts like Siri and Twitter; keynotes from Barack and Michelle Obama; and performances by everyone from Dolly Parton and Prince to Amy Winehouse and Kendrick Lamar. For his part, Hugh’s been named “Austinite of the Year” in 2012 by the Austin Chamber of Commerce, as well as receiving the Key to the City by the city’s mayor.
We caught up with Hugh on his recent whistlestop visit to Sydney, where he’s been checking in with the local SXSW Sydney team. We discussed small talk with the Obamas, real-life Jurassic Park, and what to expect from SXSW Sydney.
Welcome to Sydney! Have you spent much time here?
No, I haven’t! This is my first extended trip to Sydney. It’s been great to experience the city this week, eat some great food and speak to lots of people. Last night I was lucky enough to go to one of the experiential dinners as part of Vivid Sydney.
I’ve also walked a lot around the footprint of the event. We’re excited that this replicates what we’ve structured in Austin very closely—an event you can move very easily by foot from one thing to another. You can go to an activation here that’s showcasing the latest AI strategy, then go next door to an event that’s talking about innovation in food, then health tech is next door.
It’s about bringing together very different industries but understanding that, at its root, creativity is what unites all these things. When those kinds of connections happen across creative industries, they can be extremely powerful and that’s always been our formula for success.
Why did you choose Sydney for your first SXSW outside of North America?
This is our first SXSW event outside of North America, but we have done SXSW-ish events—one in Frankfurt, one in Stockholm—where we worked with Mercedes. But this is much bigger and it’s the first time we’ve ever done another event that’s got the SxSW name in it.
We’ve been approached a lot about doing an event outside of Austin. We began to speak with various players in Australia pre-pandemic and the more we had these conversations the more the fit seemed like a good one. It’s a long flight from Austin to Australia so we didn’t feel like we’d be pulling away an audience that would be attending the Austin event. On the contrary, we think we would be expanding the presence of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Rim by doing this.
Sydney also matches Austin in a lot of ways: it has a very strong creative culture and a very strong tech industry. We also like how big the city is, and how much room that gives us to connect with people. Another strong factor here is how enthusiastic the reception has been. We think it’s a great match and we think it will open up a completely new audience of people coming to Sydney in October, and then a portion of those people perhaps choosing to come to Austin in March. Certainly being here this week has reinforced all these feelings at my end about how much energy, enthusiasm, and excitement there is here.
SXSW Sydney has been confirmed as an annual event for the next five years. Do you have any other expansion plans?
Who knows what happens long-term? As much energy, enthusiasm, and manpower as there is here, it’s going to take a lot to get this off the ground. And if that works, maybe five or 10 years down the line there might be an opportunity to replicate this somewhere else. We definitely wouldn’t do something else in the APAC region—it would be some other corner of the world. But that’s far, far, far in the future. All we’re focused on now is trying to make this event as compelling and exciting and as big a success as possible.
You’re taking a festival to the other side of the planet. What have been the toughest challenges you’ve faced while organising SXSW Sydney?
One of the biggest challenges we face here is that Austin has been fortunate enough to grow over 30 years. There will definitely be comparisons between Austin and Sydney and we’ll have to manage those expectations a little.
I think Sydney will be a success if it follows a lot of what Austin does but also develops its own personality which matches the personality of the city. It’s similar to Austin in a lot of ways, but very unique in a lot of ways. What we’ve always emphasised in Austin is the power of massive creativity and particularly when you bring creative people in from various different industries and people who don’t normally interact.
My strong advice to the Sydney organisers has been to follow a lot of what we’ve done in Austin but figure out how it works in this particular city. As long as you’re using that north star of massive creativity, power of innovation, power of connections, power of inspiration, and optimism, I think you’ll have something really powerful here.
The SXSW program is always a huge assortment of different types of creatives, entrepreneurs, and technologists. How do you go about curating the line-up?
For roughly the last 15 years in Austin, we’ve had a process where we accept speaking proposals from the community. In Austin we call that the Panel Picker, in Sydney we call it Session Select. My brain is pretty small so alliteration works well for me! We get a lot of the content through these proposals, but at the same time, you do have this dream list of folks you want to reach out to, and you’re hoping that their schedules align with the event.
What has been one of the big formulas for success in Austin has been this mix of well-known, established names. We’ve had Bruce Springsteen (I’m a huge Bruce Springsteen fan so of course I’ll say Bruce Springsteen) plus the 30 people who might be the next Bruce Springsteen that you haven’t heard of yet.
What we very much specialise in at SXSW in Austin, and I think Sydney is committed to this formula, is discovery: finding something you weren’t expecting at all and it totally blowing you away. When I think about some of the best memories I’ve had at SXSW, some of them are seeing the big name speakers—Bruce Springsteen, Barack Obama, whatever—but a lot are when you stumble into a room and it’s a punk band from China and you’re like, “Who knew?” Or a heavy metal band from Scandinavia and you’re like, “Did that makes sense? I have no idea but it's very cool”.
It all flows into this idea of bringing different kinds of creative people together from all over the world and putting them in a city that celebrates creativity and watching all the magic things happen.
You’ve already announced some of the lineup for Sydney. Is there a particular event or speaker you’re looking forward to most?
We’ve not announced all the content for Sydney yet, but from the stuff we have announced, there are a couple of speakers that have been at SXSW before and I’m excited that they’ll be part of this.
One is a woman named Amy Webb who has become one of the most popular speakers at SXSW over the last decade—not simply because her last name is Webb at a tech event! She annually delivers this report on what she sees as the 10 most important tech trends for the coming year. And these aren’t just pie in the sky—these are put together through months and months and months of research and analytics. It’s excellent knowledge for kinds of people and industry leaders that attend the event.
Somewhat at the other end of the spectrum is a serial entrepreneur named Ben Lamm. His current startup [Colossal] is very much Jurassic Park come to life. They’re taking DNA from dinosaurs and trying to recreate them. It is incredibly wow but also asks a lot of ethical questions. And how do you avoid what happens in the second half of Jurassic Park? He spoke at the last two SXSWs about this project and it’s totally fascinating. Those are just two examples, but there are dozens and dozens of others that are doing all sorts of other neat things.
You’ve had some pretty spectacular moments at SXSW. What memory are you most proud of from past festivals?
It’s hard not to talk about 2016 when we were fortunate enough to have Barack Obama, as well as Michelle Obama, speak at SXSW—and how much of an endorsement that was for the event. Having the president talk about how important creativity is to the future of the world, and how powerful a platform SXSW is, just made us think: “You understand this event better than we do!”
Michelle Obama also spoke about empowering women and young girls through education and other opportunities. I remember meeting her in the reception line before she went on stage. She said: “Thank you for putting up with me and my husband this week.” I said, “It’s OK, you weren’t too much of an asshole. Don’t worry!”
It led to us doing an event working with the White House in Washington DC called South by South Lawn. That whole experience was just amazing and magical—how it came together after years of work but also somewhat unexpectedly.
But that said, I’ve got tons of other incredible memories of famous people I’ve met, less famous people I’ve met, and friendships I’ve created. The most reward I get out of the event is when people come up to me and say it’s been the highlight of their year, or they launched their company here, or something they’ve seen here has given them inspiration. To work at an event that has that power and impact on lives is really, really thrilling and something that I love to do.
Keen to check out SXSW Sydney? Head over here to read our guide to the festival.
Image credit: SXSW and SXSW Sydney