Texas launch pad takes off

IT’S EASY to see why South By Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) has become the destination of choice for tech companies and brands launching a new product or service.

After all, SXSWi is where the now ubiquitous Twitter and Foursquare first appeared on many radars and confirmed the event’s link with new innovations.

Such an association is what helped to draw 25,000 delegates to Austin this year, an attendance which was 27 per cent up on last year’s conference.

While the conference has been taking place since 1994 (when it was known as SXSW Multimedia), SXSWi has really become a must-attend in the last few years for anyone keen to divine the comings and goings of the tech business.

And, in even more recent times, the big corporate tech brands from Microsoft to IBM have arrived by the dozen to piggyback on an event which brings so many influential people to the same place.

While SXSWi may have enjoyed the most successful run of its tenure with the advent of social media, not all successful start-ups in that space have required its help.

A case in point is Pinterest, the pinboard-style site for sharing photos and visuals which has had an explosive growth spurt in the last six months and which didn’t bother with the SXSWi bells and whistles at launch.

Perhaps this explains the large attendance to hear Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann talk about his site in a public interview with Hunch’s Chris Dixon. The affable Silbermann, who was training to be a doctor before moving to Silicon Valley to join Google, appeared to be as surprised as everyone else with how the site has increased in popularity to now having more than 20 million users.

“Pinterest is about helping people discover things that they didn’t know they wanted,” says Silbermann, who founded Pinterest to blend his interest in collecting with technology.

A similar explanation would probably be put forward by those who were using SXSWi as a launch pad for an app, service or product which the general public doesn’t yet know they want or need.

The big winner of this year’s rumble to get noticed in the Austin jungle seems to be Highlight, an app which uses your phone’s tracking location and Facebook to tell you when your friends are nearby. That said, those promoting similar social location apps Glancee and Kismet might beg to differ.

Aside from social media companies hawking me-too products, brands offering a free lunch in return for your email address and the conference’s hundreds of panels and keynotes, it’s the opportunities for talking, meeting and networking with interested parties which makes SXSWi so valuable for many in attendance.

For Cathal Furey from Dublin-based start-up 45Sound, SXSWi is about showcasing an idea which first occurred to him at last year’s conference.

45Sound matches fans’ videos from a band’s live show with top-quality audio.

While filming a tour by Irish band And So I Watch You From Afar, Furey noticed the big difference between the band’s own audio and what was appearing in fan-generated videos online. “The band were sick of seeing videos with really bad sound from their shows online, so they gave us the audio to go with our videos. I thought the video we shot was good, but I was blown away by the audio.”

This year, the start-up, which also features John McAuley, Dan Barry and Mikel Gainza, made it to the last three in the Music Accelerator competition for new tech start-ups.

“SXSW has this amazing energy, this great buzz you get when this huge amount of really interesting people involved in tech, music, media and film come together,” says Furey. “In one day alone you meet so many people that you’d never get to meet in months – everyone from brands to audio companies checking you out.”

THIS IS SOMETHINGwhich Seán O'Sullivan from Irish start-up LocalSocial has also experienced. "Maybe it's to do with the party atmosphere or the looseness, but there are people who replied and got in touch who'd never have done so if I'd contacted them via, say, LinkedIn.

“The panels are great too, because they feature some real standout talent, and you get to spot what the US audience likes and doesn’t like about what’s coming down the tracks.”

What’s noticeable about SXSWi in recent years is the big change in terms of who is in attendance. Up until 2008, SXSWi’s audience consisted largely of developers and designers but, post-Twitter, the conference is now dominated by entrepreneurs, social media evangelists, brands and start-ups.

There’s often a wariness going on between the old and new wings, with many of the former decrying how much things have changed as SXSWi has grown, while many of the latter wonder how to make sense of the sheer scale of the event. And yes, both sides need each other, though getting them to admit that is going to be difficult.

For SXSWi itself, the task is to make the most of being the go-to event for start-ups, and the record number of attendees this reputation attracts, without being overly reliant on that sector. They need to ensure it's not a case of history repeating itself: SXSW staffers will recall only too well the difficult years for the conference after the dot.comcrash of the early 2000s wiped out much of its business.

Surviving and thriving comes down to maintaining as wide and diverse a set of speakers and topics as possible. That means looking after the people who’ve been there from the start, developing the newbies and, most of all, facilitating everyone who wants to be in Austin in the spring to discuss, debate and dissect new ideas and innovations. It’s the amount of brainfood and ideas which are generated in Austin every March which have helped the event build, develop and maintain its audience.

As SXSWi prepares to mark its 20th birthday next year, you’d probably bet the farm on them keeping that audience for some time to come.

The 20 best acts at SXSW: Jim Carroll makes his musical selection in The Ticket tomorrow