WEBVTT - The SxSW Interactive Story 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:11.880 --> 0:00:14.600 He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:17.920 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:20.760 and how the tech are You? And for today's episode, 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:23.600 I really show said how do y'all how you're doing? Because, 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:29.200 um so, I might be attending south By Southwest this year. 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:33.440 It's a big event that happens in Austin, Texas. So 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:35.920 I thought it might be cool to look back on 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:40.159 the history of south By Southwest or south By. I 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:41.879 guess if you're one of the cool kid I'm not 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:44.280 one of the cool kids. I say south By Southwest 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:50.360 every single time. It's often designated as s X s W. 0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:54.120 The X is and LORI case and everything else is capitalized. 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:57.760 Um yeah, I just called it south By Southwest because again, 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:00.120 not cool. This isn't news to you, you know it, 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:04.240 And I thought I would chat about how it really 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:06.600 got started, especially since it all started off as a 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:10.200 music festival where a bunch of bands came together to 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:14.880 play in various Austin venues to crowd So how the 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:19.479 heck did tech get involved in that? And how did 0:01:19.480 --> 0:01:23.280 it become such a big event? For tech that arguably 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:26.960 you could say tech has taken over south By. Look 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:29.960 I did it well. The story actually begins in the 0:01:30.040 --> 0:01:34.000 nineteen sixties if we want to look at what formed 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:37.399 south By Southwest. South By Southwest would not have its 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:41.880 first actual event until the late eighties, But in the 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:48.360 nineteen sixties, Austin, Texas was really a standout in its state. 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:52.200 It wasn't like other parts of Texas. So Texas has 0:01:52.200 --> 0:01:56.600 a reputation for conservative politics and also having a very 0:01:56.640 --> 0:02:01.280 fierce independent streak that that's part of the Texas identity, 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:05.640 and Austin is a little bit different because for a 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:08.720 few reasons. One is that had a very large public 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:13.320 university still does, a very good university, the University of Texas, 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:18.160 and the culture at the University of Texas was far 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:21.280 more liberal than what you found in most of the 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:25.880 state and around. The university grew up this kind of 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:29.240 liberal community. It was a community filled with artists and 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:34.880 artisans and and craftspeople and all sorts and uh, lots 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:38.320 and lots and lots of music. So this is all 0:02:38.320 --> 0:02:42.120 starting to come together. In the nineteen sixties, Austin was 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:45.800 definitely not a conservative city, even though it's the capital 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:50.040 of Texas, and the politics going on in the Capitol 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:53.120 building might have been very, very conservative, but Austin as 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:57.280 a city just wasn't. Meanwhile, at the same time, you 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:00.440 had these small businesses that were establishing them selves in 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:04.720 the city, many of them surviving because of the proximity 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:11.040 to this university, and they started to get really, you 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:14.480 know established in bigger, bigger businesses in the tech field, 0:03:14.480 --> 0:03:17.840 in particular like IBM and you know, Texas Instruments and 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:22.000 a m D. They started to set up facilities in Texas, 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:24.320 and part of the reason for that was that they 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:28.760 wanted to lure away students who had just graduated out 0:03:28.760 --> 0:03:30.600 of the University of Texas to come in and be 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:34.240 part of the workforce, to get young talented people to 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:39.520 join and to therefore continue to stay in front of competitors. 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:43.920 So this area of Texas became very important within the 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:48.000 tech sector. Obviously, we think of Silicon Valley here in 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.400 the United States, which is in California, as being really 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:55.440 important in tech, and it is a lot of incredibly 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:59.120 influential companies grew out of Silicon Valley, but Texas was 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:02.760 also and still is very very important in the tech sector. 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:10.880 So this was part and parcel with the the evolution 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:15.320 of Austin as a community. You had a very tech savvy, 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:21.800 pretty liberal city that was expanding in the sixties and seventies. Uh, 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:24.239 the vibe of the city itself was kind of young 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:29.960 and adventurous and experimental like this again very experimental era, 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:34.799 the sixties and seventies. In fact, later on, much much later, actually, 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:41.040 the motto keep Austin Weird would emerge. That was effectively 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:45.159 coined in around two thousand, so it would come much later. 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:48.720 But that concept of keeping Austin weird, it was kind 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:53.000 of paying homage to the Austin of the sixties and 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:56.720 seventies that became this this big city of the arts 0:04:56.760 --> 0:05:01.960 and of music, and also of drinking. So in nineteen 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:07.640 seventy three, Texas changed the state laws to allow eighteen 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:10.599 year olds to drink legally. Here in the United States, 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:13.839 the legal drinking ages twenty one, but in nineteen seventy 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:18.200 three Texas lowered it to eighteen. Now it's a college town. 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:22.480 You've got all these young people who are perhaps away 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:25.520 from home for the first time in their lives. Obviously 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:31.039 drinking would become a big part of the experience of 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:35.160 going to the University of Texas and UM you had 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:38.640 a lot of bars that would rise up around this time, 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:42.479 especially around campus. So to this day, if you go 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:45.480 to Austin, Texas and you walk down, I want to say, 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:47.720 it's sixth Street. It's been a long time since I've 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:51.440 been there. But it's just like lines of bars, bar 0:05:51.560 --> 0:05:54.799 after bar, with occasional like shops and restaurants thrown into 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:58.240 but a lot of bars, and in order to kind 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:01.600 of establish themselves stand out from their competition, a lot 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:05.400 of these bars would end up also having a space 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:07.840 for musicians to play and they would have live music. 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:13.120 And so Austin, Texas became known as this live music 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.479 capital where you could go to that that town and 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:20.000 on any given night you could go to one of 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:22.960 a dozen bars and see a different band playing. So 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:26.640 my music scene became a really big deal in Austin. However, 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:28.800 by the time you get up to the nineteen eighties, 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:31.120 things were starting to change. There were a lot of 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:35.839 snags that were slowing down Austin's growth and in fact 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:40.200 impeding it in several ways. So, for one thing, there 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:43.960 was a banking crisis that ended up hitting the economy 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:49.159 in general, but Austin's economy in particular, and that really hurt. Uh. 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:53.720 Texas also lost out on that drinking age thing because 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.320 during the Reagan administration there was a federal law pass 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:00.880 that set the national drinking age to twenty one, so 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:05.160 then you don't have the eighteen year olds allowed to 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:08.520 go into bars and drink anymore, which obviously meant that 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:11.160 there was a big hit to the bar scene around 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:15.520 the University of Texas, and this really had a pretty 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:18.720 big impact on Austin's local economy. But then a group 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:23.480 of folks came up with one way to potentially help 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:28.240 Austin regain some of its its footing and bring more 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:31.680 attention to the city itself. So, like I said, the 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:35.120 city had already established that it was a very active 0:07:35.200 --> 0:07:39.040 and important music scene, but for the most part, the 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:40.800 only people who knew about it were the people who 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:43.720 lived in Austin. So you had like the college students 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:47.480 and the locals the townies who knew about the music scene, 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:50.400 but anywhere outside of Austin it just wasn't looked at 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:54.560 as a music city. So the thought was, maybe we 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:58.440 could throw a music festival and attract more people to 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:02.040 the city and and uh, some movers and shakers in 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:05.600 the Austin scene would start meeting at the Austin Chronicle, 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:09.360 the newspaper in the city, and the meetings were really 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:12.640 kind of like top secret because they were really kind 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:14.920 of putting their heads together on what would be the 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:17.840 best way to do this that could potentially get us 0:08:17.840 --> 0:08:21.600 some more attention. Among the brainstormers, there was a guy 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:26.400 named Louis J. Myers. He was a manager for various 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:29.040 musicians and artists, so he came in there from that 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:33.040 business perspective. You also had Louis Black, not the comedian, 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:37.160 but rather an editor for the Austin Chronicle. You had 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:39.920 Roland Swinson, who would go on to become CEO of 0:08:39.960 --> 0:08:42.800 south By Southwest and then later on the executive chairman, 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:44.720 and he had a few others as well. And so 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:47.880 they would meet and start brainstorming about this idea for 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:51.840 a music festival. And they decided that if they were 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:53.800 going to have a music festival, they wanted to make 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:56.200 sure that they named it in such a way that 0:08:56.240 --> 0:09:01.880 it represented the region and did not take it Austin centric. 0:09:02.200 --> 0:09:04.760 Even though the festival was going to take place in Austin. 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:07.400 They didn't want to call it like the Austin Music 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:10.640 Festival because they were worried that that wouldn't attract people 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:13.240 from out of town, it wouldn't accomplish the goals they 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:15.160 had set out, which was to kind of raise the 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:18.880 profile of Austin and at least the regional, if not 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:25.440 nation estimation. Right. So, after much debate, they decided they 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:29.600 would call this new music festival south By Southwest. They 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:34.040 obviously took inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock's film north By Northwest, 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:37.719 but it made sense like they would feature a lot 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:41.080 of musicians, a lot of musical acts that grew out 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:44.839 of the south and now the Southwestern areas UH and 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:46.960 in fact, a lot of the bands that have played 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:51.440 there over the years are ones that I saw in 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:55.320 little local establishments here when they were just starting out. 0:09:55.679 --> 0:09:59.960 So they announced this intention to have a music fest 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:04.000 in October nine six. The actual event would take place 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:09.480 the following March March of nine and according to all 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:12.319 the histories I can see, although it blows my mind 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:14.840 if this is really true, it really is strange, but 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:17.839 all the histories I saw said that when they were 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:21.480 putting this together, the founders thought that maybe they would 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:24.440 attract around a hundred fifty people to come to this 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:27.080 music festival. Now, the reason why I find that hard 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:31.120 to believe is that this music festival also had one 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:36.280 seventy seven groups and artists performing at fifteen different venues 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:39.200 across the city. So, in other words, I find it 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:41.960 hard to believe that they were putting together an event 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:48.679 where the musicians would out number the people attending the festival. 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:53.400 Not to be fair, I have also been in theatrical 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:57.960 productions that ended up that way where the cast of 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:00.840 the show I was in out number or the audience 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:04.120 that attended on a given night, which I always found 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:08.200 kind of sadly comforting because I thought, yeah, well, even 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:11.240 if the show does go really bad, we have the 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:15.320 advantage in numbers, we could probably take them. That actually 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:17.800 did happen to me a few times with a staged 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:22.520 production of A Clockwork Orange. Um, in case you're curious, Yes, 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:24.760 I was in the stage production of a Clockwork Orange. No, 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:28.920 you cannot see the pictures because I was in leather 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:32.199 chaps and a mess shirt. And I played victims too 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:36.079 through seventeen. That was essentially the characters I played. Anyway, 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.760 A hundred fifty people did not show up that first 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:45.760 south By Southwest. Instead, it was seven hundred people around there, 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:51.160 so wildly successful considering what the organizers were first envisioning. 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:57.000 I still think that estimated hundred fifty attendees was incredibly pessimistic. 0:11:57.960 --> 0:11:59.959 It's hard for me to believe that, but seven hundred 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:03.480 not bad. Still pretty modest really when you think about 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:05.600 music festivals. I mean a lot of the music festivals 0:12:05.600 --> 0:12:11.360 here in Atlanta, especially the big outdoor ones, can bring more, 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:16.000 well more than ten thousand people for a single performance. Now, 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:18.720 I took a look at some of the acts that 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:22.680 played in nineteen seven. The only one that jumped out 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:25.520 at me that I recognized right away was the Reverend 0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:28.320 Horton Heat because I saw his band play live when 0:12:28.400 --> 0:12:32.160 I was in college in Athens, Georgia. So I've seen 0:12:32.200 --> 0:12:34.240 the Reverend Horton Heat live, which was a great show. 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:38.200 By the way, it's nice, small venue, it was high energy. 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:40.840 But he was the only act that I recognized in 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:43.040 a in a short list. I didn't see the full 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:50.440 seven breakdown though, So this event was big enough to 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:54.040 gain enough success in and convince the organizers that this 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:55.440 was a good idea and they should make it a 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:59.680 yearly thing. They also even had a keynote speakers even 0:12:59.679 --> 0:13:03.440 at that first event. It's it's weird to think about 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:07.080 because most music festivals don't have a keynote speaker, but 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:10.480 south By Southwest did right from the very beginning. Their 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:14.960 keynote for nine seven was Huey mo that's m. E. 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:18.520 A u X. And he was a record producer, so 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:20.640 he was kind of there to talk about sort of 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:22.840 the business side of things. That's another thing is that 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:26.720 south By Southwest has always had a little bit of 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:30.640 like a professional conference vibe to it as well. So 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:33.599 you've got like the music festival stuff and all the performances, 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:37.760 but you also have the various panels and conversations and 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:42.800 interviews that are meant to increase awareness and understanding of 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:49.640 business elements and ways to have to go about monetizing 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:55.120 or leveraging your creativity in ways that are practical and productive. Okay, 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:58.679 so that's setting the very basics there. Over the following 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:00.880 years they had a lot of other mus schol artists 0:14:00.920 --> 0:14:03.439 that would include folks like Billy Ray Cyrus and his 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:07.800 achy bricky Heart Mojo Nixon, who tells you that Elvis 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:13.520 is everywhere. Jen Blossoms, the del Lords, I love them, 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:17.280 Bighead Todd and the Monsters, the Chicks formerly known as 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:21.040 the Dixie Chicks, Driving and Crying from my own hometown. 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:25.760 Hometown Boys represent Bear Naked Ladies, Bella Fleck and the 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:29.840 Fleck Tones, Southern Culture on the Skids. Love that band 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:32.960 Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet. They're the band that 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:36.440 actually created the theme song to the Kids in the Hall. 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:41.200 If you ever watch that show, Cracker, Lisa Lobe Ever, Clear, 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:45.160 Meat Puppets, tons and tons and tons of bands. This 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:49.200 is just up into the early nineties because until the 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:54.320 mid nineties, south By Southwest was just a music festival. 0:14:54.560 --> 0:15:00.160 But all that would change in and I'll explain more 0:14:59.800 --> 0:15:12.000 at we come back from this break. Okay, before the break, 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:15.920 I mentioned that south By Southwest was this growing music 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:20.200 festival was getting really big over the years. By they 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:24.520 had more than four hundred sixty musical acts across the 0:15:24.560 --> 0:15:28.680 various venues around Austin participating in this festival. So remember 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:31.120 it's like a hundred seventy seven for the first year, 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:35.800 four hundred sixty by um, not even a full decade 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:39.360 into the festival yet, and it was really neat. You know, 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:41.880 for one price, you could get admission to all the 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:45.320 shows that you could dream of seeing based upon their 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:48.600 schedules and your ability to get around town. But yeah, 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:51.640 you could by this one admission and go see as 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:54.280 many bands as you want throughout the festival. Well, in 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:59.760 the festival expanded beyond just adding more musical acts. This 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:02.360 was also the year that the festival grew to include 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:08.480 films and multi media content. Now, remember this is so 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:11.520 the World Wide Web is really just a couple of 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:14.520 years old at this point, hardly anyone knows about it, 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:18.640 and and very few people in the mainstream, very few 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:25.320 households actually have Internet connectivity. That just wasn't a normal thing. Yet. 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:28.880 You had people in college who were aware that the 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:30.920 Internet was a thing, and that the Web was a thing. 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:33.200 You had people in business and in the military and 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:36.520 government organizations who were aware of it, but your average 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:40.520 person just wasn't. So to go this early in and 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:43.720 add the multimedia component was it was interesting. It also 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:47.600 does not surprise me that most of that focus wasn't 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:52.320 on the connectivity side of things, because that just hadn't 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:56.120 really taken hold in people's imaginations. Yet. It was more 0:16:56.320 --> 0:17:00.920 in things like programming and video game stuff that lived 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:03.320 on a computer but did not connect to an internet. 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:08.439 The keynote speaker for the interactive side of things was 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:13.600 Richard Garriott. Richard Garriott creates video games. He's probably best 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:17.880 known for creating the Ultima series of computer games. If 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:20.879 you're not familiar with Ultima whole, that was a really, 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:27.040 really influential series of fantasy computer role playing games. It 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:32.160 introduced things like morality into computer role playing games. Earlier, 0:17:32.520 --> 0:17:36.119 it was essentially kind of an amoral hack and slash 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:39.040 kind of approach to to game design, but starting with 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:43.119 Ultimate four, Richard Garriott really started to add in, no, 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:45.840 you have to make the right kinds of choices in 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:49.560 order to progress in the game. Interesting approach, very innovative 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:53.640 at the time. Garritt himself is also known as Lord British. 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:57.280 That's the name of his fictional alter ego within the 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:02.960 Ultimate series. He's the mostly evolent ruler of Britannia, and 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:06.280 garyat has got a really fascinating background. He's the son 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:09.440 of scientists, one of whom was an astronaut who actually 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:12.640 spent a couple of months aboard the sky Lab space 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:15.040 station in the seventies and also was in Space Lab 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:21.040 in the eighties, and yeah he's he himself was extremely 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:25.560 successful in the nineties as a video game creator and 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:29.040 a business owner. Famously, Richard Garytt himself would go up 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:32.320 to space and visit the International Space Station as a 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:35.119 private citizen, one of the few people, like one of 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:38.879 seven I think whoever, were able to do that in 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:43.680 the era before private space industry. This was back when 0:18:44.119 --> 0:18:46.959 you had to work with either NASA or Russia in 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:49.680 order to have a chance of going up there. And yeah, 0:18:50.040 --> 0:18:53.400 he did it anyway, just as a point of reference. 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:58.000 The music keynote speaker that year was Johnny Cash, So 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:01.040 talk about an influential our is So you had Richard 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:04.280 Garriott delivering a keynote for the multi media side and 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:08.280 Johnny Cash doing the same for the music side. So 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:10.720 by the time you get up to nine, south By 0:19:10.720 --> 0:19:14.520 Southwest was now a music and media conference for real 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:18.280 zas and it included film as well, so people would 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:21.080 come and talk about film, They do panels about film, 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:24.879 and they would premiere films at south By Southwest or 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:29.119 sometimes screen do special screenings of films. And it was 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:31.800 growing up enough so that the festival needed to spread 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:37.240 out a little bit, so in nine Film and Media 0:19:37.359 --> 0:19:41.119 Conference would split over into a separate event and Richard 0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:46.320 Garriott would again deliver a keynote. In In nine, the 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:49.520 multi media part of south By Southwest got a rebrand. 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:53.520 This is when it became known as south By Southwest Interactive, 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:57.439 which is what it's still called today. And there were 0:19:57.480 --> 0:20:01.560 some really important guests that year. There was Thomas Dolby 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:06.960 and Jared Lanier. So Thomas Dolby I think of Thomas 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:10.320 Dolby as the musician behind She blinded me with science, 0:20:10.760 --> 0:20:13.680 but has done tons and tons of work in tech. 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:18.880 And then Jared Lanier, He's the guy who coined the 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:23.679 whole virtual reality concept. He didn't invent virtual reality, but 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:28.080 he coined the idea, he coined the phrase, and is 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:31.800 a visionary in that field. No pun intended, but Jared 0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:36.800 Lanier did a lot of fundamental foundational work for virtual 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:41.920 reality as well as other technology related stuff. And by 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:45.280 this time folks were starting to really talk about the 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:50.199 power of the Internet. Like by, people were starting to 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:54.040 really catch on and it was expanding beyond the little 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:57.560 niche communities that had been aware of the Internet and 0:20:57.640 --> 0:21:02.800 been jazzed about it, but by you started to see excitement, 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:09.200 right the idea of oh, could be a really big 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:11.879 year for the Internet, and there were discussions about stuff 0:21:11.920 --> 0:21:15.840 like online communities, which wouldn't have happened a few years earlier, 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:20.160 but now there was this recognition that an online community 0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:23.000 could be a very powerful thing. Film was really hitting 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:26.359 hard to by the late nineties. Who had Quentin Tarantino there, 0:21:26.400 --> 0:21:30.640 you had might judge there. Brendan Fraser was there during 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:33.480 his first run as being a beloved actor, and I'm 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:36.680 glad to see him getting a lot more attention and 0:21:37.200 --> 0:21:43.800 acknowledgement today. When you get up to Mark Cuban the 0:21:44.720 --> 0:21:49.560 entrepreneur would give a keynote. Philip Glass, the musician, the composer, 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:53.320 was also one of the interactive guests that year. Oddly enough, 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:55.480 not just you know sometimes we see this too where 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:59.399 there's a lot of crossover between the different tracks of 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:03.119 program So having Philip Glass appeared to talk to the 0:22:03.119 --> 0:22:08.280 interactive crowd was interesting. Also, south By Southwest held a 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:14.840 panel about streaming video technology. Now at the time, no 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:19.080 one was really sure if streaming video was going to work. Right, 0:22:19.200 --> 0:22:23.359 Like at that point, if you had a video online. 0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:26.119 It was more likely just a file sitting on a 0:22:26.200 --> 0:22:30.400 database and someone would have to go and download that 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:34.760 video to their computer and then use a video playing 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:38.479 program of some sort to access the video file and 0:22:38.520 --> 0:22:42.120 watch it, because there weren't a lot of options for streaming. 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:45.439 But in nine they were actually talking about that at 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:47.600 south By Southwest. The reason I bring this up is 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:49.639 because one of the important things to remember is that 0:22:49.680 --> 0:22:53.600 while south By can be a hype machine, it can 0:22:53.640 --> 0:22:56.320 be kind of like people all blow and smoke up 0:22:56.320 --> 0:23:01.000 each other's rear ends for seven to nine days, it 0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:04.879 can also be a genuine place for real discussion about 0:23:04.920 --> 0:23:10.000 stuff that's important, that is unfolding, that's at it's very 0:23:10.400 --> 0:23:12.960 you know, earliest stages, so we don't really know where 0:23:13.000 --> 0:23:15.560 it's going to go. And in ninety nine, no one 0:23:15.840 --> 0:23:18.360 was predicting that YouTube was going to be a thing. 0:23:18.440 --> 0:23:20.960 YouTube wouldn't launch until two thousand five. That was six 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:26.800 years later, so really prescient of the panelists to talk 0:23:26.840 --> 0:23:29.600 about streaming video all the way back in n I 0:23:29.640 --> 0:23:33.000 would have been really interested to attend that particular discussion 0:23:33.000 --> 0:23:35.960 and see what they had to say, because I mean, 0:23:36.000 --> 0:23:40.199 today you look around, there's so many different streaming services 0:23:40.200 --> 0:23:43.760 like that's where the focus of entertainment is today. I 0:23:43.800 --> 0:23:46.760 don't know that anyone in ninety nine would have envisioned 0:23:46.960 --> 0:23:51.200 what we have at our disposal now, fascinating stuff. By 0:23:51.280 --> 0:23:55.200 two thousand one, the Festival the Music Side had more 0:23:55.200 --> 0:23:59.439 than a thousand artists playing at forty eight venues across 0:23:59.480 --> 0:24:03.600 the city. Two thousand one, so more than two decades ago, 0:24:03.960 --> 0:24:06.199 and it had more than a thousand artists. That's just 0:24:07.240 --> 0:24:12.720 so huge. I can't even imagine being in Austin and 0:24:12.800 --> 0:24:16.720 wanting to see, you know, various groups play and having 0:24:16.720 --> 0:24:20.560 to decide between that many. That's like I get a 0:24:21.040 --> 0:24:24.560 choice paralysis all the time. Analysis paralysis, I guess you 0:24:24.560 --> 0:24:27.560 can call it. Well, if you give me too many options, 0:24:27.560 --> 0:24:30.960 I kind of shut down because I just can't. After 0:24:31.000 --> 0:24:35.000 you get past three or four, I start to panic. Uh. 0:24:35.080 --> 0:24:38.200 I complained about this a lot to my partner, who 0:24:38.640 --> 0:24:41.760 well often send me thirty to forty choices at a time, 0:24:41.760 --> 0:24:44.680 and I just tell her, like, this is not good 0:24:44.720 --> 0:24:47.320 for me. I can't handle it. So I can't even 0:24:47.320 --> 0:24:50.200 imagine looking at a different thousand different acts and try 0:24:50.240 --> 0:24:52.199 to figure out where I'm going to go see. But 0:24:52.280 --> 0:24:56.280 two thousand one also saw some interesting speakers. The founder 0:24:56.320 --> 0:25:01.520 of Napster had attended and he gave an interview over 0:25:01.560 --> 0:25:12.200 at Interactive. Remember, Napster was truly a an important UH service. 0:25:12.720 --> 0:25:17.040 In the early two thousands, Napster was seen as an 0:25:17.200 --> 0:25:20.720 enormous threat to the established music industry, which is interesting 0:25:20.760 --> 0:25:24.400 that they would then have him appear at south By 0:25:24.400 --> 0:25:29.400 Southwest because obviously, like he was like uh most wanted 0:25:29.640 --> 0:25:32.720 for all the different music studios that wanted to sue 0:25:33.000 --> 0:25:36.399 Napster out of existence, which did eventually happen. But it 0:25:36.480 --> 0:25:40.359 really also brought to light the usefulness of peer to 0:25:40.400 --> 0:25:44.719 peer technology and it it really demonstrated that there was 0:25:45.280 --> 0:25:49.280 a real need to address digital music in a way 0:25:49.640 --> 0:25:53.280 that made sense for consumers two thousand one. This is 0:25:53.320 --> 0:25:55.280 before we get to things like the launch of the 0:25:55.320 --> 0:26:00.359