Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are You? And for today's episode,
Speaker 1: I really show said how do y'all how you're doing? Because,
Speaker 1: um so, I might be attending south By Southwest this year.
Speaker 1: It's a big event that happens in Austin, Texas. So
Speaker 1: I thought it might be cool to look back on
Speaker 1: the history of south By Southwest or south By. I
Speaker 1: guess if you're one of the cool kid I'm not
Speaker 1: one of the cool kids. I say south By Southwest
Speaker 1: every single time. It's often designated as s X s W.
Speaker 1: The X is and LORI case and everything else is capitalized.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I just called it south By Southwest because again,
Speaker 1: not cool. This isn't news to you, you know it,
Speaker 1: And I thought I would chat about how it really
Speaker 1: got started, especially since it all started off as a
Speaker 1: music festival where a bunch of bands came together to
Speaker 1: play in various Austin venues to crowd So how the
Speaker 1: heck did tech get involved in that? And how did
Speaker 1: it become such a big event? For tech that arguably
Speaker 1: you could say tech has taken over south By. Look
Speaker 1: I did it well. The story actually begins in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties if we want to look at what formed
Speaker 1: south By Southwest. South By Southwest would not have its
Speaker 1: first actual event until the late eighties, But in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, Austin, Texas was really a standout in its state.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like other parts of Texas. So Texas has
Speaker 1: a reputation for conservative politics and also having a very
Speaker 1: fierce independent streak that that's part of the Texas identity,
Speaker 1: and Austin is a little bit different because for a
Speaker 1: few reasons. One is that had a very large public
Speaker 1: university still does, a very good university, the University of Texas,
Speaker 1: and the culture at the University of Texas was far
Speaker 1: more liberal than what you found in most of the
Speaker 1: state and around. The university grew up this kind of
Speaker 1: liberal community. It was a community filled with artists and
Speaker 1: artisans and and craftspeople and all sorts and uh, lots
Speaker 1: and lots and lots of music. So this is all
Speaker 1: starting to come together. In the nineteen sixties, Austin was
Speaker 1: definitely not a conservative city, even though it's the capital
Speaker 1: of Texas, and the politics going on in the Capitol
Speaker 1: building might have been very, very conservative, but Austin as
Speaker 1: a city just wasn't. Meanwhile, at the same time, you
Speaker 1: had these small businesses that were establishing them selves in
Speaker 1: the city, many of them surviving because of the proximity
Speaker 1: to this university, and they started to get really, you
Speaker 1: know established in bigger, bigger businesses in the tech field,
Speaker 1: in particular like IBM and you know, Texas Instruments and
Speaker 1: a m D. They started to set up facilities in Texas,
Speaker 1: and part of the reason for that was that they
Speaker 1: wanted to lure away students who had just graduated out
Speaker 1: of the University of Texas to come in and be
Speaker 1: part of the workforce, to get young talented people to
Speaker 1: join and to therefore continue to stay in front of competitors.
Speaker 1: So this area of Texas became very important within the
Speaker 1: tech sector. Obviously, we think of Silicon Valley here in
Speaker 1: the United States, which is in California, as being really
Speaker 1: important in tech, and it is a lot of incredibly
Speaker 1: influential companies grew out of Silicon Valley, but Texas was
Speaker 1: also and still is very very important in the tech sector.
Speaker 1: So this was part and parcel with the the evolution
Speaker 1: of Austin as a community. You had a very tech savvy,
Speaker 1: pretty liberal city that was expanding in the sixties and seventies. Uh,
Speaker 1: the vibe of the city itself was kind of young
Speaker 1: and adventurous and experimental like this again very experimental era,
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies. In fact, later on, much much later, actually,
Speaker 1: the motto keep Austin Weird would emerge. That was effectively
Speaker 1: coined in around two thousand, so it would come much later.
Speaker 1: But that concept of keeping Austin weird, it was kind
Speaker 1: of paying homage to the Austin of the sixties and
Speaker 1: seventies that became this this big city of the arts
Speaker 1: and of music, and also of drinking. So in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, Texas changed the state laws to allow eighteen
Speaker 1: year olds to drink legally. Here in the United States,
Speaker 1: the legal drinking ages twenty one, but in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: three Texas lowered it to eighteen. Now it's a college town.
Speaker 1: You've got all these young people who are perhaps away
Speaker 1: from home for the first time in their lives. Obviously
Speaker 1: drinking would become a big part of the experience of
Speaker 1: going to the University of Texas and UM you had
Speaker 1: a lot of bars that would rise up around this time,
Speaker 1: especially around campus. So to this day, if you go
Speaker 1: to Austin, Texas and you walk down, I want to say,
Speaker 1: it's sixth Street. It's been a long time since I've
Speaker 1: been there. But it's just like lines of bars, bar
Speaker 1: after bar, with occasional like shops and restaurants thrown into
Speaker 1: but a lot of bars, and in order to kind
Speaker 1: of establish themselves stand out from their competition, a lot
Speaker 1: of these bars would end up also having a space
Speaker 1: for musicians to play and they would have live music.
Speaker 1: And so Austin, Texas became known as this live music
Speaker 1: capital where you could go to that that town and
Speaker 1: on any given night you could go to one of
Speaker 1: a dozen bars and see a different band playing. So
Speaker 1: my music scene became a really big deal in Austin. However,
Speaker 1: by the time you get up to the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: things were starting to change. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: snags that were slowing down Austin's growth and in fact
Speaker 1: impeding it in several ways. So, for one thing, there
Speaker 1: was a banking crisis that ended up hitting the economy
Speaker 1: in general, but Austin's economy in particular, and that really hurt. Uh.
Speaker 1: Texas also lost out on that drinking age thing because
Speaker 1: during the Reagan administration there was a federal law pass
Speaker 1: that set the national drinking age to twenty one, so
Speaker 1: then you don't have the eighteen year olds allowed to
Speaker 1: go into bars and drink anymore, which obviously meant that
Speaker 1: there was a big hit to the bar scene around
Speaker 1: the University of Texas, and this really had a pretty
Speaker 1: big impact on Austin's local economy. But then a group
Speaker 1: of folks came up with one way to potentially help
Speaker 1: Austin regain some of its its footing and bring more
Speaker 1: attention to the city itself. So, like I said, the
Speaker 1: city had already established that it was a very active
Speaker 1: and important music scene, but for the most part, the
Speaker 1: only people who knew about it were the people who
Speaker 1: lived in Austin. So you had like the college students
Speaker 1: and the locals the townies who knew about the music scene,
Speaker 1: but anywhere outside of Austin it just wasn't looked at
Speaker 1: as a music city. So the thought was, maybe we
Speaker 1: could throw a music festival and attract more people to
Speaker 1: the city and and uh, some movers and shakers in
Speaker 1: the Austin scene would start meeting at the Austin Chronicle,
Speaker 1: the newspaper in the city, and the meetings were really
Speaker 1: kind of like top secret because they were really kind
Speaker 1: of putting their heads together on what would be the
Speaker 1: best way to do this that could potentially get us
Speaker 1: some more attention. Among the brainstormers, there was a guy
Speaker 1: named Louis J. Myers. He was a manager for various
Speaker 1: musicians and artists, so he came in there from that
Speaker 1: business perspective. You also had Louis Black, not the comedian,
Speaker 1: but rather an editor for the Austin Chronicle. You had
Speaker 1: Roland Swinson, who would go on to become CEO of
Speaker 1: south By Southwest and then later on the executive chairman,
Speaker 1: and he had a few others as well. And so
Speaker 1: they would meet and start brainstorming about this idea for
Speaker 1: a music festival. And they decided that if they were
Speaker 1: going to have a music festival, they wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure that they named it in such a way that
Speaker 1: it represented the region and did not take it Austin centric.
Speaker 1: Even though the festival was going to take place in Austin.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to call it like the Austin Music
Speaker 1: Festival because they were worried that that wouldn't attract people
Speaker 1: from out of town, it wouldn't accomplish the goals they
Speaker 1: had set out, which was to kind of raise the
Speaker 1: profile of Austin and at least the regional, if not
Speaker 1: nation estimation. Right. So, after much debate, they decided they
Speaker 1: would call this new music festival south By Southwest. They
Speaker 1: obviously took inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock's film north By Northwest,
Speaker 1: but it made sense like they would feature a lot
Speaker 1: of musicians, a lot of musical acts that grew out
Speaker 1: of the south and now the Southwestern areas UH and
Speaker 1: in fact, a lot of the bands that have played
Speaker 1: there over the years are ones that I saw in
Speaker 1: little local establishments here when they were just starting out.
Speaker 1: So they announced this intention to have a music fest
Speaker 1: in October nine six. The actual event would take place
Speaker 1: the following March March of nine and according to all
Speaker 1: the histories I can see, although it blows my mind
Speaker 1: if this is really true, it really is strange, but
Speaker 1: all the histories I saw said that when they were
Speaker 1: putting this together, the founders thought that maybe they would
Speaker 1: attract around a hundred fifty people to come to this
Speaker 1: music festival. Now, the reason why I find that hard
Speaker 1: to believe is that this music festival also had one
Speaker 1: seventy seven groups and artists performing at fifteen different venues
Speaker 1: across the city. So, in other words, I find it
Speaker 1: hard to believe that they were putting together an event
Speaker 1: where the musicians would out number the people attending the festival.
Speaker 1: Not to be fair, I have also been in theatrical
Speaker 1: productions that ended up that way where the cast of
Speaker 1: the show I was in out number or the audience
Speaker 1: that attended on a given night, which I always found
Speaker 1: kind of sadly comforting because I thought, yeah, well, even
Speaker 1: if the show does go really bad, we have the
Speaker 1: advantage in numbers, we could probably take them. That actually
Speaker 1: did happen to me a few times with a staged
Speaker 1: production of A Clockwork Orange. Um, in case you're curious, Yes,
Speaker 1: I was in the stage production of a Clockwork Orange. No,
Speaker 1: you cannot see the pictures because I was in leather
Speaker 1: chaps and a mess shirt. And I played victims too
Speaker 1: through seventeen. That was essentially the characters I played. Anyway,
Speaker 1: A hundred fifty people did not show up that first
Speaker 1: south By Southwest. Instead, it was seven hundred people around there,
Speaker 1: so wildly successful considering what the organizers were first envisioning.
Speaker 1: I still think that estimated hundred fifty attendees was incredibly pessimistic.
Speaker 1: It's hard for me to believe that, but seven hundred
Speaker 1: not bad. Still pretty modest really when you think about
Speaker 1: music festivals. I mean a lot of the music festivals
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, especially the big outdoor ones, can bring more,
Speaker 1: well more than ten thousand people for a single performance. Now,
Speaker 1: I took a look at some of the acts that
Speaker 1: played in nineteen seven. The only one that jumped out
Speaker 1: at me that I recognized right away was the Reverend
Speaker 1: Horton Heat because I saw his band play live when
Speaker 1: I was in college in Athens, Georgia. So I've seen
Speaker 1: the Reverend Horton Heat live, which was a great show.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's nice, small venue, it was high energy.
Speaker 1: But he was the only act that I recognized in
Speaker 1: a in a short list. I didn't see the full
Speaker 1: seven breakdown though, So this event was big enough to
Speaker 1: gain enough success in and convince the organizers that this
Speaker 1: was a good idea and they should make it a
Speaker 1: yearly thing. They also even had a keynote speakers even
Speaker 1: at that first event. It's it's weird to think about
Speaker 1: because most music festivals don't have a keynote speaker, but
Speaker 1: south By Southwest did right from the very beginning. Their
Speaker 1: keynote for nine seven was Huey mo that's m. E.
Speaker 1: A u X. And he was a record producer, so
Speaker 1: he was kind of there to talk about sort of
Speaker 1: the business side of things. That's another thing is that
Speaker 1: south By Southwest has always had a little bit of
Speaker 1: like a professional conference vibe to it as well. So
Speaker 1: you've got like the music festival stuff and all the performances,
Speaker 1: but you also have the various panels and conversations and
Speaker 1: interviews that are meant to increase awareness and understanding of
Speaker 1: business elements and ways to have to go about monetizing
Speaker 1: or leveraging your creativity in ways that are practical and productive. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's setting the very basics there. Over the following
Speaker 1: years they had a lot of other mus schol artists
Speaker 1: that would include folks like Billy Ray Cyrus and his
Speaker 1: achy bricky Heart Mojo Nixon, who tells you that Elvis
Speaker 1: is everywhere. Jen Blossoms, the del Lords, I love them,
Speaker 1: Bighead Todd and the Monsters, the Chicks formerly known as
Speaker 1: the Dixie Chicks, Driving and Crying from my own hometown.
Speaker 1: Hometown Boys represent Bear Naked Ladies, Bella Fleck and the
Speaker 1: Fleck Tones, Southern Culture on the Skids. Love that band
Speaker 1: Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet. They're the band that
Speaker 1: actually created the theme song to the Kids in the Hall.
Speaker 1: If you ever watch that show, Cracker, Lisa Lobe Ever, Clear,
Speaker 1: Meat Puppets, tons and tons and tons of bands. This
Speaker 1: is just up into the early nineties because until the
Speaker 1: mid nineties, south By Southwest was just a music festival.
Speaker 1: But all that would change in and I'll explain more
Speaker 1: at we come back from this break. Okay, before the break,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that south By Southwest was this growing music
Speaker 1: festival was getting really big over the years. By they
Speaker 1: had more than four hundred sixty musical acts across the
Speaker 1: various venues around Austin participating in this festival. So remember
Speaker 1: it's like a hundred seventy seven for the first year,
Speaker 1: four hundred sixty by um, not even a full decade
Speaker 1: into the festival yet, and it was really neat. You know,
Speaker 1: for one price, you could get admission to all the
Speaker 1: shows that you could dream of seeing based upon their
Speaker 1: schedules and your ability to get around town. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you could by this one admission and go see as
Speaker 1: many bands as you want throughout the festival. Well, in
Speaker 1: the festival expanded beyond just adding more musical acts. This
Speaker 1: was also the year that the festival grew to include
Speaker 1: films and multi media content. Now, remember this is so
Speaker 1: the World Wide Web is really just a couple of
Speaker 1: years old at this point, hardly anyone knows about it,
Speaker 1: and and very few people in the mainstream, very few
Speaker 1: households actually have Internet connectivity. That just wasn't a normal thing. Yet.
Speaker 1: You had people in college who were aware that the
Speaker 1: Internet was a thing, and that the Web was a thing.
Speaker 1: You had people in business and in the military and
Speaker 1: government organizations who were aware of it, but your average
Speaker 1: person just wasn't. So to go this early in and
Speaker 1: add the multimedia component was it was interesting. It also
Speaker 1: does not surprise me that most of that focus wasn't
Speaker 1: on the connectivity side of things, because that just hadn't
Speaker 1: really taken hold in people's imaginations. Yet. It was more
Speaker 1: in things like programming and video game stuff that lived
Speaker 1: on a computer but did not connect to an internet.
Speaker 1: The keynote speaker for the interactive side of things was
Speaker 1: Richard Garriott. Richard Garriott creates video games. He's probably best
Speaker 1: known for creating the Ultima series of computer games. If
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with Ultima whole, that was a really,
Speaker 1: really influential series of fantasy computer role playing games. It
Speaker 1: introduced things like morality into computer role playing games. Earlier,
Speaker 1: it was essentially kind of an amoral hack and slash
Speaker 1: kind of approach to to game design, but starting with
Speaker 1: Ultimate four, Richard Garriott really started to add in, no,
Speaker 1: you have to make the right kinds of choices in
Speaker 1: order to progress in the game. Interesting approach, very innovative
Speaker 1: at the time. Garritt himself is also known as Lord British.
Speaker 1: That's the name of his fictional alter ego within the
Speaker 1: Ultimate series. He's the mostly evolent ruler of Britannia, and
Speaker 1: garyat has got a really fascinating background. He's the son
Speaker 1: of scientists, one of whom was an astronaut who actually
Speaker 1: spent a couple of months aboard the sky Lab space
Speaker 1: station in the seventies and also was in Space Lab
Speaker 1: in the eighties, and yeah he's he himself was extremely
Speaker 1: successful in the nineties as a video game creator and
Speaker 1: a business owner. Famously, Richard Garytt himself would go up
Speaker 1: to space and visit the International Space Station as a
Speaker 1: private citizen, one of the few people, like one of
Speaker 1: seven I think whoever, were able to do that in
Speaker 1: the era before private space industry. This was back when
Speaker 1: you had to work with either NASA or Russia in
Speaker 1: order to have a chance of going up there. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he did it anyway, just as a point of reference.
Speaker 1: The music keynote speaker that year was Johnny Cash, So
Speaker 1: talk about an influential our is So you had Richard
Speaker 1: Garriott delivering a keynote for the multi media side and
Speaker 1: Johnny Cash doing the same for the music side. So
Speaker 1: by the time you get up to nine, south By
Speaker 1: Southwest was now a music and media conference for real
Speaker 1: zas and it included film as well, so people would
Speaker 1: come and talk about film, They do panels about film,
Speaker 1: and they would premiere films at south By Southwest or
Speaker 1: sometimes screen do special screenings of films. And it was
Speaker 1: growing up enough so that the festival needed to spread
Speaker 1: out a little bit, so in nine Film and Media
Speaker 1: Conference would split over into a separate event and Richard
Speaker 1: Garriott would again deliver a keynote. In In nine, the
Speaker 1: multi media part of south By Southwest got a rebrand.
Speaker 1: This is when it became known as south By Southwest Interactive,
Speaker 1: which is what it's still called today. And there were
Speaker 1: some really important guests that year. There was Thomas Dolby
Speaker 1: and Jared Lanier. So Thomas Dolby I think of Thomas
Speaker 1: Dolby as the musician behind She blinded me with science,
Speaker 1: but has done tons and tons of work in tech.
Speaker 1: And then Jared Lanier, He's the guy who coined the
Speaker 1: whole virtual reality concept. He didn't invent virtual reality, but
Speaker 1: he coined the idea, he coined the phrase, and is
Speaker 1: a visionary in that field. No pun intended, but Jared
Speaker 1: Lanier did a lot of fundamental foundational work for virtual
Speaker 1: reality as well as other technology related stuff. And by
Speaker 1: this time folks were starting to really talk about the
Speaker 1: power of the Internet. Like by, people were starting to
Speaker 1: really catch on and it was expanding beyond the little
Speaker 1: niche communities that had been aware of the Internet and
Speaker 1: been jazzed about it, but by you started to see excitement,
Speaker 1: right the idea of oh, could be a really big
Speaker 1: year for the Internet, and there were discussions about stuff
Speaker 1: like online communities, which wouldn't have happened a few years earlier,
Speaker 1: but now there was this recognition that an online community
Speaker 1: could be a very powerful thing. Film was really hitting
Speaker 1: hard to by the late nineties. Who had Quentin Tarantino there,
Speaker 1: you had might judge there. Brendan Fraser was there during
Speaker 1: his first run as being a beloved actor, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad to see him getting a lot more attention and
Speaker 1: acknowledgement today. When you get up to Mark Cuban the
Speaker 1: entrepreneur would give a keynote. Philip Glass, the musician, the composer,
Speaker 1: was also one of the interactive guests that year. Oddly enough,
Speaker 1: not just you know sometimes we see this too where
Speaker 1: there's a lot of crossover between the different tracks of
Speaker 1: program So having Philip Glass appeared to talk to the
Speaker 1: interactive crowd was interesting. Also, south By Southwest held a
Speaker 1: panel about streaming video technology. Now at the time, no
Speaker 1: one was really sure if streaming video was going to work. Right,
Speaker 1: Like at that point, if you had a video online.
Speaker 1: It was more likely just a file sitting on a
Speaker 1: database and someone would have to go and download that
Speaker 1: video to their computer and then use a video playing
Speaker 1: program of some sort to access the video file and
Speaker 1: watch it, because there weren't a lot of options for streaming.
Speaker 1: But in nine they were actually talking about that at
Speaker 1: south By Southwest. The reason I bring this up is
Speaker 1: because one of the important things to remember is that
Speaker 1: while south By can be a hype machine, it can
Speaker 1: be kind of like people all blow and smoke up
Speaker 1: each other's rear ends for seven to nine days, it
Speaker 1: can also be a genuine place for real discussion about
Speaker 1: stuff that's important, that is unfolding, that's at it's very
Speaker 1: you know, earliest stages, so we don't really know where
Speaker 1: it's going to go. And in ninety nine, no one
Speaker 1: was predicting that YouTube was going to be a thing.
Speaker 1: YouTube wouldn't launch until two thousand five. That was six
Speaker 1: years later, so really prescient of the panelists to talk
Speaker 1: about streaming video all the way back in n I
Speaker 1: would have been really interested to attend that particular discussion
Speaker 1: and see what they had to say, because I mean,
Speaker 1: today you look around, there's so many different streaming services
Speaker 1: like that's where the focus of entertainment is today. I
Speaker 1: don't know that anyone in ninety nine would have envisioned
Speaker 1: what we have at our disposal now, fascinating stuff. By
Speaker 1: two thousand one, the Festival the Music Side had more
Speaker 1: than a thousand artists playing at forty eight venues across
Speaker 1: the city. Two thousand one, so more than two decades ago,
Speaker 1: and it had more than a thousand artists. That's just
Speaker 1: so huge. I can't even imagine being in Austin and
Speaker 1: wanting to see, you know, various groups play and having
Speaker 1: to decide between that many. That's like I get a
Speaker 1: choice paralysis all the time. Analysis paralysis, I guess you
Speaker 1: can call it. Well, if you give me too many options,
Speaker 1: I kind of shut down because I just can't. After
Speaker 1: you get past three or four, I start to panic. Uh.
Speaker 1: I complained about this a lot to my partner, who
Speaker 1: well often send me thirty to forty choices at a time,
Speaker 1: and I just tell her, like, this is not good
Speaker 1: for me. I can't handle it. So I can't even
Speaker 1: imagine looking at a different thousand different acts and try
Speaker 1: to figure out where I'm going to go see. But
Speaker 1: two thousand one also saw some interesting speakers. The founder
Speaker 1: of Napster had attended and he gave an interview over
Speaker 1: at Interactive. Remember, Napster was truly a an important UH service.
Speaker 1: In the early two thousands, Napster was seen as an
Speaker 1: enormous threat to the established music industry, which is interesting
Speaker 1: that they would then have him appear at south By
Speaker 1: Southwest because obviously, like he was like uh most wanted
Speaker 1: for all the different music studios that wanted to sue
Speaker 1: Napster out of existence, which did eventually happen. But it
Speaker 1: really also brought to light the usefulness of peer to
Speaker 1: peer technology and it it really demonstrated that there was
Speaker 1: a real need to address digital music in a way
Speaker 1: that made sense for consumers two thousand one. This is
Speaker 1: before we get to things like the launch of the
Speaker 1: iTunes store. It was hard to get digital music. There
Speaker 1: wasn't like an easy way to access it and to
Speaker 1: purchase it and too be able to download it, and
Speaker 1: so people were turning to piracy because that was easy. Uh.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be until we started seeing things like iTunes
Speaker 1: really established itself where that would change. Plus, obviously the
Speaker 1: music labels and the government of the United States in particular,
Speaker 1: brought the hammer down on all the different sharing services
Speaker 1: that really cut back on piracy that way too, And
Speaker 1: obviously all that would change again once we got into
Speaker 1: audio streaming services, which has been taught a lot about it.
Speaker 1: South By Southwest as well. Another person who was at
Speaker 1: two thousand one was one of the co founders of Google,
Speaker 1: Larry Page. So at this stage, you know, again pretty
Speaker 1: early on in the lifetime of south By Southwest, you
Speaker 1: start to see some important people in the various industries
Speaker 1: arrive and and give talks and centations and workshops at
Speaker 1: south By Southwest. This applies across all the different tracks.
Speaker 1: I'm focusing mostly on interactive, but you also had, you know,
Speaker 1: incredibly important people in the world of music, whether they
Speaker 1: were musicians or on the business side or the engineering
Speaker 1: side of things. And equally so in the film world,
Speaker 1: really important filmmakers. So two thousand one also had a
Speaker 1: session that was important called is anyone making Money? And
Speaker 1: you know, you also have to remember two thousand one
Speaker 1: this is like where the bubble bursting is happening in
Speaker 1: Big Swing. It's the spring of two thousand one, so
Speaker 1: it's before nine eleven. Nine eleven would really be where
Speaker 1: the entire world would take a hit financially, but the
Speaker 1: dot com industry in particular would be completely almost completely
Speaker 1: wiped out. Not completely, there'd be some companies that would survive,
Speaker 1: like Amazon survived. But you know two thousand one is
Speaker 1: it when making money, it's the questions that you need
Speaker 1: to ask because the answers to that might help you
Speaker 1: avoid disaster down the line. There was also a lot
Speaker 1: of discussion about wearable computers in two thousand one, which
Speaker 1: you know that was still a science fiction kind of
Speaker 1: concept in two thousand one. Now we have all these
Speaker 1: activity trackers and smart watches and stuff. So again very prescient. Uh.
Speaker 1: In two thousand four, Jonathan Abrams of friends Sterre would
Speaker 1: present at south By Southwest. Friendster would not be super
Speaker 1: important for much longer, but this was like the dawn
Speaker 1: of the social platform age. Two thousand five saw Malcolm
Speaker 1: Gladwell give a presentation at south By Southwest. Malcolm Gladwell
Speaker 1: of course hosts Smart Talks with IBM, which you've probably
Speaker 1: heard a few of those episodes on this feed. So
Speaker 1: a friend of the show, Malcolm Gladwell, Laura Swisher very
Speaker 1: important into actually gave a presentation that year as well,
Speaker 1: and then in two thousand seven we saw the launch
Speaker 1: of panel Picker. So this is in south By Southwest's
Speaker 1: own terminology quote the official User generated Session Proposal platform
Speaker 1: for south By Southwest and south By Southwest e d
Speaker 1: u end quote. So panel Picker is a way for
Speaker 1: attendees and hopeful participants to submit ideas for stuff that
Speaker 1: needs to be talked about. Typically it can be very buzzy,
Speaker 1: hypeish stuff. On occasion, it could be very very important.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's too early to call it important, it ends
Speaker 1: up being a lot of people talking about buzzwords and
Speaker 1: not much else. But the idea here is that let's
Speaker 1: look at the issues that are either really big or
Speaker 1: about to be really big in the industry and pitch
Speaker 1: a panel based off that so that we can have
Speaker 1: a discussion about where things are going. Two thousand seven
Speaker 1: has also when Twitter would attend for the first time
Speaker 1: and got a lot of attention. So it didn't launch
Speaker 1: at south By Southwest two thousand seven. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of stories where that's kind of thrown around as
Speaker 1: a fact that didn't happen. It actually launched the year before,
Speaker 1: at the end of March in two thousand six, so
Speaker 1: too late to be at south By Southwest in two
Speaker 1: thousand six, but it was very small. It was mostly
Speaker 1: the internal team of Twitter and their friends and family,
Speaker 1: and then a small following beyond that. Right, it had
Speaker 1: not really made a big splash. But in two thousand
Speaker 1: seven at south By Southwest they put up a bunch
Speaker 1: of screens that would show people's public tweets as they
Speaker 1: were making them. And this got people really excited and
Speaker 1: a lot of people started to sign up, And really
Speaker 1: two thousand seven south By Southwest is where Twitter would
Speaker 1: establish itself as having an important space in the tech
Speaker 1: field in particular, and it just grew from that point forward. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about one of the worst interviews
Speaker 1: in south By Southwest history, and it involves a very
Speaker 1: prominent tech leader. But first, let's take this break. Okay,
Speaker 1: I promised you all a train reckon two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: south By Southwest gave us one. It was when a
Speaker 1: journalist named Sarah Lacy conducted an interview with a tech
Speaker 1: leader named Mark Zuckerberg, head of Facebook at the time
Speaker 1: now Meta, and this was a big deal. Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: did not give interviews, especially in public, really, and so
Speaker 1: this was a highly anticipated event at south By Southwest
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. As such, the crowd filled in the room.
Speaker 1: It was like at full capacity to the point where
Speaker 1: they had to have overflow rooms where they were watching
Speaker 1: a video feed of the interview unfold and they're apparently
Speaker 1: playing like high energy music before the interview, and there
Speaker 1: were like people in the front row or even dancing
Speaker 1: to the music like it was a It was an
Speaker 1: energetic vibe in that room. You had people who are
Speaker 1: really hyped up. Mark Zuckerberg and Sarah Lacey come out.
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg was clearly not ready for this. He was nervous
Speaker 1: and sweating, and it was not a good look, like
Speaker 1: it was like panic in in in in front of
Speaker 1: everyone up on stage and the interview starts, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people were complaining early on that Sarah's questions
Speaker 1: to Zuckerberg, we're kind of softball, and we're focused mainly
Speaker 1: on business e types of stuff and not on nuts
Speaker 1: and bolts and policy things like this, things that people
Speaker 1: were really interested in. There were people who have tough
Speaker 1: questions that they wanted to ask but they felt that
Speaker 1: Sarah was taking a different approach. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: there are more than a few people I have I
Speaker 1: have never actually sat down to watch this interview because
Speaker 1: I can't I empathize too much. I can't handle watching
Speaker 1: people struggle and being super uncomfortable and awkward. I do
Speaker 1: that enough for myself, so I have not watched myself.
Speaker 1: But the all the different reports I was reading, including
Speaker 1: one from barrettun Day Thurston who's been on the show,
Speaker 1: made it sound like the questions just weren't going in
Speaker 1: the way the crowd wanted, and the crowd started getting uneasy.
Speaker 1: They felt like the interview was largely a waste of
Speaker 1: time and that Zuckerberg was clearly out of this element.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. Twitter had had not launched, but Twitter
Speaker 1: had become popular in two thousand seven. This is two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, so now everyone at South Byself US is
Speaker 1: on Twitter. So people started going on Twitter and live
Speaker 1: tweeting their responses to watching this interview unfold, to the
Speaker 1: point where Baratunday actually said there were two events happening simultaneously.
Speaker 1: There was the interview that was actually unfolding in the room,
Speaker 1: and then there was everyone heckling the interview online via
Speaker 1: Twitter as they were responding in real time to what
Speaker 1: they were seeing. Towards the end of it, apparently the
Speaker 1: crowd started to shout out questions and demanding answers. Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: was miserable, Sarah was out of her element, and things
Speaker 1: got really super ugly, to the point where people just
Speaker 1: talked about being the most awkward, uncomfortable interview of self
Speaker 1: by selfless history, which honestly I find comfort in and
Speaker 1: I'll explain why in a little bit. But the interesting
Speaker 1: thing I think about this this interview, apart from the
Speaker 1: fact that it was just not a good day for
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg or for Sarah for that matter, is that
Speaker 1: it really illustrated how important Twitter would be at events
Speaker 1: like this, where you could have this secondary conversation unfold
Speaker 1: as an event itself is happening. And that was really
Speaker 1: the first time that that would play a huge part
Speaker 1: at South By Southwest, and it was kind of like
Speaker 1: the dawning of realization on all the people who are attending.
Speaker 1: This interview, from what I understand, is available to watch online,
Speaker 1: so if you are morbidly curious to watch, you can.
Speaker 1: Maybe it turns out to not be as bad as
Speaker 1: everyone says it was. But every every UH report I
Speaker 1: read made it sound truly terrible, and I just don't
Speaker 1: think I could sit through it. Anyway. I'll talk about
Speaker 1: my own personal version of that in just a little bit.
Speaker 1: So two thousand nine, we get up to the point
Speaker 1: where four square would launch at south By Southwest. This
Speaker 1: was the original four square. So when it originally launched,
Speaker 1: four Square was this app that would let you check
Speaker 1: in two places you were visiting. So you might go
Speaker 1: to like a restaurant, and you check in via four
Speaker 1: square to say, yes, here, I am at this restaurant,
Speaker 1: and it helped with discovery, so people who followed you
Speaker 1: on four square could say, oh, they went to this restaurant,
Speaker 1: said it was really good, let's go, Let's go there
Speaker 1: tomorrow and let's check it out. And so restaurants began
Speaker 1: to have incentives to invite people to come in and
Speaker 1: UH and check in at four square and you could
Speaker 1: get like an appetizer or something on the house. Actually
Speaker 1: had that happened a few times when I used to
Speaker 1: use four square. For this reason, there were also other
Speaker 1: things you had to take into consideration, like you are
Speaker 1: giving up privacy by checking into locations and saying this
Speaker 1: is where I'm at. Depending on your situation, that might
Speaker 1: be a dangerous thing, and eventually four Square would get
Speaker 1: away from that. We got away from that location check
Speaker 1: in element to the app. But in two thousand nine
Speaker 1: when they first launched, that is what they were all about.
Speaker 1: That's also wins. South By Southwest introduced the Accelerator Pitch Competition.
Speaker 1: This is an event where various startups all try to
Speaker 1: pitch their idea for the possibility of getting investor support.
Speaker 1: We've seen similar events like this in the tech space,
Speaker 1: but yeah, this is when it became part of south
Speaker 1: By Southwest's own scope of of activities. In there was
Speaker 1: an app that was created by twenty four people who
Speaker 1: used to work at Stanford Research Institute who showed off
Speaker 1: this interesting voice activated personal assistant thing. It was apparently
Speaker 1: very bare bones but really fascinating, And it must have
Speaker 1: been truly fascinating because a couple of months later, Apple
Speaker 1: bought the whole project and it would become Sirie. By
Speaker 1: the time you get up to two thousand thir team,
Speaker 1: you've got el Un Musk attending south By Southwest. He
Speaker 1: was interviewed on stage. This was specifically with his involvement
Speaker 1: of SpaceX but Musk has been to south By Southwest
Speaker 1: a couple of times, which makes sense. I mean, SpaceX
Speaker 1: is is kind of centered in Texas, and he's talked
Speaker 1: about all sorts of tech stuff at the event. Don't
Speaker 1: know if he's scheduled for this year or not. I
Speaker 1: also thought it was interesting that, according to south By
Speaker 1: Southwest's own website, in one of the presenters in the
Speaker 1: interactive area was Neil Gaiman. Um. I think of Neil
Speaker 1: Gaiman as an author, and I he writes a lot
Speaker 1: of fantasy and kind of horror stuff and things that
Speaker 1: are are really fascinating, But I wouldn't necessarily think of
Speaker 1: it as interactive, So I'm very curious what he was
Speaker 1: what he was actually talking about. I don't have that information,
Speaker 1: but I thought that was really interesting. You also had
Speaker 1: a lot of other things going on around this time.
Speaker 1: In the big news was Edwards Snowdon attending south By Southwest.
Speaker 1: Virtually he couldn't do it in person because he was
Speaker 1: a very wanted man still is. He attended via skyte
Speaker 1: and called in and talked about his role in being
Speaker 1: a whistleblower and leaking classified information to Wiki leaks. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was a very controversial move on the part of
Speaker 1: south By Southwest. You actually had US politicians contacting the
Speaker 1: conference and asking them to rescind that invitation. Other guests
Speaker 1: who were at two thousand and fourteen south By Southwest
Speaker 1: include Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astronomer, Adam Savage, the former
Speaker 1: host of of MythBusters, and Chelsea Clinton was there too. Okay,
Speaker 1: we have made it up to my own personal terrible
Speaker 1: interview of south By Southwest. I've only ever been part
Speaker 1: of an official seuth By Southwest event once till this year, anyway,
Speaker 1: and that was in two thousand sixteen, and the event
Speaker 1: was called an Honest Conversation with yek Yak. If you
Speaker 1: don't remember, yek Yak was and actually now it's back again.
Speaker 1: But yek Yak was. This this social platform map where
Speaker 1: you could post messages anonymously that were GEO located to
Speaker 1: wherever you were, and only people within a certain range
Speaker 1: of your physical position would be able to read that message.
Speaker 1: So let's say I'm in downtown Atlanta and I use
Speaker 1: yek Yak and I write something like traffic today is
Speaker 1: out of control, while the people in that radius would
Speaker 1: be able to see that I had posted that and
Speaker 1: they could chime in. Maybe they'd say, like, you're an idiot,
Speaker 1: it's always out of control. You're just not in downtown
Speaker 1: Atlanta very much, which should be pretty accurate on all
Speaker 1: fronts really. So anyway, yak was mostly known for its
Speaker 1: popularity at college campuses, and there were a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were concerned about yik yak because of the
Speaker 1: the ability for people to potentially abuse folks anonymously, and
Speaker 1: there could be terrible bullying and just trolling in general.
Speaker 1: It could lead to some really toxic behaviors, so there
Speaker 1: was a lot of concern about this. Now, at the time,
Speaker 1: I had not really conducted any interviews. I hadn't really
Speaker 1: moderated panels. I was asked by my boss of the
Speaker 1: time to do this, and I wasn't confident enough to
Speaker 1: say no, I don't want to do this. So I
Speaker 1: agreed to do it. And that's on me. That's my fault.
Speaker 1: In fact, I want to own this, like I hate
Speaker 1: that it happened, but boy, it really was my fault
Speaker 1: for not saying no. So I agreed to do it.
Speaker 1: But I had to submit all my questions in advance
Speaker 1: to the yik yak team, which meant that I felt intimidated.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel comfortable writing questions that were more critical
Speaker 1: of the service. And then we get to the day
Speaker 1: of this interview, and I'm there with the two co
Speaker 1: founders and I'm asking them questions, but they're giving me
Speaker 1: very short answers, which means that I'm burning through my
Speaker 1: questions so so fast. And we finally get to a
Speaker 1: point where we're supposed to get to audience Q and A.
Speaker 1: And that was supposed to be like a ten minute session,
Speaker 1: but they had gone through so quickly there was more
Speaker 1: like twenty five minutes or maybe even thirty minutes left
Speaker 1: in the panel. So I opened it up, and let
Speaker 1: me tell you, the people who were asking questions from
Speaker 1: the audience, they did not have to submit their questions
Speaker 1: in advance, and they really asked some very tough questions.
Speaker 1: And I just kind of sat there thinking I would
Speaker 1: rather be anywhere else in the whole wide world. I
Speaker 1: was completely out of my element. I was not a
Speaker 1: good moderator. This is one of those low points of
Speaker 1: my career, and I feel comfortable talking about it because
Speaker 1: I think that there are lessons to be learned, the
Speaker 1: big one being if your boss asks you to do
Speaker 1: something that you really don't feel comfortable doing, say so
Speaker 1: because you might. You're gonna save everyone a lot of heartache,
Speaker 1: Like if you if they go with someone else who
Speaker 1: does a great job, then everyone's happy. You didn't have
Speaker 1: to do it. Someone else did what they were good at.
Speaker 1: Everybody looks good and you can move on with your life.
Speaker 1: But if you end up saying yes, like I did,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna end up having this this weight on
Speaker 1: your shoulders and it's really hard to shake off, y'all.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like seven years later and I still
Speaker 1: think about that night. Yuck. Anyway, probably didn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about any way, because, like, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: other stuff going on in twenty sixteen, the Obamas were
Speaker 1: there in so my little crash and burn with the
Speaker 1: ick Yak was nothing. It certainly wasn't on the level
Speaker 1: of the Zuckerberg interview from a few years earlier. South
Speaker 1: By Southwest was starting to become a more unified event.
Speaker 1: They were creating twenty four tracks across music, film, and interactive,
Speaker 1: so they were kind of reversing that decision of splitting
Speaker 1: everything off into sort of separate events at this point
Speaker 1: was an early cancelation due to COVID. Keep in mind,
Speaker 1: south By Southwest happens in March, so March of like,
Speaker 1: people were still not really sure what was going on
Speaker 1: with COVID. They were starting to get worried by you know, February,
Speaker 1: but it was still fairly early, and south By Southwest
Speaker 1: canceling was one of the early indicators that oh, this
Speaker 1: is a big deal, this is going to affect a
Speaker 1: lot of things moving forward, and so the show was
Speaker 1: completely scuttled. In it was a huge uproar, not uproar,
Speaker 1: but a huge upset in the tech industry. One there
Speaker 1: was a south By Southwest, but it was online only,
Speaker 1: so again no in person conference. They did have musical
Speaker 1: performances and stuff that streamed out, so you could buy
Speaker 1: an online pass to south By Southwest that it obviously
Speaker 1: was not the same two went back to being both
Speaker 1: in person and online at the same time, so you
Speaker 1: could actually go in person or if you wanted to,
Speaker 1: you could stay and watch on your computer. And these
Speaker 1: days you can buy various types of badges to access
Speaker 1: the different events and y'all, you've gotta have deep pockets
Speaker 1: to go to south By Southwest as an attendee, Like
Speaker 1: if you're not a guest and you don't have a
Speaker 1: badge that's already assigned to you. As I recall when
Speaker 1: I got my badge back in, it had like the
Speaker 1: dates that it was active, and beyond that I was
Speaker 1: not hill. I didn't have access to south By Southwest,
Speaker 1: which makes sense because you look at the price of
Speaker 1: these things. So if you only wanted a badge to
Speaker 1: the interactive parts of south By Southwest and and that's
Speaker 1: all you really cared about, that would set you back
Speaker 1: one thousand, five hundred dollars right now, if you were
Speaker 1: to buy it at the door, it would be a
Speaker 1: hundred bucks more than that, very very expensive. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: let's say that you just want to do music. If
Speaker 1: you just wanted to do music, that's actually the cheapest.
Speaker 1: That's just an eight dollars. And south By has had
Speaker 1: a sort of a decline in attendance on the music
Speaker 1: side of recent years, so that might be why it's
Speaker 1: it's the cheap price of eight film is a thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred, so just a little less expensive than interactive.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to be able to see everything at
Speaker 1: priority category, well you'd have to spend one thousand, eight
Speaker 1: hundred nine five dollars almost two grand. Now, according to
Speaker 1: south By Southwest, any badge gets to you primary entrance
Speaker 1: into the related category and secondary entry into most other events.
Speaker 1: I don't know what secondary intrigue means. I just assume
Speaker 1: that means you get, like you know, not the not
Speaker 1: the prioritized seating, and there might be much more limited
Speaker 1: space for that, but at least then you could, in theory,
Speaker 1: by a badge for for music and use it to
Speaker 1: see most other events during the whole festival, which stretches,
Speaker 1: like I said, more than a week at this point,
Speaker 1: or if you prefer, you could get an online pass
Speaker 1: for the low low price of a So there is
Speaker 1: that anyway. South By. I think it's a cool event. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of other things that are happening
Speaker 1: at around the same time, like parties and promotional stuff
Speaker 1: that really end up being a lot of fun that
Speaker 1: are in addition to the official south By Southwest events.
Speaker 1: So it really becomes a big party atmosphere. But it's
Speaker 1: also incredibly expensive, and I think it becomes sort of
Speaker 1: almost an elitist kind of thing because only the people
Speaker 1: who can really afford it are gonna be going, and
Speaker 1: it really creates a have have not situation there, and
Speaker 1: I don't know how I feel about that. I think
Speaker 1: that's kind of a bummer. I love live music, I
Speaker 1: don't think I love it enough to spend nine on
Speaker 1: a badge to be able to see at all. It's
Speaker 1: just it's kind of sad. Uh. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: a lot of cool stuff happens, and a lot of
Speaker 1: really interesting technologies have launched there or become popular there.
Speaker 1: So I hope that I'm going to be going this year,
Speaker 1: And if I do that, maybe I see some of
Speaker 1: you out there. I'll keep an eye out, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: before I run too long, I'll just say I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio
Speaker 1: is at the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H