South by Southwest, Inc.

By Mary Tuma Friday, 26 February 2010

SOUTHWEST AUSTIN — More than two decades ago, Louis Black remembers stuffing swag into South by Southwest promotional bags on an office floor with his friends and discussing what he envisioned the music conference to look like. As cofounder of the internationally recognized media industry event, Black has seen the operation grow from a four-person group in the late ’80s to a full-size company responsible for organizing one of the largest music festivals in the world.

“After all these years, SXSW is really still about creative people coming together face-to-face and collaborating,” said Black, who currently serves as editor of the alternative newsweekly The Austin Chronicle, which he also cofounded. “Our motto this year is ‘Tomorrow happens here,’ and it’s true—if you want to know what’s going on now and what’s going on next, this is the place to be.”

In its 24th year, SXSW attracts thousands of attendees from around the globe to its 10-day music, film and interactive media conference. Though it only lasts a few days, the industry event is a culmination of work performed all year by a team of professionals headquartered in central Austin.

South by Southwest Inc. is a private company that employs roughly 40 staff members in five offices. Behind the scenes, employees coordinate speakers, musicians and filmmakers, create program books, screen movies, sift through panel proposals and organize venue locations.

The full-time staff get an extra hand as March approaches. Hundreds more, some individually contracted, help out, along with some 1,700 volunteers at the event. The vast majority of employees are Austinites. SXSW sales and promotional representatives can be found internationally from Japan to Australia.

“A lot of people are surprised to learn this is a year-round operation,” said Shawn O’Keefe, who heads the interactive festival. “SXSW is just 10 days, but it takes a full year to prepare and plan.”

After New York–based New Music Seminar opted out of hosting its event in Austin, Black and friends Roland Swenson, Nick Barbaro and Louis Meyers decided to start their own music conference. Using The Austin Chronicle as a platform, they spent four months planning and promoting the event.

“It was basically four guys sitting around a room talking a lot. We would work on the Chronicle, take a break and talk more. We focused a lot on the big picture, but also the details,” he said. “We would sit there night after night and ask things like, ‘OK, you land at the airport—what happens next?’”

The first SXSW music festival made its debut in 1987, attracting 700 registrants to Austin’s eclectic music scene, a much higher turnout than Black anticipated. Today, the conference includes film and interactive components, and the number of registrants has ballooned to 12,000.

By the early ’90s, SXSW split from the print publication and became its own corporation. The shift caused Black to re-evaluate the status of his brainchild.

“I remember being shocked when I realized there were federal wage and hour laws applied to us because we had more than 15 employees. All this time I thought we were just this little Podunk operation,” he said. “The whole process has been a learning experience on how to run a business, how to work with people, how to take care of your staff. It’s been a real education. We didn’t start this thinking we are business people, but over the years we’ve had to become business people.”