If COVID-19 taught us anything, it’s that the world can most certainly survive — and even thrive — online.
And South By Southwest, which opens Friday in Austin, Texas, allows those who are forced to skip the in-person spectacle to still feel as though they’re along for the journey, thanks to the power of their computers, tablets or smart phones.
“We’re going live, y’all!,” South By Southwest, also known as SXSW, posted on its website. “Whether you’re in town and want to multitask or couldn’t make it to Austin this year, we want you to be a part of the SX magic.”
Starting Friday at 11 a.m., keynotes, featured sessions, SXSW studio interviews, film and TV festival red carpets, daily highlights and more will be available to watch, both live and on demand, on the festival’s YouTube Channel.
For the past three days, live feeds from SXSW Edu, the vibrant precursor to the main festival that brings together the brightest scholastic minds to focus on education issues of today and solutions for tomorrow, have been streaming continuously on its YouTube page.
Always a highlight, South By Southwest Keynotes will take place daily through next Friday, March 15, all available on the show’s streaming YouTube channel. Friday’s formal opening day keynote delivers the heaviest hitters of all, featuring Meghan Markle, Katie Couric, Brooke Shields, Errin Haines and Nancy Wang Yuen, beginning online at 2 p.m.
Other sessions throughout the week — all scheduled from 2 until 3 p.m., will include Block Party Co-Founder Tracy Chou and Head of Product Design Deonne Castaneda; prominent female athletes Sue Bird, Jessica Robertson and Justine Brown; and Black Keys musicians Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, among others.
But there’s so much more to the festival than the keynotes. The Featured Speakers conference, for example, was crafted to deliver inspiration, motivation and stimulation through live sessions featuring such well-known luminaries as Conan O’Brien, Nick Cross, Selena Gomez, Dwayne Wade, Jane Fonda, Sweta Chakraborty and others. Click here for a full schedule of featured online activities.
For those who typically plan their Austin journey around movie unveiling and television premieres, the online option of the festivities offers a rare glimpse into star appearances on the festival’s Red Carpet, where many of the biggest names of both the large and small screens typically turn out to publicize their productions.
The festival’s YouTube channel offers streaming visitors a novel opportunity that those who attend in person — aside from the journalists who cover the industry — cannot otherwise enjoy. Online viewers can watch actor, director and producer interviews in real time.
And with such stars as Jake Gyllenhaal, John Bradley, Jean Smart, John Leguizamo, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Sonequa Martin-Green, Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Jordan Peele and even Cheech and Chong expected to attend, perhaps sitting by your computer and monitoring the action could be better than attending in person.
While thousands of visitors show up solely for the music — and often spend their days hopping from venue to venue to enjoy live onsite performances for free — South By Southwest’s online Radio Day Stage offers the perfect opportunity to catch some of the festival’s top musical showcase artists including Pink Pablo, J Noa, Viji, Buffalo Nichols, Papisa, Lo Moon, and more.
So is it really better to experience South By online than it is in person?
Well, let’s put it this way. If circumstances prevent you from making that journey to the Capital of Texas for SXSW 2024, it’s certainly the next best thing.
Additional SXSW content is also available on LinkedIn, “X,” Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
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