Reflecting on the fun of last week’s SXSW Sydney. It’s taken a few days to catch up.
The theme this year was The Future Belongs to the Curious. I couldn’t agree more. It was a packed week again with 1,000 speakers and 300 sessions at the Tech & Innovation Conference, 200 artists on 15 stages for the Music Festival, 68 features and 69 shorts for the Screen Festival, and 120 games from 30 countries for the Games Festival.
A massive congrats to Fenella Kernebone, Brianna Avnell, Amy Freeman, and the whole team and all of the volunteers for bringing it all together again…
Also a shoutout to my good mates Alan James and Brad Smith from loadin.com – the Sydney startup with the Good Design Award winning platform used to manage the complexity of the requirements & stage specs, bios & promo tiles, slides, compliance paperwork, and more. Awesome to see you guys doing the do and always fun to hang out!
My highlights?
For me conferences and meetups are all about the people. SXSW Sydney has the brand power to draw people from all over the country (and beyond). It’s a great time to catch up with people I don’t see often and to make a bunch of new friends too. There are way too many people to tag but a few below…
I didn’t go to a lot of talks but there was no way I was missing Johann Hari’s stolen focus keynote. I’ve already shared my reflections on that.
It was awesome to catch up with bunch of friends and meet some new people at the Social Enterprise Australia and B Corp/B Lab Australia & Aotearoa NZ meetups.
Just before we were due to kick off our Sydney Design Thinking (SydDT) #105 meetup on the Monday, Tumbalong Park was evacuated because of an extreme weather warning… thunder and lightning moments later. A bunch of us still had a fun catch up and continued on at the pub.
That contrasted with some of the other afternoons in the sun on the rooftop for happy hour.
It was also great to get to some gigs at the Tumbalong Park Main Stage, the Gladdy, and The Underground. Moonchild Sanelly from South Africa was awesome!
Bring on SXSW Sydney 2025 😃
There are way too many people to tag but awesome to catch up and hang out… I hope it doesn’t take another year 😄 Christina Chun, Jess Moore, Lali Wiratunga, Nandeeta Maharaj, Kin Ly, Julie Trell, Asha Murphy, Maxx Silver, Renaté Bianca, Annie Beaulieu, James Sutton, Diego Trigo, Bella Bain, Jason Ming, Oliver Weidlich, Scott OBrien, Miles Murphy, Natasha Ballantyne, Manisha Amin, Sarah Pulis, Frank Newman, Kylie Mageropoulos, Lucas Mara, Tiff Ng, Natalie Siagian, Navjot Kaur, Christof Brandon, Carmine Mastrantone, Justin Hevey, Paras Aggarwal, Tom Dawkins, Dickie Currer, Andrew Davies, Mindy Leow, Angie Farrugia, Mela Baldock, Poppy Sykes, Tim Prosser, Craig Swann, Lara Husselbee, Ulf Sthamer, Stephanie Salter, Ben Liquete, Chris Elliot, Rachel Lounds, Susan Hansen, Tom Curphey, Mike Kelly, Morgan Fletcher, Mike Clements, Carolina Teicher… and so many more!
