Is SXSW London missing a trick?

Author:

Adrian Dinsdale, Strategy Director, Emota

The future of live events didn’t quite play out for me in Shoreditch this year

At Emota, we’re increasingly hearing the same challenge from clients: how do we create more engaging experiences for meeting attendees?

The traditional plenary-and-breakout model is losing its appeal. Audiences no longer want to sit passively and absorb information. They want to contribute, collaborate and co-create. After years of talking about the importance of pre-event engagement and extending the conversation beyond the closing session, we’re finally seeing real momentum in that direction too.

So, imagine my excitement as I took my first foray into the world of SXSW London. If there is one event that should provide a glimpse into the future of conferences, then surely it’s SXSW. Its reputation has been built on innovation, creativity and pushing boundaries. Where better then to understand where event experiences are heading?

Unfortunately, my bubble burst rather quickly.

Within hours, I found myself sprinting through the pouring rain between Shoreditch venues, trying desperately to make it to the talks I’d painstakingly selected the night before.

In a world where AI is transforming everything from shopping recommendations to travel planning, my SXSW experience could have got off to a better start. Whilst the event app claims to offer AI-generated recommendations, I found the technology wanting. For a festival whose tagline is ‘Shape the future’, shouldn’t I have been given a personalized digital assistant who not only makes recommendations based on my interests, but also manages my schedule according to venue locations, crowd levels and queue times?

Given that I had only one day at the festival and not the luxury of a whole week, an assistant could have suggested alternative sessions when venues reached capacity. It could have built a realistic itinerary that accounted for walking times between locations. It may even have encouraged me to step away from traditional talks altogether and explore roundtables, workshops, mentor sessions or networking experiences that better matched my objectives.

As it was, I chose to concentrate on the talks and that’s where my second disappointment emerged.

Some of these sessions were organized by brands and therefore had a veneer of selling thrown in. Some were cut short because the moderator just ran out of steam without going in depth on the subject matter. And in the sessions I attended, opportunities for audience questions were surprisingly limited. Often, I was left with a feeling that I could have just read the information online and might have had a better chance attending a different talk happening at the same time.

And that’s where the post-event experience becomes so valuable. This is the chance for the SXSW brand to make that final good impression. Imagine a personalized, AI-curated video selection of sessions that I couldn’t attend, key takeaways from talks that clashed with my break for lunch and recommended content based on the topics I had engaged with.

Does my experience make me reluctant to attend next year? No. After all, where else could I have learnt about AI drug development, heard about Jamie Laing’s wedding preparations and feted the legend that is Tim Berners-Lee all in one day?

But it’s important to remember the benefit of gathering all of these people physically together in one place, rather than online. If there is no concerted effort to help attendees actively shape the conversation rather than passively consume information, then what’s the point?

My hope is that the innovation that leads some of the world’s brightest minds to travel to London and share their wisdom can also be applied to the attendee experience itself, so that it’s more personalized, more participatory and more collaborative.

At Emota, we see this challenge every day. Many of our clients operate in highly regulated B2B sectors where creative solutions need to be found within environments that are shaped by compliance and complexity. Yet even in these settings, we’re finding ways to use technology, co-creation and innovative meeting formats to make events more engaging and impactful.

That’s why SXSW feels like it’s missing a trick. If these approaches can work in some of the world’s most regulated industries, surely they can thrive at a festival built on innovation.

And then we really could say that SXSW London is a place where we ‘shape the future’ together.