Welcome to SXSW 2016!

Anyone who knows me knows SXSW isn’t my jam (am I the only music journalist who really doesn’t get excited about big festivals?). It’s mostly because it makes downtown nearly unnavigable for 10 days, it’s too crowded, it seems to be harder and harder to find the gems among all the commercialization, and there are WAY too many annoying drunk people.

But dammit, there’s a lot of great stuff too.

This year I’m not focusing on the music showcases (though I hope to hit a few), but instead looking to the actual conference part of the festival/conference. The three segments of the festival still include Interactive, Film, and Music, but within each category the conference sessions are divided into several different tracks. Are you all about content and distribution in the Interactive field? There’s a track for that. What about MedTech? Finding your audience? New technologies in film? There are tracks for that. And just within music, there are tracks for international issues, branding your band, publishing, touring, marketing, formatting… The list goes on. These aren’t one-off sessions. There are multiple sessions, workshops, mentoring opportunities, panels and networking all within a specific track for the duration of the festival. I’m hitting up the PR, Media & Journalism in Music track, naturally.

Will I bring back wildly improved journalistic skills that blow this magazine out of the water? Eh. Let’s wait and see. But honestly, I’m looking forward to getting my conference on way more than I ever was about waiting in a crushing mass of people to get into the Tostitos showcase.

Find complete SXSW information and coverage at their official page.