Adelaide, South Australia has amazing festivals and events like Adelaide Fringe, Adelaide Festival, Adelaide Writers Week, _SOUTHSTART, Screenmakers Conference, South Australian Living Arts Festival (SALA), industry conferences and expos, and there is so much to build upon for a South Australian Collaboration, Innovation and Tech Festival in Spring.
An opportunity to work with sister city Austin in Texas, who hosts SXSW (35 years old this year) in March over their Spring break, could see delegations coming from Austin, Dallas FW, Houston and other locations to Adelaide, in September/October before the Thanksgiving break. Hugh Forrest, Chief Programming Officer at SXSW has been to Adelaide in the past and there are many friends and connections to draw upon from Austin.
And not being able to get to SXSW this year it has been great to get the Afterpass with so much to watch so I hope Hugh and colleagues will consider extending access for another week or to on SXSW 2022 content.
Back to Adelaide, how could an event like this work? It would take over the whole city with major hotels involved for official programming as well as bars, function centres, music venues, coworking spaces for networking events, meetups and unofficial programming.
A future food focus would be at the Hilton Adelaide in Victoria Square and the Adelaide Central Market. Agtech and Hort Tech would make sense to run out of the National Wine Centre and the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. EdTech and the future of education, in all its forms from Adelaide Botanic High School, Youth Inc, UniSA, Flinders University, TAFESA and private training providers. Health and MedTech at SAHMRI and all University locations.
Entrepreneurship and startup tracks at InterContinental Adelaide, Lot 14, Stone and Chalk, coworking spaces across the city. Future of local government at the Adelaide Town Hall, MR/AR/VR at various locations down Hindley Street, Stone and Chalk, and cool bars, Beauty and Fashion Tech in Rundle Mall. A podcasting stage and major programming, big keynote speakers, sessions, workshops and an expo at the Adelaide Convention Centre. Films debuting at Mercury Cinema, Palace Nova East End, performers at bar, pubs and locations including Adelaide Festival Centre.
Tech companies showcased at various HQ’s, SkyCity on the future of game industry, Adelaide Oval for the future of sports, especially esports. With an outlook to 2030 including topics such as blockchain, circular economy, climate change, energy, equity and diversity, industry leadership, international relationships, future jobs, marketing and social media, media, and influence, NFT’s, social enterprise, regional development and tourism.
Building international relationships there could be connections with all of Adelaide’s sister cities including Austin, USA; Christchurch, New Zealand; George Town, Malaysia; Himeji, Japan; Qingdao, China as well as their sisters.
Learning from the world leading SXSW Festival, where there is nothing like it on the planet, and if you are keen to go to SXSW in 2023, please get in touch via wendy@wendyperry.com.au, thank you.