Today’s edition features an interview with Colin Daniels, managing director of the first SXSW Sydney.

Colin Daniels, the man bringing SXSW down under

Entertainment and media festival South By Southwest is coming to Australia for the first time in October. The man responsible for bringing the event to Sydney is Colin Daniels - a veteran of the music industry including more than a decade running music company Inertia which he left last year after becoming managing director of SXSW Sydney.

Daniels has racked up an impressive nineteen visits to SXSW over the years. His vision for SXSW Sydney is for it to be a combination of film screenings, networking events, conferences and other interactive set-ups designed to appeal to “the United Nations of the creative industries”.

With less than five months to go, SXSW has now announced its first speakers including marketer and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki, futurist Amy Webb, and GroupM CEO Christian Juhl.

In conversation with Unmade’s Tim Burrowes, Daniels unveils what SXSW Sydney has in store for the Australian media and marketing community. The SXSW team has been developing the program in consultation with the local industry, although in the interview Daniels does concede he was initially hard to get hold of when interest in the event outstripped his ability to get back to everyone.

Adland has been leaning into the local program. “Our number one attendee for SXSW Sydney based on registration and interest is the marketing and advertising industry," Daniels says.

“For the media and marketing conference tracks, we had 200 submissions just from agencies and media organisations.”

Audio production was courtesy of Abe’s Audio, the people to talk to about voiceovers, sound design and podcast production.

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We’ll be back with Best of the Week tomorrow.

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