Former SXSW co-president and chief programming officer Hugh Forrest joins Plutopia to reflect on nearly four decades helping shape South by Southwest, its growth alongside Austin, and the challenges of scaling creative communities without losing authenticity. Forrest discusses how SXSW succeeded by bringing diverse creative people together, but also how rapid growth created problems of cost, accessibility, logistics, and community displacement. Now leading Gather and Grow Experiences, he advises organizations to build meaningful, locally grounded, face-to-face experiences that prioritize quality over quantity, reflect their host communities, and foster human connection in an increasingly digital, automated, and politically fragmented world.

Hugh Forrest:

The most successful events and experiences — again, I like the word experiences more than events, as much as I use the word events — are very much a reflection of the local community that they’re in. And certainly, I think what we found with South by Southwest when we tried to do these events in other markets, was that you couldn’t treat this as a franchisable cookie cutter approach if it was going to be successful. If we’re going to do an event in Blank-blank city that’s going to be successful, it really has to reflect the the values, the the strengths, the interests of that particular city. So I don’t know that there’s a playbook on that. If anything, the playbook is reflect where you are.

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