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Hugh Forrest is the Chief Programming Officer and the Director of South by Southwest Interactive. Scheduled usually in March in Austin, this event has become one of the main showcases worldwide for the latest tendencies in new technologies, innovation and entrepreneurship. It brings together more than 50,000 industry creatives from across the United States and the rest of the world for five days of debates, presentations, brainstorming, networking, the creation of start-ups thanks to an accelerator, and entertainment. In addition to his work at SXSW, he has previously served on of the National Advisory Board for the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. He is currently part of the Board of Directors for Austin Habitat for Humanity, as well as a trustee for the Austin Awesome Foundation.
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Rachel Moore is the Director of Social and Broadcast Media at Hubilo, the hybrid event platform built for engagement and event excellence. She oversees Hubilo’s social media, influencer marketing, livestreaming, and podcasting initiatives. Rachel is also the public face of Hubilo, hosting their flagship events, their weekly livestream In Any Event, and their podcast EVENTtalks.
Hugh Forrest is the Chief Programming Officer and the Director of South by Southwest Interactive. Scheduled usually in March in Austin, this event has become one of the main showcases worldwide for the latest tendencies in new technologies, innovation and entrepreneurship. It brings together more than 50,000 industry creatives from across the United States and the rest of the world for five days of debates, presentations, brainstorming, networking, the creation of start-ups thanks to an accelerator, and entertainment. In addition to his work at SXSW, he has previously served on of the National Advisory Board for the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. He is currently part of the Board of Directors for Austin Habitat for Humanity, as well as a trustee for the Austin Awesome Foundation.
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Rachel Moore, Sr. Director of Content at Hubilo, welcomes Hugh Forrest to the show. Hugh’s been with South by Southwest for almost three decades, and as the Chief Programming Officer of the event, his primary job is to oversee all the content, from presentations to meetups. He goes on to tell us how the event has transformed in the last 30 years. Initially, South by Southwest was simply a music-oriented event, but over the years, it has grown to accommodate many other content types, like film festivals and vibrant showcases. Hugh also shares that about fifty thousand people participated in their last physical event in 2019. He also emphasizes the importance of putting quality over quantity.
Hugh tells us that South by Southwest has been using the Panel Picker process for the past fifteen years. He acknowledges that community has always been a big part of their process and, many times, the key driving force behind the panels they end up picking. But before they put the Panel Picker process in place, the applications used to float in even till a month before the event, which meant that a lot of great ideas were, from a logistics point of view, impossible to accommodate. But now they have a way of getting proposals almost six to seven months before the event, they have an ample amount of time to pick the best ones and put things into motion.
Hugh explains that all the proposals that are submitted are made available on the internet on an interface where community members can see them and, based on whether they like a certain proposal or not, give an up or down vote. People also have the ability to leave comments on content proposals. Apart from community feedback, SXSW also has an advisory board in place that vets every single proposal that is submitted to the event and the ones that are getting the most traction on the internet. Thus by integrating internal vetting and reviewing processes with wider community feedback, SXSW accepts the highest quality proposals. Every year, about five thousand proposals are submitted to SXSW, and Hugh explains that it is the job of his team to pick the best five hundred proposals or so out of them. Therefore, this process makes sure that only the highest quality content gets through.
Hugh tells us that, like most industries, the events industry had to adapt due to the pandemic and go digital. But what started as a means to an end became a significant opportunity. Before the pandemic, physical events were the norm, so not a lot of people thought about what virtual events could bring to the table. All this changed during the pandemic. Hugh explains that we can increase event attendance by holding virtual events. People who are unable to travel can also participate in the event instead of missing out completely. Also, virtual events make running out of tickets a thing of the past and also enable people to attend more panels during the event. Building connections is also easier and a little more organized with virtual events since you can book a slot for a one-on-one. Hugh further explains that all these exciting revelations the events industry made over the course of the pandemic will be carried forward. The industry as a whole is shifting towards hybrid events rather than strictly being physical or virtual.
Rachel and Hugh wrap up their session by discussing the future of SXSW and what we can expect from the upcoming events. Hugh tells us how South by Southwest is always a reflection of the current political, business, and cultural landscapes of Austin and how he wants the event to retain that. He goes on to further tell us how they are planning to integrate some virtual elements going forward to further improve the experience.
Rachel Moore: Thank you everybody for joining the show. This week's guest this episode we decided to bring in a person who is involved with an event, you may or may not have heard of, you probably have um it's called South by Southwest and it is held annually in austin texas. And our guest today is the chief programming officer and he's also the Director of South by Southwest Interactive. And for those of you who have not checked out South by Southwest. Uh it's a very large event and has multiple facets to it. One of which which my personal favorite, I'm not ashamed to say is Interactive, but um he is the director and chief programming officer there, he's also a boston red sox fan. So I want to put that up front in case all of you need to kind of mentally adjust. Um that's perfectly fine and apparently really digs reading as well as sleeping, which I do as well, but only when he's not doing all of the other things. I'm really happy to welcome Hugh forrest to our podcast and show today Hugh, welcome and thank you for joining us.
Hugh Forrest: Thanks Rachel. It's great to be here.
SUBTOPIC: The Chief Programming Officer of South by Southwest... 00:00:00-00:01:07
Rachel Moore: Thank you everybody for joining the show. This week's guest this episode we decided to bring in a person who is involved with an event, you may or may not have heard of, you probably have um it's called South by Southwest and it is held annually in austin texas. And our guest today is the chief programming officer and he's also the Director of South by Southwest Interactive. And for those of you who have not checked out South by Southwest. Uh it's a very large event and has multiple facets to it. One of which which my personal favorite, I'm not ashamed to say is Interactive, but um he is the director and chief programming officer there, he's also a boston red sox fan. So I want to put that up front in case all of you need to kind of mentally adjust. Um that's perfectly fine and apparently really digs reading as well as sleeping, which I do as well, but only when he's not doing all of the other things. I'm really happy to welcome Hugh forrest to our podcast and show today Hugh, welcome and thank you for joining us.
Hugh Forrest: Thanks Rachel. It's great to be here.
SUBTOPIC: The Boston Red Sox 00:01:07-00:01:39
Hugh Forrest: So we're going to talk for a few minutes about the boston red sox
Rachel Moore: uh we can acquisitions if you want to go that direction. I'm gonna be honest. I don't follow baseball. So really you've got a rapt audience right here on the screen. How are you feeling about the last part of the interview? Okay,
SUBTOPIC: The Boston Red Sox 00:01:07-00:01:39
Hugh Forrest: So we're going to talk for a few minutes about the boston red sox
Rachel Moore: uh we can acquisitions if you want to go that direction. I'm gonna be honest. I don't follow baseball. So really you've got a rapt audience right here on the screen. How are you feeling about the last part of the interview? Okay,
TOPIC: The Chief Programming Officer ... 00:00:00-00:01:39
SUBTOPIC: Hugh Forrest of South by Southwest 00:00:00-00:01:07
Rachel Moore: Thank you everybody for joining the show. This week's guest this episode we decided to bring in a person who is involved with an event, you may or may not have heard of, you probably have um it's called South by Southwest and it is held annually in austin texas. And our guest today is the chief programming officer and he's also the Director of South by Southwest Interactive. And for those of you who have not checked out South by Southwest. Uh it's a very large event and has multiple facets to it. One of which which my personal favorite, I'm not ashamed to say is Interactive, but um he is the director and chief programming officer there, he's also a boston red sox fan. So I want to put that up front in case all of you need to kind of mentally adjust. Um that's perfectly fine and apparently really digs reading as well as sleeping, which I do as well, but only when he's not doing all of the other things. I'm really happy to welcome Hugh forrest to our podcast and show today Hugh, welcome and thank you for joining us.
Hugh Forrest: Thanks Rachel. It's great to be here.
SUBTOPIC: The Chief Programming Officer of South by Southwest... 00:00:00-00:01:07
Rachel Moore: Thank you everybody for joining the show. This week's guest this episode we decided to bring in a person who is involved with an event, you may or may not have heard of, you probably have um it's called South by Southwest and it is held annually in austin texas. And our guest today is the chief programming officer and he's also the Director of South by Southwest Interactive. And for those of you who have not checked out South by Southwest. Uh it's a very large event and has multiple facets to it. One of which which my personal favorite, I'm not ashamed to say is Interactive, but um he is the director and chief programming officer there, he's also a boston red sox fan. So I want to put that up front in case all of you need to kind of mentally adjust. Um that's perfectly fine and apparently really digs reading as well as sleeping, which I do as well, but only when he's not doing all of the other things. I'm really happy to welcome Hugh forrest to our podcast and show today Hugh, welcome and thank you for joining us.
Hugh Forrest: Thanks Rachel. It's great to be here.
SUBTOPIC: The Boston Red Sox 00:01:07-00:01:39
Hugh Forrest: So we're going to talk for a few minutes about the boston red sox
Rachel Moore: uh we can acquisitions if you want to go that direction. I'm gonna be honest. I don't follow baseball. So really you've got a rapt audience right here on the screen. How are you feeling about the last part of the interview? Okay,
SUBTOPIC: The Boston Red Sox 00:01:07-00:01:39
Hugh Forrest: So we're going to talk for a few minutes about the boston red sox
Rachel Moore: uh we can acquisitions if you want to go that direction. I'm gonna be honest. I don't follow baseball. So really you've got a rapt audience right here on the screen. How are you feeling about the last part of the interview? Okay,
TOPIC: Crowdsourcing for Event Planning 00:01:39-00:20:49
SUBTOPIC: South by Southwest Interactive 00:01:39-00:05:36
Rachel Moore: give me a great idea sometimes of all the things you do. Can you describe for us, what does it mean that you're the chief programming officer and Director of South by South Southwest Interactive? What does that mean?
Hugh Forrest: Uh It is a fancy title but uh that means I'm sure like a lot of the audience out there, I answer a lot of emails or avoid answering a lot of emails, but um a little more seriously or directly, I oversee all the content. We do at South by Southwest. Um and by overseeing by content, I mean all that we do from a from panels, presentations, keynotes, uh called mentor sessions meetups, everything that um is conference related. I also oversee the the music festival, which brings together somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 or 2000 bands from all over the U. S. And all over the world Austin as well as the film festival, which is this vibrant showcase of up and coming filmmakers as well as as more established Hollywood uh industry folks and um oversee the comedy festival. And we also do a event called South by Southwest E bu that I oversee also, but oversee is, you know, very broad word that means um I have people who are very good at those jobs who are much more managing the details. I'm a little more focused um day to day on the conference aspect of the event um sessions. Again, he knows featured speakers, the kind of people that we want to bring to the audience up and comers, established industry folks, people who will inspire our community with new information um with new visions of the future, with revised visions of the future, with analysis of the past, with information about new technology, about new trends, all of those kinds of things, so that's where I do most of my day to day work. Um but again, oversee a very talented staff that that manages a lot of these details in a lot better ways than I can,
Rachel Moore: so you're not busy is what you're trying to say, you really need more stuff to do.
Hugh Forrest: Uh you know, again, like a lot of us um I can work mhm. Many more hours a day and I still wouldn't get everything done. Um the key is always to try to work smarter, not longer and as long as I tell myself that I hope that I'll eventually figure out what that means, right?
Rachel Moore: I think yeah, I I can relate, I feel like we're all writing that book right, where it's like once I I land on the the key or the fix all for all of us having more time in the day and getting everything done that we need to then they won't need to work anymore because they'll have you know, hit upon the thing everybody wants. Um Yeah, so alright you talked about just now overseeing all the content and I know our audience of event planners out there and you know as you and I talked offline a bit um we've got event planners and coordinators and even people who are are putting on and hosting these events are asking them to be put on um run the gamut. They can be very small and very focused or they can be very large. Um south by southwest really quick. Uh How many people on average do you say attend the conference every year?
SUBTOPIC: South by South Southwest Interactive 00:01:39-00:05:36
Rachel Moore: give me a great idea sometimes of all the things you do. Can you describe for us, what does it mean that you're the chief programming officer and Director of South by South Southwest Interactive? What does that mean?
Hugh Forrest: Uh It is a fancy title but uh that means I'm sure like a lot of the audience out there, I answer a lot of emails or avoid answering a lot of emails, but um a little more seriously or directly, I oversee all the content. We do at South by Southwest. Um and by overseeing by content, I mean all that we do from a from panels, presentations, keynotes, uh called mentor sessions meetups, everything that um is conference related. I also oversee the the music festival, which brings together somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 or 2000 bands from all over the U. S. And all over the world Austin as well as the film festival, which is this vibrant showcase of up and coming filmmakers as well as as more established Hollywood uh industry folks and um oversee the comedy festival. And we also do a event called South by Southwest E bu that I oversee also, but oversee is, you know, very broad word that means um I have people who are very good at those jobs who are much more managing the details. I'm a little more focused um day to day on the conference aspect of the event um sessions. Again, he knows featured speakers, the kind of people that we want to bring to the audience up and comers, established industry folks, people who will inspire our community with new information um with new visions of the future, with revised visions of the future, with analysis of the past, with information about new technology, about new trends, all of those kinds of things, so that's where I do most of my day to day work. Um but again, oversee a very talented staff that that manages a lot of these details in a lot better ways than I can,
Rachel Moore: so you're not busy is what you're trying to say, you really need more stuff to do.
Hugh Forrest: Uh you know, again, like a lot of us um I can work mhm. Many more hours a day and I still wouldn't get everything done. Um the key is always to try to work smarter, not longer and as long as I tell myself that I hope that I'll eventually figure out what that means, right?
Rachel Moore: I think yeah, I I can relate, I feel like we're all writing that book right, where it's like once I I land on the the key or the fix all for all of us having more time in the day and getting everything done that we need to then they won't need to work anymore because they'll have you know, hit upon the thing everybody wants. Um Yeah, so alright you talked about just now overseeing all the content and I know our audience of event planners out there and you know as you and I talked offline a bit um we've got event planners and coordinators and even people who are are putting on and hosting these events are asking them to be put on um run the gamut. They can be very small and very focused or they can be very large. Um south by southwest really quick. Uh How many people on average do you say attend the conference every year?
SUBTOPIC: Our Last Real-World Event 00:05:37-00:08:16
Hugh Forrest: Well our last real world event which is 2019, we had about um 50,000 total badge holders over the space of our 14 days, luckily we never had all those people in one place at one time. Um It's you know there there there's a small percentage of people who who stay for a week, most are coming in for three or four days or attending for three or four days. Um These are these are these are people from all over the U. S. And all over the world and uh you know that the the event has changed and morphed a lot in the 30 years that I've been here. We started off as a entirely focused on music. We now still cover music, we cover film, we cover technology, we cover food, we cover fashion, we cover government and politics, we cover cannabis, we cover transportation, we cover all these different verticals. um but as much as the event has changed in that 30 years in terms of areas of coverage, the bottom line, I think I hope is still the same. Uh and that we that we bring very very creative people together um give them opportunities to connect with other creative people um and uh give them opportunities to advance their career. Um you know, a little bit of back to the original part of your question uh 50,000 badges. There's a lot of badges um ah that may be Smalling than some of the events that that your audience does. That maybe bigger. Um it's where we've kind of landed on after 30 years. I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity and I don't think that the size of the event particularly makes that much difference in terms of the quality. It's about um what we all do or trying to do is is, you know, create platforms that bring people together in meaningful ways. Um and again, the size is the size gets me to to be invited to speak on cool podcast like this one. But again, there are lots of incredible incredible events that are smaller, lots that are bigger. And ultimately it's more about what you do with the with your
SUBTOPIC: 50,000 Badges 00:05:37-00:07:14
Hugh Forrest: Well our last real world event which is 2019, we had about um 50,000 total badge holders over the space of our 14 days, luckily we never had all those people in one place at one time. Um It's you know there there there's a small percentage of people who who stay for a week, most are coming in for three or four days or attending for three or four days. Um These are these are these are people from all over the U. S. And all over the world and uh you know that the the event has changed and morphed a lot in the 30 years that I've been here. We started off as a entirely focused on music. We now still cover music, we cover film, we cover technology, we cover food, we cover fashion, we cover government and politics, we cover cannabis, we cover transportation, we cover all these different verticals. um but as much as the event has changed in that 30 years in terms of areas of coverage, the bottom line, I think I hope is still the same. Uh and that we that we bring very very creative people together um give them opportunities to connect with other creative people um and uh give them opportunities to advance their career.
SUBTOPIC: Is There a Bigger Difference in Conference Content... 00:07:14-00:14:37
Hugh Forrest: that may be Smalling than some of the events that that your audience does. That maybe bigger. Um it's where we've kind of landed on after 30 years. I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity and I don't think that the size of the event particularly makes that much difference in terms of the quality. It's about um what we all do or trying to do is is, you know, create platforms that bring people together in meaningful ways. Um and again, the size is the size gets me to to be invited to speak on cool podcast like this one. But again, there are lots of incredible incredible events that are smaller, lots that are bigger. And ultimately it's more about what you do with the with your platform than than how big the platform is.
Rachel Moore: I completely agree. And and I'm I'm sure a lot of our audience is nodding to saying that's right, you know, because you can you can have such meaningful um outcomes, uh but particularly when you're planning it and I, so I want to ask you because and you know, someone who has in the past, in the past, I have submitted panel pickers. Um I know there's like, there's online groups out there who are trying to, like, work together to like, how do we, you know, get our proposals together. And I'm talking mostly about the content that you're, you're you're assessing so uh for those of for those who don't know, um can you, it is a panel picker um process where people submit ideas and then your team and also the voting community assesses them. Is that right? Where that's how you are bringing in new content ideas?
Hugh Forrest: Yeah. In terms of conference content, we've had a system for roughly 15 years which is a, you know, kind of an application system that is similar in some ways to what a lot of events used, it is simply a way for us to improve the process. Um and I feel like while we want to focus on creativity with our events, ultimately, so much of what we do is process and how to improve that process and you know, before we had this system, what I had found was that um, inevitably the best content that we had for our event was other people who had really good ideas. Um but in heavily I would get, you know, so many of these ideas in mid february when our event is in March and there was really no way to process all those ideas just from bandwidth standpoint. So we created a system where people are encouraged to enter speaking ideas in, in the summer, in late june early july yeah, there are certainly a lot of flaws with this system, but there are a lot of pluses. Uh it shows our focus on community and I firmly believe that what we do is South by southwest is less about me or any of the other people who work at South by southwest and more about the community. It allowed us to, this panel picker process allowed us to expand into a lot of these other verticals. It allowed us to also create buzz about the event six months before the event at a time when we were previously, you know, no one was really thinking about South by southwest and you know, certainly what I've always found is the sooner you can create some significant buzz for your event, the, you know, the higher the buzz ends up when the event actually begins, So again, that was a big part of our I think growth trajectory um and a little more detail on this panel picker process will at this point get, you know, somewhere between 3000 and 5000 speaking proposals from very, very creative people from all over the world. We end up accepting probably between five 107 100 of these events, so it's very, very competitive. Uh the competition is always a good thing, it again also, you know, gives us a glimpse into what our community is thinking about um and often that can be, you know, can be a window that we didn't previously have. So you know, I firmly believe that the more you can communicate with your audience with your attendees, they often understand your event better than you do. Um the stronger you are, I'm not very good at remembering remembering quotes, I wish I was, I'm not the one that I, the one that I can remember really well, because it's three words is a quote from a book called the clue train manifesto, which came out around 2000, it was kind of an early internet bible and the quote there is, markets are conversations and um I always try to remember that, I always try to talk to my staff about that, that again, the more that we can communicate converse with our audience, the more we can understand them, the more we can demonstrate that we're humans not some kind of bot at the other end, the more community, we create, the more buzz we create, the more interest, the more goodwill, the more good outcomes we have and the panel picker is simply one more, one More, you know, weapon in that arsenal to accomplish that task.
Rachel Moore: It's the way you've described it, it's a great idea honestly. And even if it does have, you know, like you said, every process has its own flaws, nothing is perfect. But you're talking about, I mean, it really does foster, even again, by the process I just mentioned earlier, people do collaborate together to try to put their best foot forward, the best proposal forward because they, you know, it really is, it's like shoot if I can get featured at south by southwest, that's, that's really an awesome accomplishment. Um, but, but the fact that this is based on community and you've, whether you and guys, whether you intended it to start that way or not, you may have started out as a process, but it wound up building like you said, all these other facets that all benefit everyone in the conference, the registrations, the quality of the content, you're getting the fact that you're able to keep the pulse on everything. Um, so I absolutely,
Hugh Forrest: and I will say Rachel that we, we certainly when we launch this thing approximately 15 years ago, we, we, we didn't fully understand, um, a lot of the benefits that it, that it would have and um, again, it's, it's been a one of the big triggers in the growth of the event, which again is, is um, you know, they're, they're great things about growth. There are challenges about growth. I think it's also been a big factor in just the improved quality of the
SUBTOPIC: Conference Content 00:08:16-00:14:37
Rachel Moore: I completely agree. And and I'm I'm sure a lot of our audience is nodding to saying that's right, you know, because you can you can have such meaningful um outcomes, uh but particularly when you're planning it and I, so I want to ask you because and you know, someone who has in the past, in the past, I have submitted panel pickers. Um I know there's like, there's online groups out there who are trying to, like, work together to like, how do we, you know, get our proposals together. And I'm talking mostly about the content that you're, you're you're assessing so uh for those of for those who don't know, um can you, it is a panel picker um process where people submit ideas and then your team and also the voting community assesses them. Is that right? Where that's how you are bringing in new content ideas?
Hugh Forrest: Yeah. In terms of conference content, we've had a system for roughly 15 years which is a, you know, kind of an application system that is similar in some ways to what a lot of events used, it is simply a way for us to improve the process. Um and I feel like while we want to focus on creativity with our events, ultimately, so much of what we do is process and how to improve that process and you know, before we had this system, what I had found was that um, inevitably the best content that we had for our event was other people who had really good ideas. Um but in heavily I would get, you know, so many of these ideas in mid february when our event is in March and there was really no way to process all those ideas just from bandwidth standpoint. So we created a system where people are encouraged to enter speaking ideas in, in the summer, in late june early july yeah, there are certainly a lot of flaws with this system, but there are a lot of pluses. Uh it shows our focus on community and I firmly believe that what we do is South by southwest is less about me or any of the other people who work at South by southwest and more about the community. It allowed us to, this panel picker process allowed us to expand into a lot of these other verticals. It allowed us to also create buzz about the event six months before the event at a time when we were previously, you know, no one was really thinking about South by southwest and you know, certainly what I've always found is the sooner you can create some significant buzz for your event, the, you know, the higher the buzz ends up when the event actually begins, So again, that was a big part of our I think growth trajectory um and a little more detail on this panel picker process will at this point get, you know, somewhere between 3000 and 5000 speaking proposals from very, very creative people from all over the world. We end up accepting probably between five 107 100 of these events, so it's very, very competitive. Uh the competition is always a good thing, it again also, you know, gives us a glimpse into what our community is thinking about um and often that can be, you know, can be a window that we didn't previously have. So you know, I firmly believe that the more you can communicate with your audience with your attendees, they often understand your event better than you do. Um the stronger you are, I'm not very good at remembering remembering quotes, I wish I was, I'm not the one that I, the one that I can remember really well, because it's three words is a quote from a book called the clue train manifesto, which came out around 2000, it was kind of an early internet bible and the quote there is, markets are conversations and um I always try to remember that, I always try to talk to my staff about that, that again, the more that we can communicate converse with our audience, the more we can understand them, the more we can demonstrate that we're humans not some kind of bot at the other end, the more community, we create, the more buzz we create, the more interest, the more goodwill, the more good outcomes we have and the panel picker is simply one more, one More, you know, weapon in that arsenal to accomplish that task.
Rachel Moore: It's the way you've described it, it's a great idea honestly. And even if it does have, you know, like you said, every process has its own flaws, nothing is perfect. But you're talking about, I mean, it really does foster, even again, by the process I just mentioned earlier, people do collaborate together to try to put their best foot forward, the best proposal forward because they, you know, it really is, it's like shoot if I can get featured at south by southwest, that's, that's really an awesome accomplishment. Um, but, but the fact that this is based on community and you've, whether you and guys, whether you intended it to start that way or not, you may have started out as a process, but it wound up building like you said, all these other facets that all benefit everyone in the conference, the registrations, the quality of the content, you're getting the fact that you're able to keep the pulse on everything. Um, so I absolutely,
Hugh Forrest: and I will say Rachel that we, we certainly when we launch this thing approximately 15 years ago, we, we, we didn't fully understand, um, a lot of the benefits that it, that it would have and um, again, it's, it's been a one of the big triggers in the growth of the event, which again is, is um, you know, they're, they're great things about growth. There are challenges about growth. I think it's also been a big factor in just the improved quality of the
SUBTOPIC: Crowdsourcing for Event Planning 00:14:37-00:16:39
Hugh Forrest: I would, myself and my staff would work a lot with, you know, incoming emails of people. We'd also just, you know, try to track something down like, let's do a panel on podcasting. Well, does anyone know anything about podcasting? No, not really well, so it's a lot better to get someone who's an expert in podcast seemed to organize that session again, work with the community, work with your people and let them do what they do well and let them do and you do what you do well, which is hopefully knock on wood, organize events and, and create that platform for for these very, very creative people.
Rachel Moore: That's so great and thank you for touching on that too. And then again, I know this is probably really, this is all good information for all of our event planners to have to, because, you know, you may go in like you said with an intention and then it blossoms out, but also the fact I love what you're bringing up almost about crowd sourcing. Um, you know, content ideas, I, I often have that approach to where I might have a great idea and it happens frequently and later. I'll be like I was wrong, and it's my own myopia that's telling me that it's, it's a great idea, but you just tend to get better ideas and content when you're coming from across the room or across communities. So I love that you you all have found that, you know, nailed that down to bring that together. And plus again, I mean, by virtue of seeing what is ultimately selected to be the content, um very high quality and I've attended South by Southwest once and it blew my mind, I can't think of a panel or any one of the presentations or anything that I went to, that wasn't really good, you know, and really well thought out and you're requiring people to do that. It's not just let me go fill a google format with an idea I have, and well, I won't talk to you until I show up and now I'm going to present you really do make people planet out. Can you talk a little bit about how you and again, you don't have to give away trade secrets or anything like that. But you, you mentioned earlier quality versus quantity.
SUBTOPIC: Crowdsourcing for Event Planning 00:14:37-00:16:39
Hugh Forrest: I would, myself and my staff would work a lot with, you know, incoming emails of people. We'd also just, you know, try to track something down like, let's do a panel on podcasting. Well, does anyone know anything about podcasting? No, not really well, so it's a lot better to get someone who's an expert in podcast seemed to organize that session again, work with the community, work with your people and let them do what they do well and let them do and you do what you do well, which is hopefully knock on wood, organize events and, and create that platform for for these very, very creative people.
Rachel Moore: That's so great and thank you for touching on that too. And then again, I know this is probably really, this is all good information for all of our event planners to have to, because, you know, you may go in like you said with an intention and then it blossoms out, but also the fact I love what you're bringing up almost about crowd sourcing. Um, you know, content ideas, I, I often have that approach to where I might have a great idea and it happens frequently and later. I'll be like I was wrong, and it's my own myopia that's telling me that it's, it's a great idea, but you just tend to get better ideas and content when you're coming from across the room or across communities. So I love that you you all have found that, you know, nailed that down to bring that together. And plus again, I mean, by virtue of seeing what is ultimately selected to be the content, um very high quality and I've attended South by Southwest once and it blew my mind, I can't think of a panel or any one of the presentations or anything that I went to, that wasn't really good, you know, and really well thought out and you're requiring people to do that. It's not just let me go fill a google format with an idea I have, and well, I won't talk to you until I show up and now I'm going to present you really do make people planet out. Can you talk a little bit about how you and again, you don't have to give away trade secrets or anything like that. But you, you mentioned earlier quality versus quantity.
SUBTOPIC: Panel Picker 00:16:39-00:17:40
Rachel Moore: Um and how, What are some basic things that you and your team due to, you know, as you as you narrow down from the 3 to 5000 proposals you get to the, you know, 500 ish. Um what exact what criteria are you using to determine? This is a winning um winning session. This is something we absolutely have to feature because it's such high quality. Can you share that with this?
Hugh Forrest: Absolutely. Well the way the panel picker works is that um everyone who enters an idea. Uh huh. It is posted on an interface. Um Anyone with a connection to the interwebs can see this um interface can up vote or down vote simple, you know internet style there. You can comment on the session. We also have an advisory board that reviews um all the the panel picker entries and then staff reviews them. So we've got three different Essentialments three different inputs for every idea. Um
SUBTOPIC: Panel Picker 00:16:39-00:17:40
Rachel Moore: Um and how, What are some basic things that you and your team due to, you know, as you as you narrow down from the 3 to 5000 proposals you get to the, you know, 500 ish. Um what exact what criteria are you using to determine? This is a winning um winning session. This is something we absolutely have to feature because it's such high quality. Can you share that with this?
Hugh Forrest: Absolutely. Well the way the panel picker works is that um everyone who enters an idea. Uh huh. It is posted on an interface. Um Anyone with a connection to the interwebs can see this um interface can up vote or down vote simple, you know internet style there. You can comment on the session. We also have an advisory board that reviews um all the the panel picker entries and then staff reviews them. So we've got three different Essentialments three different inputs for every idea. Um
SUBTOPIC: Balancing Proposals 00:17:40-00:18:37
Hugh Forrest: The part of that is to such that people with big social media followings don't have advantage over people with smaller social media problems, social media following their um then we're also as staff, we're you know, we're trying to vet each particular session, look at the speakers, how much experience they have have they spoken before. Um knowing that that you know a good speaker can make a boring topic interesting. A not experienced speaker can make a very interesting topic seem boring. All these factors. Uh we we we will get together and discuss uh you know the the sessions that have the highest number of votes and and make the terminations
SUBTOPIC: Social Media Problems 00:17:40-00:18:37
Hugh Forrest: The part of that is to such that people with big social media followings don't have advantage over people with smaller social media problems, social media following their um then we're also as staff, we're you know, we're trying to vet each particular session, look at the speakers, how much experience they have have they spoken before. Um knowing that that you know a good speaker can make a boring topic interesting. A not experienced speaker can make a very interesting topic seem boring. All these factors. Uh we we we will get together and discuss uh you know the the sessions that have the highest number of votes and and make the terminations
SUBTOPIC: Getting Better Every Year 00:18:37-00:20:49
Hugh Forrest: uh make errors there. I'm impressed that with you to help us unless every session was good but you got lucky on that one because there are always some that that don't live up to expectations but but certainly um trying to put as much work into this process on the front end um is what uh what what more likely insurers success in the back end. And as your audience well knows what we what we all do as event planners is details details details, trying to figure out every particular detail, trying to figure out redundancy when that when when you know plan A fails, what are you gonna do with Plan B? Um I think we've gotten pretty good at this at south by southwest. But I also know that that every year there's x number of details that darn we didn't think of that will do better on that next year. And I think that's um you know kind of the approach that's worked for us in terms of our launch activity and our growth is that we're gonna take a long term approach to this. We're gonna try to get a little better every year. And um I work a lot with our community on this work a lot with community feedback. Um and getting a little better every year over the space of of a few years or longer than a few years in our case. Um you can put together something pretty special. um as we all know, events are hard to organize, Events are difficult, there are a lot of work, but I think we all live for those um you know, magic moments when you're bringing people together, when they're creating some kind of connection, when they're finding a job, when they're learning something new. And again, what we're trying to do um at South by Southwest and what your audience is trying to do is work out as many of those details, um uh mitigate as many of the challenges such that
SUBTOPIC: Getting Better Every Year 00:18:37-00:20:49
Hugh Forrest: uh make errors there. I'm impressed that with you to help us unless every session was good but you got lucky on that one because there are always some that that don't live up to expectations but but certainly um trying to put as much work into this process on the front end um is what uh what what more likely insurers success in the back end. And as your audience well knows what we what we all do as event planners is details details details, trying to figure out every particular detail, trying to figure out redundancy when that when when you know plan A fails, what are you gonna do with Plan B? Um I think we've gotten pretty good at this at south by southwest. But I also know that that every year there's x number of details that darn we didn't think of that will do better on that next year. And I think that's um you know kind of the approach that's worked for us in terms of our launch activity and our growth is that we're gonna take a long term approach to this. We're gonna try to get a little better every year. And um I work a lot with our community on this work a lot with community feedback. Um and getting a little better every year over the space of of a few years or longer than a few years in our case. Um you can put together something pretty special. um as we all know, events are hard to organize, Events are difficult, there are a lot of work, but I think we all live for those um you know, magic moments when you're bringing people together, when they're creating some kind of connection, when they're finding a job, when they're learning something new. And again, what we're trying to do um at South by Southwest and what your audience is trying to do is work out as many of those details, um uh mitigate as many of the challenges such that
TOPIC: Event Planning 00:01:39-00:20:49
SUBTOPIC: South by Southwest Interactive 00:01:39-00:05:36
Rachel Moore: give me a great idea sometimes of all the things you do. Can you describe for us, what does it mean that you're the chief programming officer and Director of South by South Southwest Interactive? What does that mean?
Hugh Forrest: Uh It is a fancy title but uh that means I'm sure like a lot of the audience out there, I answer a lot of emails or avoid answering a lot of emails, but um a little more seriously or directly, I oversee all the content. We do at South by Southwest. Um and by overseeing by content, I mean all that we do from a from panels, presentations, keynotes, uh called mentor sessions meetups, everything that um is conference related. I also oversee the the music festival, which brings together somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 or 2000 bands from all over the U. S. And all over the world Austin as well as the film festival, which is this vibrant showcase of up and coming filmmakers as well as as more established Hollywood uh industry folks and um oversee the comedy festival. And we also do a event called South by Southwest E bu that I oversee also, but oversee is, you know, very broad word that means um I have people who are very good at those jobs who are much more managing the details. I'm a little more focused um day to day on the conference aspect of the event um sessions. Again, he knows featured speakers, the kind of people that we want to bring to the audience up and comers, established industry folks, people who will inspire our community with new information um with new visions of the future, with revised visions of the future, with analysis of the past, with information about new technology, about new trends, all of those kinds of things, so that's where I do most of my day to day work. Um but again, oversee a very talented staff that that manages a lot of these details in a lot better ways than I can,
Rachel Moore: so you're not busy is what you're trying to say, you really need more stuff to do.
Hugh Forrest: Uh you know, again, like a lot of us um I can work mhm. Many more hours a day and I still wouldn't get everything done. Um the key is always to try to work smarter, not longer and as long as I tell myself that I hope that I'll eventually figure out what that means, right?
Rachel Moore: I think yeah, I I can relate, I feel like we're all writing that book right, where it's like once I I land on the the key or the fix all for all of us having more time in the day and getting everything done that we need to then they won't need to work anymore because they'll have you know, hit upon the thing everybody wants. Um Yeah, so alright you talked about just now overseeing all the content and I know our audience of event planners out there and you know as you and I talked offline a bit um we've got event planners and coordinators and even people who are are putting on and hosting these events are asking them to be put on um run the gamut. They can be very small and very focused or they can be very large. Um south by southwest really quick. Uh How many people on average do you say attend the conference every year?
SUBTOPIC: South by South Southwest Interactive 00:01:39-00:05:36
Rachel Moore: give me a great idea sometimes of all the things you do. Can you describe for us, what does it mean that you're the chief programming officer and Director of South by South Southwest Interactive? What does that mean?
Hugh Forrest: Uh It is a fancy title but uh that means I'm sure like a lot of the audience out there, I answer a lot of emails or avoid answering a lot of emails, but um a little more seriously or directly, I oversee all the content. We do at South by Southwest. Um and by overseeing by content, I mean all that we do from a from panels, presentations, keynotes, uh called mentor sessions meetups, everything that um is conference related. I also oversee the the music festival, which brings together somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 or 2000 bands from all over the U. S. And all over the world Austin as well as the film festival, which is this vibrant showcase of up and coming filmmakers as well as as more established Hollywood uh industry folks and um oversee the comedy festival. And we also do a event called South by Southwest E bu that I oversee also, but oversee is, you know, very broad word that means um I have people who are very good at those jobs who are much more managing the details. I'm a little more focused um day to day on the conference aspect of the event um sessions. Again, he knows featured speakers, the kind of people that we want to bring to the audience up and comers, established industry folks, people who will inspire our community with new information um with new visions of the future, with revised visions of the future, with analysis of the past, with information about new technology, about new trends, all of those kinds of things, so that's where I do most of my day to day work. Um but again, oversee a very talented staff that that manages a lot of these details in a lot better ways than I can,
Rachel Moore: so you're not busy is what you're trying to say, you really need more stuff to do.
Hugh Forrest: Uh you know, again, like a lot of us um I can work mhm. Many more hours a day and I still wouldn't get everything done. Um the key is always to try to work smarter, not longer and as long as I tell myself that I hope that I'll eventually figure out what that means, right?
Rachel Moore: I think yeah, I I can relate, I feel like we're all writing that book right, where it's like once I I land on the the key or the fix all for all of us having more time in the day and getting everything done that we need to then they won't need to work anymore because they'll have you know, hit upon the thing everybody wants. Um Yeah, so alright you talked about just now overseeing all the content and I know our audience of event planners out there and you know as you and I talked offline a bit um we've got event planners and coordinators and even people who are are putting on and hosting these events are asking them to be put on um run the gamut. They can be very small and very focused or they can be very large. Um south by southwest really quick. Uh How many people on average do you say attend the conference every year?
SUBTOPIC: Our Last Real-World Event 00:05:37-00:08:16
Hugh Forrest: Well our last real world event which is 2019, we had about um 50,000 total badge holders over the space of our 14 days, luckily we never had all those people in one place at one time. Um It's you know there there there's a small percentage of people who who stay for a week, most are coming in for three or four days or attending for three or four days. Um These are these are these are people from all over the U. S. And all over the world and uh you know that the the event has changed and morphed a lot in the 30 years that I've been here. We started off as a entirely focused on music. We now still cover music, we cover film, we cover technology, we cover food, we cover fashion, we cover government and politics, we cover cannabis, we cover transportation, we cover all these different verticals. um but as much as the event has changed in that 30 years in terms of areas of coverage, the bottom line, I think I hope is still the same. Uh and that we that we bring very very creative people together um give them opportunities to connect with other creative people um and uh give them opportunities to advance their career. Um you know, a little bit of back to the original part of your question uh 50,000 badges. There's a lot of badges um ah that may be Smalling than some of the events that that your audience does. That maybe bigger. Um it's where we've kind of landed on after 30 years. I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity and I don't think that the size of the event particularly makes that much difference in terms of the quality. It's about um what we all do or trying to do is is, you know, create platforms that bring people together in meaningful ways. Um and again, the size is the size gets me to to be invited to speak on cool podcast like this one. But again, there are lots of incredible incredible events that are smaller, lots that are bigger. And ultimately it's more about what you do with the with your
SUBTOPIC: 50,000 Badges 00:05:37-00:07:14
Hugh Forrest: Well our last real world event which is 2019, we had about um 50,000 total badge holders over the space of our 14 days, luckily we never had all those people in one place at one time. Um It's you know there there there's a small percentage of people who who stay for a week, most are coming in for three or four days or attending for three or four days. Um These are these are these are people from all over the U. S. And all over the world and uh you know that the the event has changed and morphed a lot in the 30 years that I've been here. We started off as a entirely focused on music. We now still cover music, we cover film, we cover technology, we cover food, we cover fashion, we cover government and politics, we cover cannabis, we cover transportation, we cover all these different verticals. um but as much as the event has changed in that 30 years in terms of areas of coverage, the bottom line, I think I hope is still the same. Uh and that we that we bring very very creative people together um give them opportunities to connect with other creative people um and uh give them opportunities to advance their career.
SUBTOPIC: Is There a Bigger Difference in Conference Content... 00:07:14-00:14:37
Hugh Forrest: that may be Smalling than some of the events that that your audience does. That maybe bigger. Um it's where we've kind of landed on after 30 years. I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity and I don't think that the size of the event particularly makes that much difference in terms of the quality. It's about um what we all do or trying to do is is, you know, create platforms that bring people together in meaningful ways. Um and again, the size is the size gets me to to be invited to speak on cool podcast like this one. But again, there are lots of incredible incredible events that are smaller, lots that are bigger. And ultimately it's more about what you do with the with your platform than than how big the platform is.
Rachel Moore: I completely agree. And and I'm I'm sure a lot of our audience is nodding to saying that's right, you know, because you can you can have such meaningful um outcomes, uh but particularly when you're planning it and I, so I want to ask you because and you know, someone who has in the past, in the past, I have submitted panel pickers. Um I know there's like, there's online groups out there who are trying to, like, work together to like, how do we, you know, get our proposals together. And I'm talking mostly about the content that you're, you're you're assessing so uh for those of for those who don't know, um can you, it is a panel picker um process where people submit ideas and then your team and also the voting community assesses them. Is that right? Where that's how you are bringing in new content ideas?
Hugh Forrest: Yeah. In terms of conference content, we've had a system for roughly 15 years which is a, you know, kind of an application system that is similar in some ways to what a lot of events used, it is simply a way for us to improve the process. Um and I feel like while we want to focus on creativity with our events, ultimately, so much of what we do is process and how to improve that process and you know, before we had this system, what I had found was that um, inevitably the best content that we had for our event was other people who had really good ideas. Um but in heavily I would get, you know, so many of these ideas in mid february when our event is in March and there was really no way to process all those ideas just from bandwidth standpoint. So we created a system where people are encouraged to enter speaking ideas in, in the summer, in late june early july yeah, there are certainly a lot of flaws with this system, but there are a lot of pluses. Uh it shows our focus on community and I firmly believe that what we do is South by southwest is less about me or any of the other people who work at South by southwest and more about the community. It allowed us to, this panel picker process allowed us to expand into a lot of these other verticals. It allowed us to also create buzz about the event six months before the event at a time when we were previously, you know, no one was really thinking about South by southwest and you know, certainly what I've always found is the sooner you can create some significant buzz for your event, the, you know, the higher the buzz ends up when the event actually begins, So again, that was a big part of our I think growth trajectory um and a little more detail on this panel picker process will at this point get, you know, somewhere between 3000 and 5000 speaking proposals from very, very creative people from all over the world. We end up accepting probably between five 107 100 of these events, so it's very, very competitive. Uh the competition is always a good thing, it again also, you know, gives us a glimpse into what our community is thinking about um and often that can be, you know, can be a window that we didn't previously have. So you know, I firmly believe that the more you can communicate with your audience with your attendees, they often understand your event better than you do. Um the stronger you are, I'm not very good at remembering remembering quotes, I wish I was, I'm not the one that I, the one that I can remember really well, because it's three words is a quote from a book called the clue train manifesto, which came out around 2000, it was kind of an early internet bible and the quote there is, markets are conversations and um I always try to remember that, I always try to talk to my staff about that, that again, the more that we can communicate converse with our audience, the more we can understand them, the more we can demonstrate that we're humans not some kind of bot at the other end, the more community, we create, the more buzz we create, the more interest, the more goodwill, the more good outcomes we have and the panel picker is simply one more, one More, you know, weapon in that arsenal to accomplish that task.
Rachel Moore: It's the way you've described it, it's a great idea honestly. And even if it does have, you know, like you said, every process has its own flaws, nothing is perfect. But you're talking about, I mean, it really does foster, even again, by the process I just mentioned earlier, people do collaborate together to try to put their best foot forward, the best proposal forward because they, you know, it really is, it's like shoot if I can get featured at south by southwest, that's, that's really an awesome accomplishment. Um, but, but the fact that this is based on community and you've, whether you and guys, whether you intended it to start that way or not, you may have started out as a process, but it wound up building like you said, all these other facets that all benefit everyone in the conference, the registrations, the quality of the content, you're getting the fact that you're able to keep the pulse on everything. Um, so I absolutely,
Hugh Forrest: and I will say Rachel that we, we certainly when we launch this thing approximately 15 years ago, we, we, we didn't fully understand, um, a lot of the benefits that it, that it would have and um, again, it's, it's been a one of the big triggers in the growth of the event, which again is, is um, you know, they're, they're great things about growth. There are challenges about growth. I think it's also been a big factor in just the improved quality of the
SUBTOPIC: Conference Content 00:08:16-00:14:37
Rachel Moore: I completely agree. And and I'm I'm sure a lot of our audience is nodding to saying that's right, you know, because you can you can have such meaningful um outcomes, uh but particularly when you're planning it and I, so I want to ask you because and you know, someone who has in the past, in the past, I have submitted panel pickers. Um I know there's like, there's online groups out there who are trying to, like, work together to like, how do we, you know, get our proposals together. And I'm talking mostly about the content that you're, you're you're assessing so uh for those of for those who don't know, um can you, it is a panel picker um process where people submit ideas and then your team and also the voting community assesses them. Is that right? Where that's how you are bringing in new content ideas?
Hugh Forrest: Yeah. In terms of conference content, we've had a system for roughly 15 years which is a, you know, kind of an application system that is similar in some ways to what a lot of events used, it is simply a way for us to improve the process. Um and I feel like while we want to focus on creativity with our events, ultimately, so much of what we do is process and how to improve that process and you know, before we had this system, what I had found was that um, inevitably the best content that we had for our event was other people who had really good ideas. Um but in heavily I would get, you know, so many of these ideas in mid february when our event is in March and there was really no way to process all those ideas just from bandwidth standpoint. So we created a system where people are encouraged to enter speaking ideas in, in the summer, in late june early july yeah, there are certainly a lot of flaws with this system, but there are a lot of pluses. Uh it shows our focus on community and I firmly believe that what we do is South by southwest is less about me or any of the other people who work at South by southwest and more about the community. It allowed us to, this panel picker process allowed us to expand into a lot of these other verticals. It allowed us to also create buzz about the event six months before the event at a time when we were previously, you know, no one was really thinking about South by southwest and you know, certainly what I've always found is the sooner you can create some significant buzz for your event, the, you know, the higher the buzz ends up when the event actually begins, So again, that was a big part of our I think growth trajectory um and a little more detail on this panel picker process will at this point get, you know, somewhere between 3000 and 5000 speaking proposals from very, very creative people from all over the world. We end up accepting probably between five 107 100 of these events, so it's very, very competitive. Uh the competition is always a good thing, it again also, you know, gives us a glimpse into what our community is thinking about um and often that can be, you know, can be a window that we didn't previously have. So you know, I firmly believe that the more you can communicate with your audience with your attendees, they often understand your event better than you do. Um the stronger you are, I'm not very good at remembering remembering quotes, I wish I was, I'm not the one that I, the one that I can remember really well, because it's three words is a quote from a book called the clue train manifesto, which came out around 2000, it was kind of an early internet bible and the quote there is, markets are conversations and um I always try to remember that, I always try to talk to my staff about that, that again, the more that we can communicate converse with our audience, the more we can understand them, the more we can demonstrate that we're humans not some kind of bot at the other end, the more community, we create, the more buzz we create, the more interest, the more goodwill, the more good outcomes we have and the panel picker is simply one more, one More, you know, weapon in that arsenal to accomplish that task.
Rachel Moore: It's the way you've described it, it's a great idea honestly. And even if it does have, you know, like you said, every process has its own flaws, nothing is perfect. But you're talking about, I mean, it really does foster, even again, by the process I just mentioned earlier, people do collaborate together to try to put their best foot forward, the best proposal forward because they, you know, it really is, it's like shoot if I can get featured at south by southwest, that's, that's really an awesome accomplishment. Um, but, but the fact that this is based on community and you've, whether you and guys, whether you intended it to start that way or not, you may have started out as a process, but it wound up building like you said, all these other facets that all benefit everyone in the conference, the registrations, the quality of the content, you're getting the fact that you're able to keep the pulse on everything. Um, so I absolutely,
Hugh Forrest: and I will say Rachel that we, we certainly when we launch this thing approximately 15 years ago, we, we, we didn't fully understand, um, a lot of the benefits that it, that it would have and um, again, it's, it's been a one of the big triggers in the growth of the event, which again is, is um, you know, they're, they're great things about growth. There are challenges about growth. I think it's also been a big factor in just the improved quality of the
SUBTOPIC: Crowdsourcing for Event Planning 00:14:37-00:16:39
Hugh Forrest: I would, myself and my staff would work a lot with, you know, incoming emails of people. We'd also just, you know, try to track something down like, let's do a panel on podcasting. Well, does anyone know anything about podcasting? No, not really well, so it's a lot better to get someone who's an expert in podcast seemed to organize that session again, work with the community, work with your people and let them do what they do well and let them do and you do what you do well, which is hopefully knock on wood, organize events and, and create that platform for for these very, very creative people.
Rachel Moore: That's so great and thank you for touching on that too. And then again, I know this is probably really, this is all good information for all of our event planners to have to, because, you know, you may go in like you said with an intention and then it blossoms out, but also the fact I love what you're bringing up almost about crowd sourcing. Um, you know, content ideas, I, I often have that approach to where I might have a great idea and it happens frequently and later. I'll be like I was wrong, and it's my own myopia that's telling me that it's, it's a great idea, but you just tend to get better ideas and content when you're coming from across the room or across communities. So I love that you you all have found that, you know, nailed that down to bring that together. And plus again, I mean, by virtue of seeing what is ultimately selected to be the content, um very high quality and I've attended South by Southwest once and it blew my mind, I can't think of a panel or any one of the presentations or anything that I went to, that wasn't really good, you know, and really well thought out and you're requiring people to do that. It's not just let me go fill a google format with an idea I have, and well, I won't talk to you until I show up and now I'm going to present you really do make people planet out. Can you talk a little bit about how you and again, you don't have to give away trade secrets or anything like that. But you, you mentioned earlier quality versus quantity.
SUBTOPIC: Crowdsourcing for Event Planning 00:14:37-00:16:39
Hugh Forrest: I would, myself and my staff would work a lot with, you know, incoming emails of people. We'd also just, you know, try to track something down like, let's do a panel on podcasting. Well, does anyone know anything about podcasting? No, not really well, so it's a lot better to get someone who's an expert in podcast seemed to organize that session again, work with the community, work with your people and let them do what they do well and let them do and you do what you do well, which is hopefully knock on wood, organize events and, and create that platform for for these very, very creative people.
Rachel Moore: That's so great and thank you for touching on that too. And then again, I know this is probably really, this is all good information for all of our event planners to have to, because, you know, you may go in like you said with an intention and then it blossoms out, but also the fact I love what you're bringing up almost about crowd sourcing. Um, you know, content ideas, I, I often have that approach to where I might have a great idea and it happens frequently and later. I'll be like I was wrong, and it's my own myopia that's telling me that it's, it's a great idea, but you just tend to get better ideas and content when you're coming from across the room or across communities. So I love that you you all have found that, you know, nailed that down to bring that together. And plus again, I mean, by virtue of seeing what is ultimately selected to be the content, um very high quality and I've attended South by Southwest once and it blew my mind, I can't think of a panel or any one of the presentations or anything that I went to, that wasn't really good, you know, and really well thought out and you're requiring people to do that. It's not just let me go fill a google format with an idea I have, and well, I won't talk to you until I show up and now I'm going to present you really do make people planet out. Can you talk a little bit about how you and again, you don't have to give away trade secrets or anything like that. But you, you mentioned earlier quality versus quantity.
SUBTOPIC: Panel Picker 00:16:39-00:17:40
Rachel Moore: Um and how, What are some basic things that you and your team due to, you know, as you as you narrow down from the 3 to 5000 proposals you get to the, you know, 500 ish. Um what exact what criteria are you using to determine? This is a winning um winning session. This is something we absolutely have to feature because it's such high quality. Can you share that with this?
Hugh Forrest: Absolutely. Well the way the panel picker works is that um everyone who enters an idea. Uh huh. It is posted on an interface. Um Anyone with a connection to the interwebs can see this um interface can up vote or down vote simple, you know internet style there. You can comment on the session. We also have an advisory board that reviews um all the the panel picker entries and then staff reviews them. So we've got three different Essentialments three different inputs for every idea. Um
SUBTOPIC: Panel Picker 00:16:39-00:17:40
Rachel Moore: Um and how, What are some basic things that you and your team due to, you know, as you as you narrow down from the 3 to 5000 proposals you get to the, you know, 500 ish. Um what exact what criteria are you using to determine? This is a winning um winning session. This is something we absolutely have to feature because it's such high quality. Can you share that with this?
Hugh Forrest: Absolutely. Well the way the panel picker works is that um everyone who enters an idea. Uh huh. It is posted on an interface. Um Anyone with a connection to the interwebs can see this um interface can up vote or down vote simple, you know internet style there. You can comment on the session. We also have an advisory board that reviews um all the the panel picker entries and then staff reviews them. So we've got three different Essentialments three different inputs for every idea. Um
SUBTOPIC: Balancing Proposals 00:17:40-00:18:37
Hugh Forrest: The part of that is to such that people with big social media followings don't have advantage over people with smaller social media problems, social media following their um then we're also as staff, we're you know, we're trying to vet each particular session, look at the speakers, how much experience they have have they spoken before. Um knowing that that you know a good speaker can make a boring topic interesting. A not experienced speaker can make a very interesting topic seem boring. All these factors. Uh we we we will get together and discuss uh you know the the sessions that have the highest number of votes and and make the terminations
SUBTOPIC: Social Media Problems 00:17:40-00:18:37
Hugh Forrest: The part of that is to such that people with big social media followings don't have advantage over people with smaller social media problems, social media following their um then we're also as staff, we're you know, we're trying to vet each particular session, look at the speakers, how much experience they have have they spoken before. Um knowing that that you know a good speaker can make a boring topic interesting. A not experienced speaker can make a very interesting topic seem boring. All these factors. Uh we we we will get together and discuss uh you know the the sessions that have the highest number of votes and and make the terminations
SUBTOPIC: Getting Better Every Year 00:18:37-00:20:49
Hugh Forrest: uh make errors there. I'm impressed that with you to help us unless every session was good but you got lucky on that one because there are always some that that don't live up to expectations but but certainly um trying to put as much work into this process on the front end um is what uh what what more likely insurers success in the back end. And as your audience well knows what we what we all do as event planners is details details details, trying to figure out every particular detail, trying to figure out redundancy when that when when you know plan A fails, what are you gonna do with Plan B? Um I think we've gotten pretty good at this at south by southwest. But I also know that that every year there's x number of details that darn we didn't think of that will do better on that next year. And I think that's um you know kind of the approach that's worked for us in terms of our launch activity and our growth is that we're gonna take a long term approach to this. We're gonna try to get a little better every year. And um I work a lot with our community on this work a lot with community feedback. Um and getting a little better every year over the space of of a few years or longer than a few years in our case. Um you can put together something pretty special. um as we all know, events are hard to organize, Events are difficult, there are a lot of work, but I think we all live for those um you know, magic moments when you're bringing people together, when they're creating some kind of connection, when they're finding a job, when they're learning something new. And again, what we're trying to do um at South by Southwest and what your audience is trying to do is work out as many of those details, um uh mitigate as many of the challenges such that
SUBTOPIC: Getting Better Every Year 00:18:37-00:20:49
Hugh Forrest: uh make errors there. I'm impressed that with you to help us unless every session was good but you got lucky on that one because there are always some that that don't live up to expectations but but certainly um trying to put as much work into this process on the front end um is what uh what what more likely insurers success in the back end. And as your audience well knows what we what we all do as event planners is details details details, trying to figure out every particular detail, trying to figure out redundancy when that when when you know plan A fails, what are you gonna do with Plan B? Um I think we've gotten pretty good at this at south by southwest. But I also know that that every year there's x number of details that darn we didn't think of that will do better on that next year. And I think that's um you know kind of the approach that's worked for us in terms of our launch activity and our growth is that we're gonna take a long term approach to this. We're gonna try to get a little better every year. And um I work a lot with our community on this work a lot with community feedback. Um and getting a little better every year over the space of of a few years or longer than a few years in our case. Um you can put together something pretty special. um as we all know, events are hard to organize, Events are difficult, there are a lot of work, but I think we all live for those um you know, magic moments when you're bringing people together, when they're creating some kind of connection, when they're finding a job, when they're learning something new. And again, what we're trying to do um at South by Southwest and what your audience is trying to do is work out as many of those details, um uh mitigate as many of the challenges such that
TOPIC: Perspectives on the Industry 00:20:49-00:39:16
SUBTOPIC: What's Your Perspective on the Event Industry? 00:20:49-00:27:48
Rachel Moore: absolutely, and yeah, you're, you're saying all the things that resonate with every single event planner out there and, and you know, and it's refreshing to know to this happens at every level, you know, and whether you have a big team or you're doing it yourself, um it it just comes down to those those details. Um I'd like to shift a little bit too, you've had a really, probably had a really good perspective on, you know, we've had, and this is from you below standpoint, we're a virtual event platform. We absolutely can work with hybrid, where it's a mix of an in person event versus, you know, and a virtual event, we can do fully virtual and we can be a supplement to a really majority in person event um what have you seen as and events in general and what, you know, South by Southwest obviously, um you know, you guys are thinking about this too, but what are you seeing as far as like live versus virtual events, has the events industry in your opinion, been able to to accomplish a decent shift or pivot in trying to make sure there as they had to move to virtual to hold events, were they doing a good job of that or there's things that you saw, you're like, oh that actually was better than life events or you know, how have you seen that kind of more of that evolution and what's your perspective on on how we've done as an
Hugh Forrest: industry? Well, I think, you know, the event industry is like almost every other industry in the pandemic that that um Covid forced us to you Know, do five years or 10 years of growth in the space of 12 months, 18 months. We all generally everyone had to learn how to go go virtual and we should have been learning this beforehand, but we're, we most, most of us weren't. Um uh so you know, I think that on the one hand, um we, as humans are hardwired for personal, face to face interaction and I know there's you know, there's a lot of pent up demand for events as we hopefully emerge from from Covid and can get back to that on the other hand, you know, having gone through a cycle now where we did a fully virtual event, um, you, you certainly are, one certainly gets much more of an understanding of how many advantages there are for a virtual event and from a south by southwest standpoint, some of those advantages are as follows. One of our biggest pain points within our growth, you know, it's great to grow, but it's also one of our biggest pain points is we had, you know, we would inevitably have rooms with the a great speaker, a great band, a great film that not everyone could get into and you know, because he only had, You know, 500 seats and 600 people wanted to get in, certainly in a virtual world, you know, that, that that problem is largely taken care of everyone can attend. Um, I think another great thing about virtual events is it is, and you know, it seems obvious, but but it really didn't completely light bulb didn't completely go off until we did it is that it just makes it so much easier to go from one thing to another. It's a click of the mouse as opposed to walking across the hallway walking across the street, whatever. And certainly when we did An entirely online event in March 2021, 1 of the things we found is that, that um, people were less siloed. Um, they were able to more easily moved from going to a panel to going to a recording of a band to going to a film and in a real world event scenario. Um often that becomes difficult because again, you're having to walk somewhere. Um not that walking is bad, but then you run into someone and wow, this is cool and I'm not going to go there after all, you get distracted. Now, that's part of what, what the, what the fun of the event is is connecting with people. But but again, the virtual nature certainly I think allows people to experience the depth and breadth of an event that you often can't do in person. Um and I think that that um while networking is different with virtual events very different, you don't have that, you don't, for most platforms have that serendipity factor. Um It is also, there are a lot of advantages for people, for people who are really, you know, strategic and what they want to get out of the event where um and I think that's that's who gets the most events of people who are strategic, who say, you know, I'm going to this event because I want to meet these kinds of people and virtual event platforms, most of them, uh most of the best ones are very good in terms of, you can target those kinds of people, you can set up meetings in advance. Um and you're, you know, you're losing that serendipity factor, but you're not leaving things to chance, you're able to make those connections. So again, there are a lot of of advantages to virtual events as we move forward with south by southwest. Um, you know, we'll we'll we'll push back a little more to to I. R. L. And that will be our in real life will be our primary focus. But certainly we're going to incorporate more of what we've learned from virtual into uh, into what we do and augment, strengthen, improve the experience for a lot of our audience that way,
Rachel Moore: those great points, all of those obviously we, we agreed to, but um, as someone who went to South by southwest in person, oh gosh, I think it was 2000 15 maybe. Um, and I did, I was there solo and I learned a lesson there. I'm like, man, there's just so much here I need to take in. But even just having to try to either walk or get an Uber or a lift to across across town to one of the panels, I, I definitely have an appreciation for the virtual aspect of it. As you just said, it can really help reduce kind of some of those obstacles that might let not let me get to a certain session. I really wanted to get to, well, certainly in the, in the tech
Hugh Forrest: vernacular and we hate jargon, but it sure. But whatever, you know, that's that's that's what we call friction, right? Um, that that it is something that that prevents you from doing easily doing what you want to do and again, that online world with the virtual capacity, that the friction is significantly reduced. Um, and that's a, that's a neat thing.
Rachel Moore: Yeah, well, um, we only have a little bit more time with you, but I definitely want to give you a chance to share with us our listeners, you Have, I believe south by southwest 2022 is coming up in March and we'd love to, I'd love to let you share a little bit.
SUBTOPIC: What's Your Perspective on the Event Industry? 00:20:49-00:27:48
Rachel Moore: absolutely, and yeah, you're, you're saying all the things that resonate with every single event planner out there and, and you know, and it's refreshing to know to this happens at every level, you know, and whether you have a big team or you're doing it yourself, um it it just comes down to those those details. Um I'd like to shift a little bit too, you've had a really, probably had a really good perspective on, you know, we've had, and this is from you below standpoint, we're a virtual event platform. We absolutely can work with hybrid, where it's a mix of an in person event versus, you know, and a virtual event, we can do fully virtual and we can be a supplement to a really majority in person event um what have you seen as and events in general and what, you know, South by Southwest obviously, um you know, you guys are thinking about this too, but what are you seeing as far as like live versus virtual events, has the events industry in your opinion, been able to to accomplish a decent shift or pivot in trying to make sure there as they had to move to virtual to hold events, were they doing a good job of that or there's things that you saw, you're like, oh that actually was better than life events or you know, how have you seen that kind of more of that evolution and what's your perspective on on how we've done as an
Hugh Forrest: industry? Well, I think, you know, the event industry is like almost every other industry in the pandemic that that um Covid forced us to you Know, do five years or 10 years of growth in the space of 12 months, 18 months. We all generally everyone had to learn how to go go virtual and we should have been learning this beforehand, but we're, we most, most of us weren't. Um uh so you know, I think that on the one hand, um we, as humans are hardwired for personal, face to face interaction and I know there's you know, there's a lot of pent up demand for events as we hopefully emerge from from Covid and can get back to that on the other hand, you know, having gone through a cycle now where we did a fully virtual event, um, you, you certainly are, one certainly gets much more of an understanding of how many advantages there are for a virtual event and from a south by southwest standpoint, some of those advantages are as follows. One of our biggest pain points within our growth, you know, it's great to grow, but it's also one of our biggest pain points is we had, you know, we would inevitably have rooms with the a great speaker, a great band, a great film that not everyone could get into and you know, because he only had, You know, 500 seats and 600 people wanted to get in, certainly in a virtual world, you know, that, that that problem is largely taken care of everyone can attend. Um, I think another great thing about virtual events is it is, and you know, it seems obvious, but but it really didn't completely light bulb didn't completely go off until we did it is that it just makes it so much easier to go from one thing to another. It's a click of the mouse as opposed to walking across the hallway walking across the street, whatever. And certainly when we did An entirely online event in March 2021, 1 of the things we found is that, that um, people were less siloed. Um, they were able to more easily moved from going to a panel to going to a recording of a band to going to a film and in a real world event scenario. Um often that becomes difficult because again, you're having to walk somewhere. Um not that walking is bad, but then you run into someone and wow, this is cool and I'm not going to go there after all, you get distracted. Now, that's part of what, what the, what the fun of the event is is connecting with people. But but again, the virtual nature certainly I think allows people to experience the depth and breadth of an event that you often can't do in person. Um and I think that that um while networking is different with virtual events very different, you don't have that, you don't, for most platforms have that serendipity factor. Um It is also, there are a lot of advantages for people, for people who are really, you know, strategic and what they want to get out of the event where um and I think that's that's who gets the most events of people who are strategic, who say, you know, I'm going to this event because I want to meet these kinds of people and virtual event platforms, most of them, uh most of the best ones are very good in terms of, you can target those kinds of people, you can set up meetings in advance. Um and you're, you know, you're losing that serendipity factor, but you're not leaving things to chance, you're able to make those connections. So again, there are a lot of of advantages to virtual events as we move forward with south by southwest. Um, you know, we'll we'll we'll push back a little more to to I. R. L. And that will be our in real life will be our primary focus. But certainly we're going to incorporate more of what we've learned from virtual into uh, into what we do and augment, strengthen, improve the experience for a lot of our audience that way,
Rachel Moore: those great points, all of those obviously we, we agreed to, but um, as someone who went to South by southwest in person, oh gosh, I think it was 2000 15 maybe. Um, and I did, I was there solo and I learned a lesson there. I'm like, man, there's just so much here I need to take in. But even just having to try to either walk or get an Uber or a lift to across across town to one of the panels, I, I definitely have an appreciation for the virtual aspect of it. As you just said, it can really help reduce kind of some of those obstacles that might let not let me get to a certain session. I really wanted to get to, well, certainly in the, in the tech
Hugh Forrest: vernacular and we hate jargon, but it sure. But whatever, you know, that's that's that's what we call friction, right? Um, that that it is something that that prevents you from doing easily doing what you want to do and again, that online world with the virtual capacity, that the friction is significantly reduced. Um, and that's a, that's a neat thing.
Rachel Moore: Yeah, well, um, we only have a little bit more time with you, but I definitely want to give you a chance to share with us our listeners, you Have, I believe south by southwest 2022 is coming up in March and we'd love to, I'd love to let you share a little bit.
SUBTOPIC: What Can We Expect? 00:27:48-00:29:24
Rachel Moore: What can we expect? What, what do you want people to come and see virtually or in person? What, what are you guys planning for us this next year?
Hugh Forrest: Yeah, well, we are incredibly excited knock on wood that we will be back to a, a having some kind of viral capacity. This will be our first Real World Events since 2019. Um, so, so first and foremost, that is exciting um daunting in many ways, but exciting On the one hand, in terms of content will have a couple of new areas of, of um uh focus will, will have a lot of uh, sessions this year on transportation. Um part of that is because um South by Southwest always tends to be a reflection of what is happening in Austin and the one of our recent transplants, that number one spokesman for Doggie coin living in Austin um has made the city much more of a transportation town. I'm referring of course to even musk and the the the cybertruck factory that they were building here. So we have a much very vibrant transportation industry now and will reflect that at south by southwest, that'll be neat. Um We're also doing more
SUBTOPIC: What Can We Expect? 00:27:48-00:29:24
Rachel Moore: What can we expect? What, what do you want people to come and see virtually or in person? What, what are you guys planning for us this next year?
Hugh Forrest: Yeah, well, we are incredibly excited knock on wood that we will be back to a, a having some kind of viral capacity. This will be our first Real World Events since 2019. Um, so, so first and foremost, that is exciting um daunting in many ways, but exciting On the one hand, in terms of content will have a couple of new areas of, of um uh focus will, will have a lot of uh, sessions this year on transportation. Um part of that is because um South by Southwest always tends to be a reflection of what is happening in Austin and the one of our recent transplants, that number one spokesman for Doggie coin living in Austin um has made the city much more of a transportation town. I'm referring of course to even musk and the the the cybertruck factory that they were building here. So we have a much very vibrant transportation industry now and will reflect that at south by southwest, that'll be neat. Um We're also doing more
SUBTOPIC: South by Southwest 00:29:24-00:33:18
Hugh Forrest: that that I think a lot of us are are very focused on. Um and what we talked about in the in the intro of our various weather patterns here, um we're doing more things with, you know, we're continuing to do more things with space, space industry. I know there's vibrant space industry where you are in Denver, similar in Austin um also Denver irish type topics we're doing continue to do more within um cannabis and the various startup opportunities there and then um this emerging psychedelic industry uh and where that is and how that is in some ways, similar to where cannabis was 10 years ago. So, so these are some of the, the, the more interesting or at least more interesting to me most interesting to me topics that will be Covering for 2020 two. I will say it is slightly higher perspective, You know, what we do for 2022 will be very much in line what we've done for the past 30 years is again try to bring together extremely creative people in a variety of industries. I Think one of the biggest advantages or value as or differentials of South by southwest as we have so many different kinds of industries that come together. And um on the one hand, you can learn a lot from other people in your industry. On the other hand, you can also learn a ton from people in different industries in terms of how they work and you can make connections in those different industries that can lead to all kinds of new opportunities. And that's always kind of been our, our formula for success is, is putting together very creative people from very different industries. Put them together in a city that always celebrates creativity. Put them together in March when it's getting warmer in Austin and it's still cold in Denver and it's a uh tends to have some, some really neat outcomes.
Rachel Moore: Yeah, no, for sure. And and uh and and that leads me to one of my next question is kind of starting to wrap up our time together. Where can we find you online? And, and also, if you want to share, where do we find South by Southwest online.
Hugh Forrest: South by Southwest is easy. It's sxsw dot com, that's um always the best place to get South by Southwest information. Uh, for me, I am on the twitters at, at Hugh underscore w underscore forest. Um that's a little bit hard to remember, but I'm also always are generally always receptive to email and you can email me at you at sXsW dot com and happy to answer any questions you have about South by southwest. Any of your audience has about South by Southwest. Happy to talk about ways to get involved, Happy to share whatever meager expertise I've developed over 30 years on this stuff. Um we're all kind of in this together and, and again, I I'm a firm firm believer in the power of community and love to hear other from, from the event community on best practices and lessons learned from mistakes made.
Rachel Moore: Uh yeah, I think we're all here for that. And then I wanna, I mean seriously how, how I love what you said to, I think I feel like we hear that so often we're all in this together. We really are, you know, and especially the event planning community for all of us listening and and commiserating with this. We are, we're all trying to learn and you know, again, you you've you've brought some insights to that we can learn from and and things that were also taking away from what, how we've had to shift or the successes we've had and the failures. Um, and just testing things out. But um, but yeah, I totally agree with that and I love what you said about community. It's so true. Um
SUBTOPIC: Topics For 2022 00:29:24-00:33:18
Hugh Forrest: that that I think a lot of us are are very focused on. Um and what we talked about in the in the intro of our various weather patterns here, um we're doing more things with, you know, we're continuing to do more things with space, space industry. I know there's vibrant space industry where you are in Denver, similar in Austin um also Denver irish type topics we're doing continue to do more within um cannabis and the various startup opportunities there and then um this emerging psychedelic industry uh and where that is and how that is in some ways, similar to where cannabis was 10 years ago. So, so these are some of the, the, the more interesting or at least more interesting to me most interesting to me topics that will be Covering for 2020 two. I will say it is slightly higher perspective, You know, what we do for 2022 will be very much in line what we've done for the past 30 years is again try to bring together extremely creative people in a variety of industries. I Think one of the biggest advantages or value as or differentials of South by southwest as we have so many different kinds of industries that come together. And um on the one hand, you can learn a lot from other people in your industry. On the other hand, you can also learn a ton from people in different industries in terms of how they work and you can make connections in those different industries that can lead to all kinds of new opportunities. And that's always kind of been our, our formula for success is, is putting together very creative people from very different industries. Put them together in a city that always celebrates creativity. Put them together in March when it's getting warmer in Austin and it's still cold in Denver and it's a uh tends to have some, some really neat outcomes.
Rachel Moore: Yeah, no, for sure. And and uh and and that leads me to one of my next question is kind of starting to wrap up our time together. Where can we find you online? And, and also, if you want to share, where do we find South by Southwest online.
Hugh Forrest: South by Southwest is easy. It's sxsw dot com, that's um always the best place to get South by Southwest information. Uh, for me, I am on the twitters at, at Hugh underscore w underscore forest. Um that's a little bit hard to remember, but I'm also always are generally always receptive to email and you can email me at you at sXsW dot com and happy to answer any questions you have about South by southwest. Any of your audience has about South by Southwest. Happy to talk about ways to get involved, Happy to share whatever meager expertise I've developed over 30 years on this stuff. Um we're all kind of in this together and, and again, I I'm a firm firm believer in the power of community and love to hear other from, from the event community on best practices and lessons learned from mistakes made.
Rachel Moore: Uh yeah, I think we're all here for that. And then I wanna, I mean seriously how, how I love what you said to, I think I feel like we hear that so often we're all in this together. We really are, you know, and especially the event planning community for all of us listening and and commiserating with this. We are, we're all trying to learn and you know, again, you you've you've brought some insights to that we can learn from and and things that were also taking away from what, how we've had to shift or the successes we've had and the failures. Um, and just testing things out. But um, but yeah, I totally agree with that and I love what you said about community. It's so true. Um
SUBTOPIC: What's Going On With The Boston Red Sox? 00:33:18-00:35:31
Rachel Moore: so thank you for that. I do want to give you one last opportunity to, about the boston red sox, Go ahead. What are your thoughts, What's going on? You're actually gonna educate me because like I said, I am not in touch,
Hugh Forrest: well I caught the red Sox disease when I was a kid, that's how most people catch these kinds of irrational afflictions or affections or whatnot. And uh it's, it's been a lifelong passion of mine um something fun to do in the summer. Um They had a great season in 2021 simply because they were very low expectations and exceeded that. Looking Forward to 2022. Um and uh as we talked, there is a lockout. So hopefully that will be resolved by um spring and you know, we'll have a summer of baseball to enjoy again. But yeah, I mean the red Sox are a lot of fun and ah great to to continue to celebrate their successes or commiserate with their many failures.
Rachel Moore: I think we all do that with our sports teams. I'm actually, I'm in a, I'm in a nice ride right now. I, I I'm a fan of the colorado avalanche a hockey team and so I got into that. Yeah, yeah, well and more people hopefully will because guess what? Even though we're in colorado and not, you know, run the East coast were actually pretty cool. Um But yeah, we uh we just wrote a game last night. I'm a little horse from that today actually. But yeah, so I have to circle back, I'll have to circle back with you because by the time, by the time we're hitting summer, their season will be done. We'll see how they do. Hopefully Stanley cup bound. But um, and then I'll just check with you and see like how, how the, how the red sox are looking and where things are and how excited you are to get to get to follow them during the summer season. Hopefully. Yeah. Um, and then, uh, last thing I want to ask you, is there anything that you're listening to reading or watching that is that you can't put down or you know, that I know you're busy, we have talked about your business,
SUBTOPIC: What's Going On With The Boston Red Sox? 00:33:18-00:35:34
Rachel Moore: so thank you for that. I do want to give you one last opportunity to, about the boston red sox, Go ahead. What are your thoughts, What's going on? You're actually gonna educate me because like I said, I am not in touch,
Hugh Forrest: well I caught the red Sox disease when I was a kid, that's how most people catch these kinds of irrational afflictions or affections or whatnot. And uh it's, it's been a lifelong passion of mine um something fun to do in the summer. Um They had a great season in 2021 simply because they were very low expectations and exceeded that. Looking Forward to 2022. Um and uh as we talked, there is a lockout. So hopefully that will be resolved by um spring and you know, we'll have a summer of baseball to enjoy again. But yeah, I mean the red Sox are a lot of fun and ah great to to continue to celebrate their successes or commiserate with their many failures.
Rachel Moore: I think we all do that with our sports teams. I'm actually, I'm in a, I'm in a nice ride right now. I, I I'm a fan of the colorado avalanche a hockey team and so I got into that. Yeah, yeah, well and more people hopefully will because guess what? Even though we're in colorado and not, you know, run the East coast were actually pretty cool. Um But yeah, we uh we just wrote a game last night. I'm a little horse from that today actually. But yeah, so I have to circle back, I'll have to circle back with you because by the time, by the time we're hitting summer, their season will be done. We'll see how they do. Hopefully Stanley cup bound. But um, and then I'll just check with you and see like how, how the, how the red sox are looking and where things are and how excited you are to get to get to follow them during the summer season. Hopefully. Yeah. Um, and then, uh, last thing I want to ask you, is there anything that you're listening to reading or watching that is that you can't put down or you know, that I know you're busy, we have talked about your business, but anything that you're just like, I'm really into this right now.
SUBTOPIC: What Are You Into Right Now? 00:35:31-00:37:46
Rachel Moore: you're just like, I'm really into this right now.
Hugh Forrest: Well, it's mid december as we tape. Um, like a lot of people, um, uh, digesting processing, enjoying the get back documentary on Disney plus the Beatles thing. It's uh, you know, I'm a, as are most of us, Beatles fan, I'm not fanatic, but I'm a fan, but it's also, um, I think just a phenomenal, an exhaustive study of, of the creative process of, you know, locking people in a room and forcing them to overcome their personal differences and watching them, you know, uh, take nothing and develop that into a, a song that we've all heard in the space of, you know, 30 minutes an hour. And that is, that is fascinating. So that's been a, that's been a joy to watch recently. I'm not, I'm not necessarily a binge watcher and more savory things like 15 minutes at a time, but that's, that's a real neat thing and, and you know, again tying that back to South by southwest, I'm always a huge fan of understanding creative processes for people and how that, what they do to, to come up with new ideas. Um it's something I think about a lot of uh you know, how can I be personally more creative as opposed to just, you know, just answering emails, which is, there's a talent to that, but it's also just kind of, you know, it's just kind of road work. Um and what we all want to do is, you know, think of the next big brainstorm and getting inspired by how other people do. That is always one of the things that I enjoy doing
Rachel Moore: awesome. Well I have not checked out that documentary, but it will now thank you on your recommendation but awesome, awesome stuff and I really again appreciate you sharing everything, all your expertise, but also a little bit about yourself, we're all humans like you mentioned and it's great to just meet a fellow human who's in this whole event planning industry
SUBTOPIC: Get Back Docentary 00:35:35-00:37:46
Hugh Forrest: Well, it's mid december as we tape. Um, like a lot of people, um, uh, digesting processing, enjoying the get back documentary on Disney plus the Beatles thing. It's uh, you know, I'm a, as are most of us, Beatles fan, I'm not fanatic, but I'm a fan, but it's also, um, I think just a phenomenal, an exhaustive study of, of the creative process of, you know, locking people in a room and forcing them to overcome their personal differences and watching them, you know, uh, take nothing and develop that into a, a song that we've all heard in the space of, you know, 30 minutes an hour. And that is, that is fascinating. So that's been a, that's been a joy to watch recently. I'm not, I'm not necessarily a binge watcher and more savory things like 15 minutes at a time, but that's, that's a real neat thing and, and you know, again tying that back to South by southwest, I'm always a huge fan of understanding creative processes for people and how that, what they do to, to come up with new ideas. Um it's something I think about a lot of uh you know, how can I be personally more creative as opposed to just, you know, just answering emails, which is, there's a talent to that, but it's also just kind of, you know, it's just kind of road work. Um and what we all want to do is, you know, think of the next big brainstorm and getting inspired by how other people do. That is always one of the things that I enjoy doing
Rachel Moore: awesome. Well I have not checked out that documentary, but it will now thank you on your recommendation but awesome, awesome stuff and I really again appreciate you sharing everything, all your expertise, but also a little bit about yourself, we're all humans like you mentioned and it's great to just meet a fellow human who's in this whole event planning industry
SUBTOPIC: The 21st Century Church 00:37:46-00:39:16
Rachel Moore: and we really appreciate your time.
Hugh Forrest: Thanks Rachel. It's been fun to, to, to chat with you about the red sox and about hockey and maybe about event industry also and um good luck to all of us as we navigate these still somewhat difficult waters. Um, but you know, I mean, my my last thought that I will leave you with is that, you know, what we do in the event industry is is really, really important. We provide people inspiration, connections, information. I think that in many ways what we do was Something that that, you know, other institutions like the church did 50 years ago, 100 years ago. We are, in a sense, the 21st Century Church, and and and it's not too hyperbolic to say that's a sacred trust between us and our community. So the more we can think about this, the more we can do better on this, the more that we can help people to achieve what they want to achieve at their events, the slightly better we're making the world and that's a good thing.
Rachel Moore: Absolutely excellent. Works to end on couldn't agree more. And thank you so much. Again, this has been inspiring, awesome and relatable. And so those are all the things we're trying to hit. So thank you so much and let's go to church
SUBTOPIC: The 21st Century Church 00:37:46-00:39:16
Rachel Moore: and we really appreciate your time.
Hugh Forrest: Thanks Rachel. It's been fun to, to, to chat with you about the red sox and about hockey and maybe about event industry also and um good luck to all of us as we navigate these still somewhat difficult waters. Um, but you know, I mean, my my last thought that I will leave you with is that, you know, what we do in the event industry is is really, really important. We provide people inspiration, connections, information. I think that in many ways what we do was Something that that, you know, other institutions like the church did 50 years ago, 100 years ago. We are, in a sense, the 21st Century Church, and and and it's not too hyperbolic to say that's a sacred trust between us and our community. So the more we can think about this, the more we can do better on this, the more that we can help people to achieve what they want to achieve at their events, the slightly better we're making the world and that's a good thing.
Rachel Moore: Absolutely excellent. Works to end on couldn't agree more. And thank you so much. Again, this has been inspiring, awesome and relatable. And so those are all the things we're trying to hit. So thank you so much and let's go to church
TOPIC: What's Your Perspective on the... 00:20:49-00:39:16
SUBTOPIC: What's Your Perspective on the Event Industry? 00:20:49-00:27:48
Rachel Moore: absolutely, and yeah, you're, you're saying all the things that resonate with every single event planner out there and, and you know, and it's refreshing to know to this happens at every level, you know, and whether you have a big team or you're doing it yourself, um it it just comes down to those those details. Um I'd like to shift a little bit too, you've had a really, probably had a really good perspective on, you know, we've had, and this is from you below standpoint, we're a virtual event platform. We absolutely can work with hybrid, where it's a mix of an in person event versus, you know, and a virtual event, we can do fully virtual and we can be a supplement to a really majority in person event um what have you seen as and events in general and what, you know, South by Southwest obviously, um you know, you guys are thinking about this too, but what are you seeing as far as like live versus virtual events, has the events industry in your opinion, been able to to accomplish a decent shift or pivot in trying to make sure there as they had to move to virtual to hold events, were they doing a good job of that or there's things that you saw, you're like, oh that actually was better than life events or you know, how have you seen that kind of more of that evolution and what's your perspective on on how we've done as an
Hugh Forrest: industry? Well, I think, you know, the event industry is like almost every other industry in the pandemic that that um Covid forced us to you Know, do five years or 10 years of growth in the space of 12 months, 18 months. We all generally everyone had to learn how to go go virtual and we should have been learning this beforehand, but we're, we most, most of us weren't. Um uh so you know, I think that on the one hand, um we, as humans are hardwired for personal, face to face interaction and I know there's you know, there's a lot of pent up demand for events as we hopefully emerge from from Covid and can get back to that on the other hand, you know, having gone through a cycle now where we did a fully virtual event, um, you, you certainly are, one certainly gets much more of an understanding of how many advantages there are for a virtual event and from a south by southwest standpoint, some of those advantages are as follows. One of our biggest pain points within our growth, you know, it's great to grow, but it's also one of our biggest pain points is we had, you know, we would inevitably have rooms with the a great speaker, a great band, a great film that not everyone could get into and you know, because he only had, You know, 500 seats and 600 people wanted to get in, certainly in a virtual world, you know, that, that that problem is largely taken care of everyone can attend. Um, I think another great thing about virtual events is it is, and you know, it seems obvious, but but it really didn't completely light bulb didn't completely go off until we did it is that it just makes it so much easier to go from one thing to another. It's a click of the mouse as opposed to walking across the hallway walking across the street, whatever. And certainly when we did An entirely online event in March 2021, 1 of the things we found is that, that um, people were less siloed. Um, they were able to more easily moved from going to a panel to going to a recording of a band to going to a film and in a real world event scenario. Um often that becomes difficult because again, you're having to walk somewhere. Um not that walking is bad, but then you run into someone and wow, this is cool and I'm not going to go there after all, you get distracted. Now, that's part of what, what the, what the fun of the event is is connecting with people. But but again, the virtual nature certainly I think allows people to experience the depth and breadth of an event that you often can't do in person. Um and I think that that um while networking is different with virtual events very different, you don't have that, you don't, for most platforms have that serendipity factor. Um It is also, there are a lot of advantages for people, for people who are really, you know, strategic and what they want to get out of the event where um and I think that's that's who gets the most events of people who are strategic, who say, you know, I'm going to this event because I want to meet these kinds of people and virtual event platforms, most of them, uh most of the best ones are very good in terms of, you can target those kinds of people, you can set up meetings in advance. Um and you're, you know, you're losing that serendipity factor, but you're not leaving things to chance, you're able to make those connections. So again, there are a lot of of advantages to virtual events as we move forward with south by southwest. Um, you know, we'll we'll we'll push back a little more to to I. R. L. And that will be our in real life will be our primary focus. But certainly we're going to incorporate more of what we've learned from virtual into uh, into what we do and augment, strengthen, improve the experience for a lot of our audience that way,
Rachel Moore: those great points, all of those obviously we, we agreed to, but um, as someone who went to South by southwest in person, oh gosh, I think it was 2000 15 maybe. Um, and I did, I was there solo and I learned a lesson there. I'm like, man, there's just so much here I need to take in. But even just having to try to either walk or get an Uber or a lift to across across town to one of the panels, I, I definitely have an appreciation for the virtual aspect of it. As you just said, it can really help reduce kind of some of those obstacles that might let not let me get to a certain session. I really wanted to get to, well, certainly in the, in the tech
Hugh Forrest: vernacular and we hate jargon, but it sure. But whatever, you know, that's that's that's what we call friction, right? Um, that that it is something that that prevents you from doing easily doing what you want to do and again, that online world with the virtual capacity, that the friction is significantly reduced. Um, and that's a, that's a neat thing.
Rachel Moore: Yeah, well, um, we only have a little bit more time with you, but I definitely want to give you a chance to share with us our listeners, you Have, I believe south by southwest 2022 is coming up in March and we'd love to, I'd love to let you share a little bit.
SUBTOPIC: What's Your Perspective on the Event Industry? 00:20:49-00:27:48
Rachel Moore: absolutely, and yeah, you're, you're saying all the things that resonate with every single event planner out there and, and you know, and it's refreshing to know to this happens at every level, you know, and whether you have a big team or you're doing it yourself, um it it just comes down to those those details. Um I'd like to shift a little bit too, you've had a really, probably had a really good perspective on, you know, we've had, and this is from you below standpoint, we're a virtual event platform. We absolutely can work with hybrid, where it's a mix of an in person event versus, you know, and a virtual event, we can do fully virtual and we can be a supplement to a really majority in person event um what have you seen as and events in general and what, you know, South by Southwest obviously, um you know, you guys are thinking about this too, but what are you seeing as far as like live versus virtual events, has the events industry in your opinion, been able to to accomplish a decent shift or pivot in trying to make sure there as they had to move to virtual to hold events, were they doing a good job of that or there's things that you saw, you're like, oh that actually was better than life events or you know, how have you seen that kind of more of that evolution and what's your perspective on on how we've done as an
Hugh Forrest: industry? Well, I think, you know, the event industry is like almost every other industry in the pandemic that that um Covid forced us to you Know, do five years or 10 years of growth in the space of 12 months, 18 months. We all generally everyone had to learn how to go go virtual and we should have been learning this beforehand, but we're, we most, most of us weren't. Um uh so you know, I think that on the one hand, um we, as humans are hardwired for personal, face to face interaction and I know there's you know, there's a lot of pent up demand for events as we hopefully emerge from from Covid and can get back to that on the other hand, you know, having gone through a cycle now where we did a fully virtual event, um, you, you certainly are, one certainly gets much more of an understanding of how many advantages there are for a virtual event and from a south by southwest standpoint, some of those advantages are as follows. One of our biggest pain points within our growth, you know, it's great to grow, but it's also one of our biggest pain points is we had, you know, we would inevitably have rooms with the a great speaker, a great band, a great film that not everyone could get into and you know, because he only had, You know, 500 seats and 600 people wanted to get in, certainly in a virtual world, you know, that, that that problem is largely taken care of everyone can attend. Um, I think another great thing about virtual events is it is, and you know, it seems obvious, but but it really didn't completely light bulb didn't completely go off until we did it is that it just makes it so much easier to go from one thing to another. It's a click of the mouse as opposed to walking across the hallway walking across the street, whatever. And certainly when we did An entirely online event in March 2021, 1 of the things we found is that, that um, people were less siloed. Um, they were able to more easily moved from going to a panel to going to a recording of a band to going to a film and in a real world event scenario. Um often that becomes difficult because again, you're having to walk somewhere. Um not that walking is bad, but then you run into someone and wow, this is cool and I'm not going to go there after all, you get distracted. Now, that's part of what, what the, what the fun of the event is is connecting with people. But but again, the virtual nature certainly I think allows people to experience the depth and breadth of an event that you often can't do in person. Um and I think that that um while networking is different with virtual events very different, you don't have that, you don't, for most platforms have that serendipity factor. Um It is also, there are a lot of advantages for people, for people who are really, you know, strategic and what they want to get out of the event where um and I think that's that's who gets the most events of people who are strategic, who say, you know, I'm going to this event because I want to meet these kinds of people and virtual event platforms, most of them, uh most of the best ones are very good in terms of, you can target those kinds of people, you can set up meetings in advance. Um and you're, you know, you're losing that serendipity factor, but you're not leaving things to chance, you're able to make those connections. So again, there are a lot of of advantages to virtual events as we move forward with south by southwest. Um, you know, we'll we'll we'll push back a little more to to I. R. L. And that will be our in real life will be our primary focus. But certainly we're going to incorporate more of what we've learned from virtual into uh, into what we do and augment, strengthen, improve the experience for a lot of our audience that way,
Rachel Moore: those great points, all of those obviously we, we agreed to, but um, as someone who went to South by southwest in person, oh gosh, I think it was 2000 15 maybe. Um, and I did, I was there solo and I learned a lesson there. I'm like, man, there's just so much here I need to take in. But even just having to try to either walk or get an Uber or a lift to across across town to one of the panels, I, I definitely have an appreciation for the virtual aspect of it. As you just said, it can really help reduce kind of some of those obstacles that might let not let me get to a certain session. I really wanted to get to, well, certainly in the, in the tech
Hugh Forrest: vernacular and we hate jargon, but it sure. But whatever, you know, that's that's that's what we call friction, right? Um, that that it is something that that prevents you from doing easily doing what you want to do and again, that online world with the virtual capacity, that the friction is significantly reduced. Um, and that's a, that's a neat thing.
Rachel Moore: Yeah, well, um, we only have a little bit more time with you, but I definitely want to give you a chance to share with us our listeners, you Have, I believe south by southwest 2022 is coming up in March and we'd love to, I'd love to let you share a little bit.
SUBTOPIC: What Can We Expect? 00:27:48-00:29:24
Rachel Moore: What can we expect? What, what do you want people to come and see virtually or in person? What, what are you guys planning for us this next year?
Hugh Forrest: Yeah, well, we are incredibly excited knock on wood that we will be back to a, a having some kind of viral capacity. This will be our first Real World Events since 2019. Um, so, so first and foremost, that is exciting um daunting in many ways, but exciting On the one hand, in terms of content will have a couple of new areas of, of um uh focus will, will have a lot of uh, sessions this year on transportation. Um part of that is because um South by Southwest always tends to be a reflection of what is happening in Austin and the one of our recent transplants, that number one spokesman for Doggie coin living in Austin um has made the city much more of a transportation town. I'm referring of course to even musk and the the the cybertruck factory that they were building here. So we have a much very vibrant transportation industry now and will reflect that at south by southwest, that'll be neat. Um We're also doing more
SUBTOPIC: What Can We Expect? 00:27:48-00:29:24
Rachel Moore: What can we expect? What, what do you want people to come and see virtually or in person? What, what are you guys planning for us this next year?
Hugh Forrest: Yeah, well, we are incredibly excited knock on wood that we will be back to a, a having some kind of viral capacity. This will be our first Real World Events since 2019. Um, so, so first and foremost, that is exciting um daunting in many ways, but exciting On the one hand, in terms of content will have a couple of new areas of, of um uh focus will, will have a lot of uh, sessions this year on transportation. Um part of that is because um South by Southwest always tends to be a reflection of what is happening in Austin and the one of our recent transplants, that number one spokesman for Doggie coin living in Austin um has made the city much more of a transportation town. I'm referring of course to even musk and the the the cybertruck factory that they were building here. So we have a much very vibrant transportation industry now and will reflect that at south by southwest, that'll be neat. Um We're also doing more
SUBTOPIC: South by Southwest 00:29:24-00:33:18
Hugh Forrest: that that I think a lot of us are are very focused on. Um and what we talked about in the in the intro of our various weather patterns here, um we're doing more things with, you know, we're continuing to do more things with space, space industry. I know there's vibrant space industry where you are in Denver, similar in Austin um also Denver irish type topics we're doing continue to do more within um cannabis and the various startup opportunities there and then um this emerging psychedelic industry uh and where that is and how that is in some ways, similar to where cannabis was 10 years ago. So, so these are some of the, the, the more interesting or at least more interesting to me most interesting to me topics that will be Covering for 2020 two. I will say it is slightly higher perspective, You know, what we do for 2022 will be very much in line what we've done for the past 30 years is again try to bring together extremely creative people in a variety of industries. I Think one of the biggest advantages or value as or differentials of South by southwest as we have so many different kinds of industries that come together. And um on the one hand, you can learn a lot from other people in your industry. On the other hand, you can also learn a ton from people in different industries in terms of how they work and you can make connections in those different industries that can lead to all kinds of new opportunities. And that's always kind of been our, our formula for success is, is putting together very creative people from very different industries. Put them together in a city that always celebrates creativity. Put them together in March when it's getting warmer in Austin and it's still cold in Denver and it's a uh tends to have some, some really neat outcomes.
Rachel Moore: Yeah, no, for sure. And and uh and and that leads me to one of my next question is kind of starting to wrap up our time together. Where can we find you online? And, and also, if you want to share, where do we find South by Southwest online.
Hugh Forrest: South by Southwest is easy. It's sxsw dot com, that's um always the best place to get South by Southwest information. Uh, for me, I am on the twitters at, at Hugh underscore w underscore forest. Um that's a little bit hard to remember, but I'm also always are generally always receptive to email and you can email me at you at sXsW dot com and happy to answer any questions you have about South by southwest. Any of your audience has about South by Southwest. Happy to talk about ways to get involved, Happy to share whatever meager expertise I've developed over 30 years on this stuff. Um we're all kind of in this together and, and again, I I'm a firm firm believer in the power of community and love to hear other from, from the event community on best practices and lessons learned from mistakes made.
Rachel Moore: Uh yeah, I think we're all here for that. And then I wanna, I mean seriously how, how I love what you said to, I think I feel like we hear that so often we're all in this together. We really are, you know, and especially the event planning community for all of us listening and and commiserating with this. We are, we're all trying to learn and you know, again, you you've you've brought some insights to that we can learn from and and things that were also taking away from what, how we've had to shift or the successes we've had and the failures. Um, and just testing things out. But um, but yeah, I totally agree with that and I love what you said about community. It's so true. Um
SUBTOPIC: Topics For 2022 00:29:24-00:33:18
Hugh Forrest: that that I think a lot of us are are very focused on. Um and what we talked about in the in the intro of our various weather patterns here, um we're doing more things with, you know, we're continuing to do more things with space, space industry. I know there's vibrant space industry where you are in Denver, similar in Austin um also Denver irish type topics we're doing continue to do more within um cannabis and the various startup opportunities there and then um this emerging psychedelic industry uh and where that is and how that is in some ways, similar to where cannabis was 10 years ago. So, so these are some of the, the, the more interesting or at least more interesting to me most interesting to me topics that will be Covering for 2020 two. I will say it is slightly higher perspective, You know, what we do for 2022 will be very much in line what we've done for the past 30 years is again try to bring together extremely creative people in a variety of industries. I Think one of the biggest advantages or value as or differentials of South by southwest as we have so many different kinds of industries that come together. And um on the one hand, you can learn a lot from other people in your industry. On the other hand, you can also learn a ton from people in different industries in terms of how they work and you can make connections in those different industries that can lead to all kinds of new opportunities. And that's always kind of been our, our formula for success is, is putting together very creative people from very different industries. Put them together in a city that always celebrates creativity. Put them together in March when it's getting warmer in Austin and it's still cold in Denver and it's a uh tends to have some, some really neat outcomes.
Rachel Moore: Yeah, no, for sure. And and uh and and that leads me to one of my next question is kind of starting to wrap up our time together. Where can we find you online? And, and also, if you want to share, where do we find South by Southwest online.
Hugh Forrest: South by Southwest is easy. It's sxsw dot com, that's um always the best place to get South by Southwest information. Uh, for me, I am on the twitters at, at Hugh underscore w underscore forest. Um that's a little bit hard to remember, but I'm also always are generally always receptive to email and you can email me at you at sXsW dot com and happy to answer any questions you have about South by southwest. Any of your audience has about South by Southwest. Happy to talk about ways to get involved, Happy to share whatever meager expertise I've developed over 30 years on this stuff. Um we're all kind of in this together and, and again, I I'm a firm firm believer in the power of community and love to hear other from, from the event community on best practices and lessons learned from mistakes made.
Rachel Moore: Uh yeah, I think we're all here for that. And then I wanna, I mean seriously how, how I love what you said to, I think I feel like we hear that so often we're all in this together. We really are, you know, and especially the event planning community for all of us listening and and commiserating with this. We are, we're all trying to learn and you know, again, you you've you've brought some insights to that we can learn from and and things that were also taking away from what, how we've had to shift or the successes we've had and the failures. Um, and just testing things out. But um, but yeah, I totally agree with that and I love what you said about community. It's so true. Um
SUBTOPIC: What's Going On With The Boston Red Sox? 00:33:18-00:35:31
Rachel Moore: so thank you for that. I do want to give you one last opportunity to, about the boston red sox, Go ahead. What are your thoughts, What's going on? You're actually gonna educate me because like I said, I am not in touch,
Hugh Forrest: well I caught the red Sox disease when I was a kid, that's how most people catch these kinds of irrational afflictions or affections or whatnot. And uh it's, it's been a lifelong passion of mine um something fun to do in the summer. Um They had a great season in 2021 simply because they were very low expectations and exceeded that. Looking Forward to 2022. Um and uh as we talked, there is a lockout. So hopefully that will be resolved by um spring and you know, we'll have a summer of baseball to enjoy again. But yeah, I mean the red Sox are a lot of fun and ah great to to continue to celebrate their successes or commiserate with their many failures.
Rachel Moore: I think we all do that with our sports teams. I'm actually, I'm in a, I'm in a nice ride right now. I, I I'm a fan of the colorado avalanche a hockey team and so I got into that. Yeah, yeah, well and more people hopefully will because guess what? Even though we're in colorado and not, you know, run the East coast were actually pretty cool. Um But yeah, we uh we just wrote a game last night. I'm a little horse from that today actually. But yeah, so I have to circle back, I'll have to circle back with you because by the time, by the time we're hitting summer, their season will be done. We'll see how they do. Hopefully Stanley cup bound. But um, and then I'll just check with you and see like how, how the, how the red sox are looking and where things are and how excited you are to get to get to follow them during the summer season. Hopefully. Yeah. Um, and then, uh, last thing I want to ask you, is there anything that you're listening to reading or watching that is that you can't put down or you know, that I know you're busy, we have talked about your business,
SUBTOPIC: What's Going On With The Boston Red Sox? 00:33:18-00:35:34
Rachel Moore: so thank you for that. I do want to give you one last opportunity to, about the boston red sox, Go ahead. What are your thoughts, What's going on? You're actually gonna educate me because like I said, I am not in touch,
Hugh Forrest: well I caught the red Sox disease when I was a kid, that's how most people catch these kinds of irrational afflictions or affections or whatnot. And uh it's, it's been a lifelong passion of mine um something fun to do in the summer. Um They had a great season in 2021 simply because they were very low expectations and exceeded that. Looking Forward to 2022. Um and uh as we talked, there is a lockout. So hopefully that will be resolved by um spring and you know, we'll have a summer of baseball to enjoy again. But yeah, I mean the red Sox are a lot of fun and ah great to to continue to celebrate their successes or commiserate with their many failures.
Rachel Moore: I think we all do that with our sports teams. I'm actually, I'm in a, I'm in a nice ride right now. I, I I'm a fan of the colorado avalanche a hockey team and so I got into that. Yeah, yeah, well and more people hopefully will because guess what? Even though we're in colorado and not, you know, run the East coast were actually pretty cool. Um But yeah, we uh we just wrote a game last night. I'm a little horse from that today actually. But yeah, so I have to circle back, I'll have to circle back with you because by the time, by the time we're hitting summer, their season will be done. We'll see how they do. Hopefully Stanley cup bound. But um, and then I'll just check with you and see like how, how the, how the red sox are looking and where things are and how excited you are to get to get to follow them during the summer season. Hopefully. Yeah. Um, and then, uh, last thing I want to ask you, is there anything that you're listening to reading or watching that is that you can't put down or you know, that I know you're busy, we have talked about your business, but anything that you're just like, I'm really into this right now.
SUBTOPIC: What Are You Into Right Now? 00:35:31-00:37:46
Rachel Moore: you're just like, I'm really into this right now.
Hugh Forrest: Well, it's mid december as we tape. Um, like a lot of people, um, uh, digesting processing, enjoying the get back documentary on Disney plus the Beatles thing. It's uh, you know, I'm a, as are most of us, Beatles fan, I'm not fanatic, but I'm a fan, but it's also, um, I think just a phenomenal, an exhaustive study of, of the creative process of, you know, locking people in a room and forcing them to overcome their personal differences and watching them, you know, uh, take nothing and develop that into a, a song that we've all heard in the space of, you know, 30 minutes an hour. And that is, that is fascinating. So that's been a, that's been a joy to watch recently. I'm not, I'm not necessarily a binge watcher and more savory things like 15 minutes at a time, but that's, that's a real neat thing and, and you know, again tying that back to South by southwest, I'm always a huge fan of understanding creative processes for people and how that, what they do to, to come up with new ideas. Um it's something I think about a lot of uh you know, how can I be personally more creative as opposed to just, you know, just answering emails, which is, there's a talent to that, but it's also just kind of, you know, it's just kind of road work. Um and what we all want to do is, you know, think of the next big brainstorm and getting inspired by how other people do. That is always one of the things that I enjoy doing
Rachel Moore: awesome. Well I have not checked out that documentary, but it will now thank you on your recommendation but awesome, awesome stuff and I really again appreciate you sharing everything, all your expertise, but also a little bit about yourself, we're all humans like you mentioned and it's great to just meet a fellow human who's in this whole event planning industry
SUBTOPIC: Get Back Docentary 00:35:35-00:37:46
Hugh Forrest: Well, it's mid december as we tape. Um, like a lot of people, um, uh, digesting processing, enjoying the get back documentary on Disney plus the Beatles thing. It's uh, you know, I'm a, as are most of us, Beatles fan, I'm not fanatic, but I'm a fan, but it's also, um, I think just a phenomenal, an exhaustive study of, of the creative process of, you know, locking people in a room and forcing them to overcome their personal differences and watching them, you know, uh, take nothing and develop that into a, a song that we've all heard in the space of, you know, 30 minutes an hour. And that is, that is fascinating. So that's been a, that's been a joy to watch recently. I'm not, I'm not necessarily a binge watcher and more savory things like 15 minutes at a time, but that's, that's a real neat thing and, and you know, again tying that back to South by southwest, I'm always a huge fan of understanding creative processes for people and how that, what they do to, to come up with new ideas. Um it's something I think about a lot of uh you know, how can I be personally more creative as opposed to just, you know, just answering emails, which is, there's a talent to that, but it's also just kind of, you know, it's just kind of road work. Um and what we all want to do is, you know, think of the next big brainstorm and getting inspired by how other people do. That is always one of the things that I enjoy doing
Rachel Moore: awesome. Well I have not checked out that documentary, but it will now thank you on your recommendation but awesome, awesome stuff and I really again appreciate you sharing everything, all your expertise, but also a little bit about yourself, we're all humans like you mentioned and it's great to just meet a fellow human who's in this whole event planning industry
SUBTOPIC: The 21st Century Church 00:37:46-00:39:16
Rachel Moore: and we really appreciate your time.
Hugh Forrest: Thanks Rachel. It's been fun to, to, to chat with you about the red sox and about hockey and maybe about event industry also and um good luck to all of us as we navigate these still somewhat difficult waters. Um, but you know, I mean, my my last thought that I will leave you with is that, you know, what we do in the event industry is is really, really important. We provide people inspiration, connections, information. I think that in many ways what we do was Something that that, you know, other institutions like the church did 50 years ago, 100 years ago. We are, in a sense, the 21st Century Church, and and and it's not too hyperbolic to say that's a sacred trust between us and our community. So the more we can think about this, the more we can do better on this, the more that we can help people to achieve what they want to achieve at their events, the slightly better we're making the world and that's a good thing.
Rachel Moore: Absolutely excellent. Works to end on couldn't agree more. And thank you so much. Again, this has been inspiring, awesome and relatable. And so those are all the things we're trying to hit. So thank you so much and let's go to church
SUBTOPIC: The 21st Century Church 00:37:46-00:39:16
Rachel Moore: and we really appreciate your time.
Hugh Forrest: Thanks Rachel. It's been fun to, to, to chat with you about the red sox and about hockey and maybe about event industry also and um good luck to all of us as we navigate these still somewhat difficult waters. Um, but you know, I mean, my my last thought that I will leave you with is that, you know, what we do in the event industry is is really, really important. We provide people inspiration, connections, information. I think that in many ways what we do was Something that that, you know, other institutions like the church did 50 years ago, 100 years ago. We are, in a sense, the 21st Century Church, and and and it's not too hyperbolic to say that's a sacred trust between us and our community. So the more we can think about this, the more we can do better on this, the more that we can help people to achieve what they want to achieve at their events, the slightly better we're making the world and that's a good thing.
Rachel Moore: Absolutely excellent. Works to end on couldn't agree more. And thank you so much. Again, this has been inspiring, awesome and relatable. And so those are all the things we're trying to hit. So thank you so much and let's go to church
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