SXSW 2026 highlights

Of all the things that can be said about SXSW let me clarify one important fact - this festival was not designed for you to experience everything, particularly this year, with film, music, and interactive all overlapping. Your batting average, if you are lucky, would be something like .010 - the only way to overcome this is quality over quantity. In my third attempt to embrace and succeed despite the staggering magnitude of FOMO, the best thing I think you can do is just give yourself over to it, it is 100% baked into this experience.

Quality hack #1 - the XR industry and press previews the XR Experiences floor a full day ahead of the public opening, but based on the run-times and through-put of each of the experiences - some of which lasted a full hour - even with that edge of a modestly full house, there was simply no way to see it all. All tolled it was approximately 15 HOURS of content this year. Snap Inc. and the Spectacles demo carried home the point for me, XR as a snackable and shareable experience is still heavily favoring that lightweight portability.

As for all of the things that I missed, I am truly sorry, and maybe next year I will figure out how to sign-up even earlier, but between the Auggies and the AUREA Awards, I now review upwards of 200-250 experiences a year, so honestly if I didn't get a chance to preview it at SXSW, I sincerely hope it crosses my path in the coming months. To all of the creators, thank you so much for making your art, your stories, and your innovations - I am so very grateful for all of you and the extraordinary efforts of bringing your work to Austin this year. 

Real estate was not my primary reason for going, it was more for XR and the AIxJournalism house to continue honing my skills in AI for Journalists, but next year I hope to spend a little more time at with the Proptech community, because it seems like this year there were a few folks from this arena at the conference. Until next year, thanks for the fantastic experience Austin, and I look forward to coming back soon. ​