Over 500 delegates from Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii are paid-up and ready to go to the iconic SXSW music conference in Austin, Texas, according to the latest figures.
With just 40 days to go before the event kicks off 13 March, organisers have expressed surprise at the numbers given the weakness of the Australian and New Zealand dollars against the greenback. The figures are consistent with last year, where a last-month flurry of registrations pushed the antipodean numbers to 750.
It is expected that 50,000 delegates from 150 countries will attend the conference. Over 60 Australian acts have been invited to showcase throughout the event, having been selected from the 175 that applied.
“This is a far cry from when I started as the SXSW representative from Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii in 2002 with only 20 delegates and five bands,” said SXSW's Phil Tripp.
“SXSW has had a major impact on homegrown artists over the past decade with hundreds of showcases and dozens of major deals done and is now kickstarting the Interactive side of our presence which is currently more than 50 percent of our delegates. We are currently getting an average of seven regos a day.”
SXSW are expecting 250 more delegates to sign up before the conference kicks off. Currently 465 are from Australia, 35 are from New Zealand and 13 from Hawaii. 22 of those are speakers, five are media and five of the 600 stand spaces are have been secured by Australian and New Zealand organisations.
