There are HUNDREDS of panels, HUNDREDS of artists, HUNDREDS of venues, and you will not see them all, nor will you want to. Every single SXSW experience is vastly different- this is not ACL or Glastonbury, or CES, Sundance, Tribeca, or Cannes, for that matter. There are 50 tracks in the conference alone. It is the essence of drinking from the firehose for 8 days straight, for those of you coming for all three fests. Worst of all, it will at some point make you feel like everyone is optimizing it but you. If you measure yourself in productivity, go ahead and take some prozac now.

Here are some things to live by as a badged-up attendee:

-Have a couple goals in mind and write them down.

Maybe you’re looking for leads and your company has given you some strict KPIs for the event. Maybe you’re there to see your favorite act. Maybe you’re there to spread the word about an initiative.

Have a think about this before you go in.

Now download the SXSW GO app.

Get your badge linked to the app.

Take a browse at the schedule ​and the brands and participants pages and save some events, brands, and people to your favorites.

It’s good to take a first pass at what’s going on and make little mental notes of the things that interest you based on your goals. SO…

Now realize that about 50% of those things you want to go to will be too far to walk, you’ll be tired, you’ll be hungry, you’ll have overlaps, and there will be distractions. Prepare yourself for the inevitability. This festival is throughout the entire city, with traffic blocked off across town. Much of what you’ll do is walk or take a petty cab to and fro, and you will feel majestic as your hair blows in the spring breeze, and you pass at least four outdoor parties that you make a mental note to circle back on that will be torn down for a different brand experience before you remember to head toward that direction again. You’ll make friends and they’ll text you- “hey so nice to meet you! Meet us on 6th at Friends at 5pm” and you’ll say “sure!” And sometimes you’ll make it, and sometimes you’ll be at that exact moment, making it early to Amy Webb’s talk before the app queue indicator turns yellow and waiting in that platinum line (I promise it’s worth it) while you chat with the stranger behind you about their VR journalism project. That stranger will later invite you to an unofficial event with an RSVP and you’ll sign in and hoof it back across town only to realize the RSVP doesn’t mean sh**. On to the next.

This is why you WRITE DOWN your goals, in part because despite all this happening, you have to find a way to stay focused on your objectives. Which leads me to the next contradictory word of advice.

Don’t sacrifice spontaneity on the altar of your granular schedule plan.

A good rule of thumb is to spend about 50% of your time or less doing things you planned on doing.

I truly would not recommend planning out every waking moment of your day just to juice the lemon dry. SXSW is built on a cornerstone of cross-pollination and goodwill towards your most wild-eyed self. You don’t have to abandon corporate America to howl at the moon from the spire of the Capitol building unless that's what you're into. And hey, if you love liminal spaces and using the word "disrupt" repeatedly in casual conversation, there are definitely spaces for that. But please do yourself and favor and build a schedule for the purpose of abandoning it. Let your curiosities drag you by the hair. I can’t tell you how many times my evenings have diverted into something that I could not have planned better. It is hard to find a dud- the SXSW planners go all year curating these things so that around every corner is some flavor of adventure, and they do a great job.

And for the practical advise on how to do this:

Take stock of your interests and your energy levels

There are a few things that do fill up ahead of time:
Mentorships are tough to book last minute.
SXpress passes are a GREAT tool for those high demand keynotes, music acts, and brand experiences but require some gamification because of the demand, and you only get a couple per day. Generally those go live the day before at 9am, but I’ll need to confirm the deets there for this year.

Beyond that, it is a matter of attention and energy. Get a good idea of how much of that you have to devote to socializing, because there is an infinite amount of that available, and you can run out of steam quickly without taking note of the chiller, more autonomous parts of the fest. XR experiences can be a great way to get some down time, and the art program is also a great space to dip out for a bit. I do even recall a sound bath sleepover one year I was sorry to miss.

Get to know the city ahead of time if you’ve never been

Pull up a google map, or a VR map if you're a spatial learner, which will be probably out of date by the time you get here with how quickly things change around here, but nonetheless take an hour or so to get the lay of the land. SXSW footprint is mainly downtown, North of Ladybird Lake (locals call it town lake, it’s more of a river, but I’m not a cartographer so let's fight) but there can be some stuff on South Congress that’s fun and cool. There are several areas that aren’t on the traditional SXSW footprint but will often be bustling with locals trying to stay on the fringe of the madness- East sixth and East Ceasar Chavez (east of I35) is generally a bit less participatory in the official action. Dirty six (from I-35 to Congress) is where a ton of the insanity of SXSW goes down for music so if you’re traveling it’s often easier to travel east west along 5th street. West 6th is a long stretch of the rest of 6th street from Congress. And then there’s Rainey street and Red River that flank either side of sixth perpendicular. There are a few venues that are outliers, but for the most part this has been the footprint where there’s so much room for activities.

With that, understand that you’ll probably walk. A LOT.

You’ll pay $15-$30 for pedicabs, and it’s often not practical to flag one down for each activity unless you’re clear-crossing town. The convention center is blocks long and plenty of hotels have events spread out across several floors of ballrooms. Lime scooters are a good route, especially if you don’t like your face so much and also hate having intact bones…I only kid- just be careful, drunken scootering is as pervasive as the potholes and lack of safe bike lanes. For the rest of it, if you’re able-bodied, walking is the ticket to most things. If you require accessible options, give SXSW a heads up at the registration desk or by sending an email to accessibility@sxsw.com to request an accessibility credential (there is an ADA shuttle available, mobility devices, and more which you can chat with Registration about- more on their nuances here.

Give yourself enough time to arrive at the venue and watch the queue indicators- these are human driven and change quickly so they might not always be super accurate. Even with a platinum badge, you can still find yourself in the priority hoi polloi for a busy event.

Understand Queues and bake it in to your future planning

The queues can be surprisingly tricky. There’s an interconnected network of badge types, wristbands, stickers, and for official general admission there are sometimes credentials for those particular events. I find that if you’re looking to get in early on “RSVP” lists for a particular event, say through an organization’s direct marketing pre-event, many of those are really just to get a head count and in my experience aren’t honored traditionally, especially for SXSW official events (you can tell an official event by the signage). There’s a sort of unwritten rule that if it’s RSVP, and you don’t have an official credential, then you are general admission. Each event has their own rules about how many of which credentials and/or GA get in- often there are badge only events with primary and secondary access. That means- one line for platinum and whichever primary badge (music events means music badge is primary, film is primary for film, same for interactive). The other line is a secondary line, meaning the other remaining badges, and then the special cases like artist wristbands, day passes for locals, etc). The app has the information for each event listed, so pay attention to that part. Without it you will be booted.

BE COOL

Importantly, the ethos of SXSW discourages the “Do you Know Who I Am” Badge. If we know who you are as staffers, you’d already be in the venue. SXSW is great about keeping queues fair and it’s important that those issues get handled swiftly. There are SXpress passes, so if you have one- tell a staffer with a green or yellow badge and they will escort you to the front of the priority line.

Also, if you’re looking to sell your credential on the secondary market, you can actually do that through SXSW registration. Just talk to them ahead of time.

As for the vibe though- really, SXSW is not trying to stunt on you, and despite the many celebrities and influencers that descend on Austin, people do still come to the fest for the quasi-humility and the lack of better-than-you antiquity of old Hollywood. There are definitely experiences that test those limits, and there are plenty of points of contention between Austin culture generally both as it grows and as visitors flood the gates and test the limits of it's cellular infrastructure, but it operates as a 30 year startup. These are transitional years and the fest is making effort to adapt and abide, so you get to play a little part in witnessing the reinvention of sorts.