A Blistering Case of SXSW FOMO (A NoPro Guide)

Every year we get at least a little tinge of FOMO — that’s Fear of Missing Out for those of you lucky enough to have never be so afflicted — for South By Southwest in Austin, and not just because there’s Torchy’s Tacos and Shiner Bocks in ready supply.

IT’S THE ACTIVATIONS, Y’ALL.

Experiential marketing agencies come out to play at SXSW in a way only matched by San Diego Comic Con, and this year we’re getting a definite vibe.

Well, that and all the XR sessions and experiences that are part of the core programming. As always there’s just TOO MUCH at SXSW to do it all, but I’ve put together a list — not small, sadly — of the experiences (9) and sessions (7) that we’re feeling the most FOMO on.

Well, not all of us. A couple of the team members will be there. Maybe you’ll run into them and they’ll reveal their secret identities. Maybe.

Got a session YOU’RE itching to see? An experience you can’t wait to get activated by? Know something special that you think our peeps should hear about?

Hit us up at pitches@noproscenium.com and put SXSW FOMO in the subject!

Activations

Camp Yellowjackets
When: March 11&12; 11AM- 6PM
Where: Fair Market

The Event: “Brave the wilderness with Showtime and dig up all of your favorite camp memories — rituals, fireside chats, survival skills, and team building. There is nothing quite like bonding with friends in the great outdoors, especially when there is good music… and don’t worry, BBQ & drinks are not scarce here. Check Camp Yellowjackets out for yourself. You’ll never want to leave.”

Mind you, it’s the video that does the heavy lifting on what’s really going to go down.

The FOMO: I’ll admit it, not everyone at NoPro has seen Yellowjackets but the buzz (accidental, I swear) around the show is so good that one of us totally signed up for Showtime last year and then promptly got too busy to binge the show. Maybe this year? In any case, SXSW is where the most over the top of over the top activations take place, and while we don’t know if this is going to be remotely on the scale of SXSWestworld from a few years back, the potential is there with the show’s premise.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Tavern Experience
When: March 10–12; 10AM-6PM
Where: Alamo Lamar

The Event: “Taking place at The Highball at Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, attendees can enjoy a fluorescent ‘Dragon’s Brew’ amidst the immersive wooden interior and of course, the antagonistic Gelatinous Cube.”

The FOMO: Is this going to be a duplicate of what went down at SDCC this past summer? It sounds like it will at least in part. If nothing else, we want to get hyped about the D&D movie by basking in some tavern vibes. Who knows, maybe we’ll meet someone and start an adventure.

Fair Worlds’ Austin Immersive Showcase
When: March 12th; 10am — 2pm
Where: The Baker School in Austin, TX

The Event: Immersive Agency Fair Worlds is hosting an off-site showcase “that will take you on a journey throughout the spacetime continuum using Augmented and Virtual Reality, AI enhanced historical footage, and immersive installations.” Timeslot RSVPs include “enhanced tour with live immersive theater-style experiences.”

The FOMO: We’re suckers for the promise of an “immersive theater-style experience” and on top of that the new DLC for Mighty Coconut’s Walkabout Mini Golf is going to be shown off here along with something called OVR Digital Scent Technology. So the whole World’s Fair vibe seems appropriate.

Find WiiLii — Ep.1 The Gate-Crasher
When: March 12–14; 11am-6pm
Where: Congressional Ballroom, Fairmont

The Event: Korea’s GiiÖii & the United States’ The Ferrymen Collective team up to present Find WiiLii, a new XR performance based story about lost memories and a groundbreaking teleportation device. Part of the XR Experience Program.

The FOMO: With a previous show being translated and produced in Korean, The Ferrymen Collective is now helping to bring a Korean XR performance experience to the West. This will be the public’s first shot at checking it out.

In Pursuit Of Repetitive Beats
When: March 12–14; 11am-6pm
Where: Manchester Ballroom; Fairmont

The Event: A VR Experience that takes you “from poster-strewn bedrooms to pirate radio, police headquarters to secret warehouses, you’ll step-into the shoes of rave culture pioneers as you go in search of the party.

Combining classic rave tracks with interactivity and multi-sensory simulation, In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats brings to life a revolution in music & society.”

The FOMO: WHAT IS THIS? WHY DOES IT HAVE A WHOLE BALLROOM? NO I’M NOT GOING TO LOOK UP FROM WHEN IT WAS PRESENTED AT Coventry UK City of Culture 2021 BECAUSE THEN I COULDN’T BASK IN THE FOMO.

The Lodge: A Paramount+ Experience
When: March 10–13; Hours change daily
Where: Clive Bar

The Event: “From the Mountain to Rainey St, this tour will take you on a journey through the unique world of Paramount+. Sip on a medley of themed cocktails at Yellowstone’s 1923 speakeasy bar, see and and take a picture with the Vince Lombardi Trophy and explore fun areas inspired by new shows like Rabbit Hole, Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, Star Trek: Picard and many others.”

The FOMO: We’re always down to see how far the streaming services will go to, and when roll out Grease and Star Trek, well, the various parts of our nerd DNA come calling.

Niantic AR Garden
When: March 10–12; 10am-8pm
Where: FAREGREOUND; 111 Congress Ave.

The Event: Niantic, the creators of Pokemon Go and Ingress, are showing off their latest and greatest from the 8th Wall app to the all new NBA ALL WORLD and Truffle apps.

The FOMO: Anything cool with Augmented Reality is going to involve Niantic at this point, so why not cut out the middle men and see what the standard bearers are up to?

STONE SPEAKS
When: March 12–15
Where: 900 W Riverside Dr Austin/4th Wall App

The Event: STONE SPEAKS is a monumental, narrative augmented reality artwork inspired by conversations between artist Nancy Baker Cahill and Sophia the Robot. Commissioned by Borderless Capital to reimagine climate crisis solutions, the artists exchanged thoughts about the accelerating climate crisis on our imperiled planet, and the adaptive potential of human-machine collaboration.

The FOMO: Our friend and most recent podcast guest Nancy Baker Cahill has made a work with a robot. Well, we gotta see this.

Swarm
When: March 10 & March 11,
Where: The lobby of The Austin Motel

The Event: Enter the world of the new limited series Swarm, from Janine Nabers and Donald Glover premiering at SXSW and streaming on Amazon Prime starting March 17th.

Guests will receive custom cash to purchase their favorite snacks and refreshments off the shelves and stocked refrigerators, as well as exclusive, screen-printed t-shirts. All of Dre’s favorite junk food snacks and drinks with Swarm-branded souvenir cups will be available for them to snag.

The FOMO: A new show that’s being tagged as the tonal followup to Atlanta, plus free stuff? Let’s GOOOOOOO.

XR Experience Program
When: March 12–14; 11am-6pm
Where: Congressional Ballroom; Fairmont

The Event: There are 31 selections in this year’s XR Experience Program in the Congressional Ballroom, plus In Pursuit Of Repetitive Beats over in the Manchester. This is the motherlode for NoPro peeps.

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The FOMO: There are 31 selections in this year’s XR Experience Program in the Congressional Ballroom, plus In Pursuit Of Repetitive Beats over in the Manchester. This is the motherlode for NoPro peeps. (That was not a typo!)

Y’all Are Welcome to Prime, TX
When: March 10–12; Noon-6PM (4PM on the 12th)
Where: Hotel San Jose

The Event: Amazon Prime’s activation promoting their series may be a little more “classic branded activation” than full on immersive, but the proof will be in the cocktails being slung at The Boys XXXclusive Bar and in the “harmonic vibes” of the Daisy Jones & the Six’s recording studio. The worst that could happen: you stand in line for free booze for a little longer than you want. The best? Well, that entirely depends on how far Amazon is willing to go to make an impression.

The FOMO: The description may be vague, but we know that Amazon doesn’t usually skimp on their activations or hesitate to build out some serious environments. So this one goes into the category of “we’ll be bummed if it’s cool and we skip it.” Perhaps the most anxiety inducing of all FOMO types!

Sessions

Bringing Cinema into the Metaverse — Now and Next
When: March 10; 4pm
Where: Austin Convention Center, Room 12AB

The Session: The metaverse is much more than the natural evolution of the internet: it represents the dematerialization of the world, where individuals can engage real-time with unlimited environments. Audiences will expect more participation and to be immersed in story worlds. Filmmakers will also have new tools that enable them to interact with audiences in new ways — we already see this with virtual production, the recent explosion of AI, and the influence of gaming. But soon all of these technologies will converge. How do we embrace these changes, while still celebrating the cinema we know and love?

The FOMO: When CEO of Kinetic Energy Entertainment and founder member of the ILMxLAB Diana Williams talks, we listen. It’s why we count us as lucky to have her on the Immersive Experience Institute’s board. There’s no one I trust more than Diana to have a handle on what all the metaversal shenanigans could mean for the future of filmmaking and thus for all of entertainment.

Small Agency Meet Up — Connect and Collaborate! Meet Up
When: March 10th, 4pm
Where: JW Marriot, Brazos Room

The Session: Return of last year’s popular meetup for creatives! If you work at a small creative agency, you know that it sometimes takes more (or different) people than you have on staff to make your big ideas a reality. You probably already have your go-to partners and collaborators and regularly navigate complex systems, making the concept-to-creation pipeline feel seamless for your clients. But when you have a new concept or want to explore different capabilities, your network may not have that particular expertise. It can be challenging to find the right fit at the right time, which is why small agency stakeholders are constantly networking. This is a space to meet and connect with other small agency innovators to share stories, gain insight, and find new collaborators for your projects!

The FOMO: Jessica Creane, the creator of many a unique immersive under the IKantKoan shingle is one of the organizers of this meet-up, which aims to network folks at small agencies. Given how many experiential creators are in our network you might want to swing by and make some connections!

Immersive Futures Lab
When: March 12–14
Where: Multiple Venues

The Events: This is actually a whole slate of events from the UK’s Creative Economy Team. From mixers to panels and live demos.

The FOMO: There’s almost too much on the Immersive Futures Lab slate, but we’ve got our eye on Tuesday’s the 14th’s Culture and Content in the Metaverse and Building Worlds: Audio and AR Journeys panels at the Fairmont which are all but back to back starting at 10am and wrapping at 12:30. The slate wraps that afternoon with the UK Immersive Takeover starting at 4:30 in the Cedar Street Courtyard.

SXSW: Sport And Immersive: The Past and Future of Fan Engagement
When: March 12; 10AM
Where: Four Seasons, Ballroom CD

The Session: Rematch Live’s Richard Ayers gives a session on why immersive is the future of fan engagement in sport. He should know, he’s worked with Man City, FIFA, and others on fan engagement and sees the future of the field in the immersive field.

The FOMO: We’re feeling’ it for all kinds of reasons, not least of which that Richard is a Sustaining Backer of NoPro and we haven’t met him in person. But the biggest reason is that when someone this deep into the sporting world sees immersive as part of the roadmap of the future, well then, we really have to listen and see what he’s seeing not only for the business reasons of it all, but for how the entertainment and sporting worlds can crib off each other as immersive gets built out as a media sector all its own.

A Guide to XR Content Finance and Distribution
When: March 12, 2:30pm
Where: Fairmont, Manchester B

The Session: Leading experts from production, finance and distribution will give an up-to-the minute overview of the business ecosystem for creative XR content. The key goals of the session are to present real, practical and candid information to help producers build a viable finance and distribution strategy from the outset of their development process.

The FOMO: We’d turn up to this one just for Liz Rosenthal of Venice Film Festival, but let’s be real: who doesn’t need some perspective on finance and distribution of XR content when all the buzz is about hardware (and you kinda need stuff to DO with the hardware, yeah?)

This is Not a Person Part 2
When: March 12, 4PM
Where: Fairmont, Manchester B

The Session: Following up on a session from last year’s SXSW, this panel will keep the conversation about using volumetric video and digital doubles as part of a performance and immersive storytelling practice, with a line-up featuring some of the folks who have laid the keel for the whole of the field.

The FOMO: If you follow this space like we do you’ve been tracking Kiira Benzing for years now, as her work has been seminal for so many of the live XR pieces that have swept over the festival circuit. Add to the mix Illya Szilak, the creator of the Queerskins series, Jason Waskey, whose time at Microsoft stretched from the Kinect era through HoloLens, to leading volumetric capture and Holoportation tech, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Scarlett Kim and you’ve got the art and tech side pretty much triangulated.

Live Performance In The Metaverse
When: March 12, 4PM
Where: Fairmont, Manchester A

The Session: a panel featuring Samantha Gorman of Tender Claws and CAA’s Joanna Popper focusing on the emergence of performers who do their jobs in real time — inside of VR — as an avatar.

The FOMO: Well that’s a doozy: right on top of the ‘This Is Not A Person’ panel. Now we’re talkin’ FOMO. WHICH DO YOU CHOOSE? WHERE IS THE CLONING BOOTH? OH, GOD. DO WE SPLIT THE PARTY? BUT THEY TOLD US NOT TO DO THAT AT THE D&D ACTIVATION!!! I don’t envy you.

Is This Really Live? Performance in the Age of XR
When: March 13; 11:30AM
Where: Fairmont, Manchester B

The Session: Get a behind the scenes look at productions that fuse XR and live performance from those who are pioneering the field.

The FOMO: When Alex Coulombe and Stephanie Riggs talk creative technology, we listen. When they talk together, step back. They make up half the panel for this one, and if you want a snapshot of where the state of XR Performance is right now, then this is the session to be at.

Simulating the Future: New Metaverse Forecasts
When: March 13; 11:30AM
Where: Fairmont, Manchester A

The Session: The metaverse has been heralded as the future of everything, yet surprisingly few are using strategic worldbuilding and foresight to make sense of these coming threats and opportunities.

Metaverse technologies have the power to change many aspects of our lives and world, from how we govern to how we entertain ourselves to how we tackle the world’s greatest challenges. Simulations allow us to create and manipulate “virtual atoms,” paving the way for new paradigms, economies, and ways of being human.

How might simulations transform society?

The FOMO: Another programming dilemma, as long time friend of the show Jesse Damiani and strategist Leah Zaidi discuss their metaverse forecasts. Setting aside the buzz and hype cycles: Damiani has been surfing at the edge of the next wave of tech for years, and always seems to know where the next big wave will be making shore.

AR, Land Art, & Ecological Imagination with Nancy Baker Cahill
When: March 13, 2:30pm
Where: JW Marriot, Salon 7–8

The Session: This keynote will examine “multiple artistic interventions using AR that deploy the medium as a tool of equity, social justice and reimagined monumental land art” with special attention paid to STONE SPEAKS, Cahill’s collaboration with Sophia The Robot that is on display at SXSW this year.

The FOMO: As we noted above in the listing for STONE SPEAKS, NBC is a friend, and also one of our favorite people to hear talk about the cutting edge of art. If that’s your bag, don’t miss this.

Augmented Realities: XR Innovation in Live Events
When: March 14; 10:00am
Where: Fairmont, Manchester B

The Session: “Imagined realities — an AR metaverse of purely virtual environments overlaid on top the real world — will be part of our lives within the next decade. It opens up a world of creative possibilities, giving artists & creators a blank slate canvas in three dimensions. Live events — especially music festivals and sports — are a perfect showcase for the ultimate potential of this coming mixed reality (XR) spectrum.”

The FOMO: When Coachella and Epic Games turn up to the same panel, we listen.

Discover the latest immersive events, festivals, workshops, and more at our new site EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE, new home of NoPro’s show listings.

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