John Bridges 

Every media outlet in Austin confronts the questions each spring: How do we cover South by Southwest this year? How many resources do we allocate to a two-week event that fills downtown with out-of-towners and curiosities and yet annoys many of our regular readers and viewers? Can we serve everyone and can we build an audience that doesn’t disappear after the festival?

As a longtime newsroom leader at the Austin American-Statesman, I dealt with those questions every year.

And so I’ve been excited to work through those issues again with Christian McDonald’s Digital Innovations students as they embarked on a design-thinking project following the same kind of innovation model we employed in newsrooms when dealing with new or vexing challenges or launching a new product.

I’ve enjoyed working with Professor McDonald and his students on this information-seeking exercise numerous times over several semesters. And I’m just one of several expats of the media business enlisted for these sessions. Each semester, the project scenario changes, and it’s also fascinating to hear what the students ask and what they’re interested in.

Together we on the media professional panel answer questions from students seeking to identify a niche problem that they might try to solve through innovation. This year, one question required us to draw sketches to illustrate our answers. Others have asked us to put index cards in rank order. They ask us “why" and “how" — a lot — as they try to get a handle on the problems faced by local media outlets.

In a few weeks, Professor McDonald will invite his professional panel back to see what the students have come up with and to give them some feedback as they embrace innovation. And that’s just how it goes in the real world.

Faith DuFresne

As students in the Digital Innovation Capstone, we were tasked with preparing questions to ask either media organizations attempting to cover South by Southwest or attendees of the festival. Our design thinking question set our main focus for the panels: As a digital news media organization, how can we create SXSW coverage that resonates with local readers and boosts engagement and revenue?

There was so much information our team wanted to hear from both groups, so it was difficult to consolidate our questions while not making them too niche. We started with motivations: How do you attend? What draws you to or away from SXSW? What would make you want to attend? We then considered the how of attendance: How do you get around? How do you make your plans? Do you go alone or with friends?

These questions allowed us to create a picture of what the before, during and after of SXSW look like for our attendees. A major part of the responses revolved around cost, which is currently unsolvable, safety, local food and culture, and the tendency to avoid the chaos of downtown during the festival. 

When speaking with our media organization panel, we looked into the issues of coverage: cost, benefits, number of reporters, and plans to publish coverage in a variety of formats. These responses were also centered around cost, resources and coverage prepped before the festival. 

With these responses, we were able to start considering what aspects of the festival we could work to improve for both attendees and media organization coverage. The responses from both panels ranged from hyper-personal experiences to issues every organization deals with each year. We’ve been brainstorming some ideas we’re excited about, and we’re looking forward to planning and pitching our prototype in the next steps of the bootcamp.