Wallonia at SXSW: being inspired, networking and understanding future trends
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South by Southwest (SXSW) took place from March 8 to 16, in Austin, Texas. A festival of music, cinema and emerging technologies, first held in 1987 and considered the largest digital, innovation and creativity gathering in the world. This year, 17 Walloon organisations were in attendance. Why is it so vital to take part in it? What are they hoping to gain? And in what frame of mind do they return to Belgium? We put these questions to them between two talks/receptions/networking sessions.
SXSW, four letters we often heard mentioned at kingkong. An event we had been told was THE most important digital, innovation and creativity gathering. An event which professionals the world over would not miss for any reason. And they weren’t lying. SXSW is much like the United States itself: immense! This year, with kingkong, we were lucky enough to travel there as part of the Walloon delegation, with the whole trip being arranged by the Walloon Export and Foreign Investment Agency (AWEX) and WBI (Wallonie Bruxelles International). We were inspired, we made discoveries, we networked and… in a word, we were totally mind-blown. But we will explore that aspect in another article.
In total, 17 Walloon organisations flew away to Austin, Texas, starting from March 7. On March 8, the first arrivals met up at the Mort Subite, Austin’s Belgian Bar. All wearing the wake! (By Digital Wallonia) baseball caps. A brand-new label which represents the creative community in Wallonia. An initiative driven by the KIKK non-profit association, within the remit of one of its missions.
Entrepreneurs, project owners, researchers, academics discuss and share the reasons for their presence in Austin. ‘To get inspired,’ is the immediate response offered by Alexandra Gérard, managing director of Stereopsia, the premier avant-garde XR event in Europe. ‘I am here for XR: the experiences, the talks, the pitches, and the people. It’s the place to be to meet the international XR community. I am aiming to boost Stereopsia’s visibility. This Walloon delegation context is important as well, not solely for the financial support, but for the close contact which gives us a week of communal life together.’ ‘We are stronger when we are all together in terms of brand and representation’, confirms Héloise Devaux, business development director at La Grand Poste. Even more so when we are part of the wake! label. Being all together, being supported by the AWEX and the WBI, makes us stronger than if we had each turned up as a small organisation independent of one another.’
The importance of the network
It is the second time that Héloise Devaux is taking part in SXSW. Her objective? To get La Grand Poste talked about internationally. ‘My aim is for it to become an unmissable site when people come to Belgium. I also want to go and meet other creative hubs and incubators. Amongst these valuable contacts, Héloise cites Jeanne Dorelli, Senior Director for Strategy and Operations at Zú. This Quebec incubation programme supports and propels entrepreneurs who use technology to revolutionise the creative industries, in generating innovative projects and world class intellectual properties. ‘We got in touch last year, and we bumped into each other by chance at the Belgian drinks reception. It means we can share our experiences and offer facilities to the startups we support, even if La Grand Poste is a meta-incubator.’
The network. Everyone agrees, it’s the most important aspect. After only 48 hours of attendance, Gérôme Vanherf, Director of La Grand Poste, considers that he could go back to Belgium. ‘I could return already and I would have everything I wished for. It’s not only a question of meeting new people, but of maintaining the connections, spending a few nice moments with the people we know and who we might only meet once a year.’ It was on returning from its first visit to SXSW in 2017 that Wallifornia Music Tech was created, a music and technologies innovation programme developed in partnership with LeanSquare, Les Ardentes, the Théâtre de Liège and the KIKK festival, whose objective is to make Belgium a touchstone in terms of innovation in the music industry. ‘The impression I have regarding my fourth participation in SXSW is very positive. I can see, in all humility, that the Wallifornia brand is functioning very well on an international level. We really maintain very strong links with Austin and the whole delegation attending this event. That also means we can come and meet startups, discover the innovations, see what is going on. And above all to attract speakers, investors, entrepreneurs to our conference and our accelerator, held each year in Liège.’ The next edition will take place from July 9 to 11.
The Liège creative sector is widely represented at SXSW. Coralie Doyen, Program & Partnership Leader at Noshaq, is also attending. Her aim here, curating the Wallifornia Music Tech. ‘For me, who creates programmes, puts in place conferences, events, it’s exactly what I need. I would love to meet people working in the music industry in the Latin countries, South America or Africa. I have come here with that focus in mind and I hope to leave with several key avenues and profiles.’
Curation in terms of content and speakers is also the reason Gilles Bazelaire, Director of the KIKK non-profit association, regularly beats a path to SXSW. ‘At KIKK we are used to going to look for content almost everywhere around the world. We always set out on the principle that we are trying to bring back the immediacy of the digital creativity planet. And to do so, we need to travel and bring the best content available in the United States, in Africa, in France, in Belgium… to Namur.’ Gilles Bazelaire is focused on two of the central planks of the KIKK Festival – whose next edition will be held from October 24 to 27 – the Market and foreign delegations. ‘We are meeting quite a lot of the ecosystems present here, that’s the advantage of SXSW. I have discovered a Japanese startup I absolutely want to bring to KIKK. It has developed a prototype of what is called haptics, which allows you to feel virtual reality. At the moment, you have to use headsets, gloves, equipment. With the technology this startup has got, it is felt directly on the body, with no apparatus. It’s quite incredible.’
In and of itself, it remains a momentum in which you can meet the digital planet in a very short space of time
Gilles Bazelaire, President of the KIKK Festival
Despite the age of SXSW, the event remains unmissable in the opinion of Gilles Bazelaire ‘in terms of the quantity and the quality of the people present. I find that the festival is getting dispersed quite a bit and it’s getting difficult to read [Editor’s note: we explore this subject in our article on the 2024 trends at the SXSW]. You really have to prepare your mission thoroughly to make sure that you are in the right place at the right time, which is not always easy to do given the enormous mass of content. But, in and of itself, it remains a momentum in which you can meet the digital planet in a very short space of time.’
Meeting so many people who share the same passion for the digital arts milieu in so little time is what Gwenaëlle Gruselle, international business developer at Dirty Monitor, likes the most about it. Dirty Monitor is a Belgian creative studio established in 2004, a pioneer in the domain of the design and production of content for video mapping and various audiovisual productions. Based in California for two months to develop the American market, Gwenaëlle has seized the opportunity to meet the Walloon delegation in Austin. All the more so in that Dirty Monitor presented two video mapping shows in California as recently as last December, Let’s Glow (which hosted around 67,000 visitors) in San Francisco and then the New Year countdown at the City Hall in Los Angeles. ‘It’s my first experience so I’m more in an exploratory mindset, to discover what you might get out of this type of event. For a start, it lets me connect with local partners for possible developments in Texas or in Austin, and also to meet other digital arts studios and to reconnect with the Walloon creative and cultural industry network.’
As part of this Walloon CCI network there was also Sébastien Resier, CEO of Arduinna Silva Studio. If he is in Austin, it is first and foremost to introduce himself to people. ‘We’ve had our nose to the grindstone for a long time. We’ve little by little started to emerge from our garage at Stereopsia. Since then we’ve been trying to take part in more events, to network and communicate more.’ What is his main impression of this experience? ‘Wallonia can hold its head high at the technological level. It’s quite interesting to make a benchmark of the market, to see what is happening in other countries and to see if there is room for our products. In the United States, I have discovered things I never would have thought of. Here, they dare much more than in Europe. I am therefore returning to Belgium with quite a lot of discoveries, new ideas and things I wish to take further and move forward.’
Damien Van Achter, a freelance consultant in the domains of media, education and entrepreneurship, is also returning with his head crammed full of ideas. And above all confirmations. ‘I’ve been ticking off little checklists alongside intuitions I have built up over the year about technologies, the dynamics, the products, the services one might come up with, to make them available to my customers or use them myself. I’m spending a large amount of my time monitoring technological developments. But from Belgium, our little corner of Europe, it’s difficult to get a macro view and to be able to confirm or disconfirm.’
Belgium has to be more daring
Is Belgium, and Wallonia, too timid? That is what also the general impression for other people within the delegation. ‘I am in Austin to get inspired,’ confides Sébastien Nahon, Director of MIIL, a media innovation laboratory at UCLouvain, specializing in immersive technologies. ‘And what I sense is that, first off, our intuitions are good. And, secondly, we need to stop being the small-time player in Belgium. We must stop saying that we do things badly. We are sometimes generally above what others are doing and we don’t have the daring.’ According to Sébastien, the Belgians have a genuine inferiority complex. ‘At the same time, I don’t want us to lose it because that makes us authentic. We need to maintain this humility, from which comes our strength, but we have to identify what we are good at and highlight it.’ As is the case on each of his SXSW participations, Sébastien is returning boosted. ‘But I’m a big kid and I am in my playground. And at the same time, the tipping point concerning immersive technologies is now, as I felt was the case. We missed the train for the web, the same goes for AI, but on this, in Belgium, we are not missing the XR train. For me, it’s the highest form of recognition. We just saw the whole thing very early, both in terms of the actors in the ecosystems and in the works produced, the investors and the public representatives. And that is priceless.’
An opinion shared by his associate Salvatore Bordonaro, Immersive Designer and project leader at MiiL. ‘I have the impression that the Belgians are extremely timid. They don’t dare, they stay in their corner. They are intimidated by what is being done externally, when they shouldn’t be.’ What Belgium is also missing are, in his opinion, the financial means. ‘We would go a lot further and a lot quicker. I am returning to Belgium saying to myself that we are very good and it’s time to let people know that we are.’
Wallonia is not lagging behind
Pierre Collin, executive manager of TWIST
The means are what Pierre Collin, executive manager at TWIST, also talks about in his assessment. ‘In two/three days, I have completely changed my tune. I started from the principle that it would be difficult to develop French-speaking Belgian content on the basis of the funding we have in our country. Now, I have understood that, thanks to generative artificial intelligence, we will be able to internationalise our culture more, develop an industry and do a great many things. Wallonia is not lagging behind and it’s now that we have to make the right decisions to move forward, that we have to position ourselves in the right ecosystems and find the right partners.’
Finding partners is one of the reasons why Xavier Péters, CEO at Leansquare (an investment fund based in Liège and which is part of the Noshaq group) is at SXSW. ‘This event is vital for an investor in music like us and which has, in addition, created an acceleration programme in the tech music market. We can see as the years go by that we are more and more integrated and recognised.’ Xavier, like Coralie Doyen last year, moreover chaired a panel during this 2024 edition. ‘It’s always very tiring given that we are not here for a long time, but it lets our partners see that we are present during their programme and they can come to ours. That creates, develops and strengthens the connection and the ecosystem. Then, it’s unmissable because you meet new people. We try to arrange meetings with corporates, investors, that we don’t have the opportunity to see outside SXSW. Over a beer, a glass of something, a concert, you can meet the CEO of Deezer, Universal, whilst you would have a lot of problems doing so through an email via LinkedIn. These people are like us, in a more festive frame of mind, cooler, more relaxed, whilst discussing business at the same time.’
And as for the most beautiful encounter of this edition of SXSW, it is without a doubt the one between Coralien Doyen and Esther Perel, a podcaster and psychologist of Belgian origin. ‘I’ve been listening to her for years and she was giving a talk at SXSW. I hadn’t noticed that she was on the lineup [did we mention that the programme was pretty intense?]. We bumped into each other by chance at a Belgian event and had a long chat together. It was a beautiful and fruitful meeting.’ A moment which once again demonstrates the richness of an event on such a scale, both professionally and… personally.
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