South-by Sydney: The Future Belongs to the Curious.

SXSW stands for South by South West, a nod to Hitchcock’s North by North West and Austin’s US location. Instead of repeating the full name - South by South West, most shorten it to the first two words - South-by or similar spellings.

South-by brings together the best of technology, film, tv, music and games in a festival format. It’s unique among conferences for its scale, variety and success stories.

Last year the Austin event added a new location - Sydney. In 2025, a 3rd city (London), gets the chance to add its personality to the South-by experience.

I've previously attended South-by Austin. Sydney had been a long held bucket list destination. Plans aligned, and I ventured south to Sydney.

This post uses event statistics to give a sense of South-by’s scale. There’s a review of a cybersecurity talk, key talk takeaways and supporting links.

Read, if you're considering attending South-by in either of its locations.

The Numbers 

In January 2024, CES the "world’s most powerful tech event" was attended by 138,789 industry, exhibitor and media personnel.

Event statistics for SXSW Austin 2023 approximated attendance at 345,066 attendees - conference, festivals and SXSW EDU

Of this figure, 76,015 attended the conference, that’s just over half the number that attended CES. However, factor in the related but different audiences for CES and South-by.

In terms of scale, 2023 figures revealed:

• 484 Conference Sessions

• 161,397 Square Feet Exhibit Space

• 1,577, Total Music Acts

• 220 Film Premieres

• 35 Comedy Showcases

as well as :

• 103 Countries Represented

• 68 Official Hotels

• 52,638 Hotel Room Nights Booked

See attached 2023 event stats for more data.

This is Sydney's 2nd South-by. Anecdotally, attendance is projected to be down on the year, with an estimated 20,000 attendees.

Not Austin attendance numbers, but the same variety.

Topic Adjacency

I work as a Technical Program Manager, the majority of my talks were in the AI and Robotics track.

South-by’s value is in unrelated or adjacent topics. It’s easy to stick to your own track, but with such variety, it makes sense to attend adjacent topics such as the evolving South Korea tech ecosystem or the secret side of New Zealand: tech companies shaping the future and Cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity - a definition and market size 

Before reviewing the talk, a quick Cyber Security definition:

The talk estimated the 2024 global economy at $150 trillion AUD.

The cyber security global industry according to their figures is worth $15 trillion AUD, growing at 15% a year.

Key Takeaways with Analysis 

Sponsored by CyberCX, the purpose of “Know Your Enemy: Unmasking the Hackers” was to provide context on the threat landscape and to leverage the latest intelligence insights to make decisions that reduce risk and bolster resilience.

The panel was chaired by journalist Hugh Riminton with industry figures from CyberCX, Telstra and Commonwealth Bank.

Takeaway 1 - Hacker Classification

Focusing on high threat hacking, the panel identified 4 main hacker groups:

• Organised Crime

• Foreign states

• Hacktivists

• Cyber Criminals

Takeaway 2 - What’s being protected?

Mostly money, data and commercial IP.

Commonwealth bank track over 400 billion events a week, in order to protect bank / consumer money and data. Grand Theft Auto was given as an example of commercial IP that hackers wanted to exploit.

As a telecommunications company, Telstra "provide the road", therefore protecting infrastructure, company and customer data is critically important.

Takeaway 3 - Data Uranium

Like uranium, storing too much data is dangerous - becoming a target for hackers. Non- essential data must be securely destroyed.

Unfortunately, there was no literal hacker unmasking.

The usual threat countries were discussed - Russia, ex Soviet bloc countries, North Korea. New countries I wasn't aware of - Indonesia, Malaysia and Cambodia, all with the general caveat that the threat can come from anywhere.

The talk delivered on its promise. The threat landscape was outlined, insights were provided - 400 billion events. From a data perspective, how the bank detects event anomalies (process, algorithms), would have been interesting.

For a 1 hour talk a lot was given.

South-By’s Special Sauce

South-by, stands out for its scale, variety, and ability to attract big names.

Attendees come from all over the world, you’ll meet peers that share your goals, aspirations and obstacles. The panels, talks, presentations are painstakingly prepared.

The special sauce is the mix of unrelated and adjacent talks. One minute you're deep in a cybersecurity talk, the next maybe a film or comedy event.

Intrigued? Check out the links to South-by London, Sydney and Austin.

Supporting Links

Event videos are slowly being added to their YouTube channel

Check out Austin’s videos