Review | That was SXSW 2023

SXSW 2023 took place from March 10 to 19. Like every year, of cour­se, it was held in sun­ny Aus­tin, Texas. And also this year, the Digi­tal Hub Initia­ti­ve was repre­sen­ted at the Ger­man Haus and the Ger­man Pavi­li­on. The­re were 23 Media­Tech who­se focus was on topics such as Arti­fi­ci­al Intel­li­gence, Vir­tu­al Reality/​ Aug­men­ted Rea­li­ty / Mixed Rea­li­ty, Inter­net of Things and other topics around Media­Tech. Among them were the teams from the Media­Tech Hub Acce­le­ra­tor freispace, Fre­que, Klang­chat, Sen­sit! and yoo​na​.ai as well as film­wer­te, Volu­cap, Vrag­ments and ZAU­BAR from the cos­mos of the Media­Tech Hub Potsdam. 

Kick-off at the Ger­man Haus was the “Ger­man Start-Up Night”, orga­ni­zed by the Digi­tal Hub Initia­ti­ve tog­e­ther with the Ger­man Acce­le­ra­tor, Baden-Würt­tem­berg Inter­na­tio­nal, Ber­lin Part­ner, Saa­ris, the Bava­ri­an For­eign Repre­sen­ta­ti­ve Office USA, the City of Munich and the Minis­try of Eco­no­mic Affairs Rhi­ne­land-Pala­ti­na­te.

In addi­ti­on, the Ger­man Pavi­li­on gave teams the oppor­tu­ni­ty to intro­du­ce them­sel­ves to inte­res­ted par­ties and pre­sent their inno­va­ti­ve ide­as. The Ger­man Pavi­li­on was ope­ned by Mar­co-Alex­an­der Breit from the Fede­ral Minis­try of Eco­no­mic Affairs and Cli­ma­te Action, Axel Ditt­man, Depu­ty Chief of Mis­si­on Ger­man Embas­sy Washing­ton, Ben Dra­ke, Direc­tor Gene­ral “Digi­tal- and Data-Poli­cy” Ger­man Fede­ral Minis­try of Trans­port and Digi­tal Infra­struc­tu­re, and Tina Sikor­ski, CEO of Initia­ti­ve Musik.

Fur­ther­mo­re, the Digi­tal Hub Initia­ti­ve pre­sen­ted an exci­ting panel on the topic of deepf­ake in films and media, which was dis­cus­sed by Mar­co-Alex­an­der Breit and Andrea Wick­le­der, CEO of the Media­Tech Hub Pots­dam, Sven Blie­dung from Volu­cap and Maar­ten Rei­j­gers­berg from RAUWcc.

All in all, SXSW 2023 was again a very exci­ting event, whe­re many impres­si­ons could be gathe­red and cont­acts could be made. We would like to thank the Digi­tal Hub Initia­ti­ve as well as rckt, GTAI, Ger­man Haus and the Ger­man Fede­ral Minis­try of Eco­no­mic Affairs and Cli­ma­te Action for the orga­niza­ti­on and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be pre­sent at SXSW again this year.