For our final project, Justin and I were able to tell the story of one of the greatest festivals of all time, South by Southwest. For the last 28 years, SXSW has grown into a worldwide recognized entertainment festival and conference. With nearly 28,000 participants in the music festival alone, the entire event brings in around $315.5 M to the economy. Some say the SXSW has grown too large and has lost the essence of what it originally intended to be. This may be true, but there is no denying that it is a huge support to businesses and locals in Austin.

The purpose of our project was to show the growth and change of the festival from the first year it started till now. We have data that shows the number of attendants and acts that were at each year of the festival as well as hard numbers that represent the economic impact it had on Austin this past year. For a more interactive visualization, we included a timeline that showcases highlight moments in SXSW’s history. Moments that range from when the Film and Multimedia components were added to breakthrough artists such as John Mayer. With all of this in mind, we hope that you check out our site and decide for yourself whether SXSW has become something For Better or Worse.

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Here were some of the challenges we faced while working on the project and consideration we had while dealing within the guidelines:

  • Data from the earlier events was scarce.  With the lack of internet usage, smartphone cameras, and social media many of the older years had little information and content to search for and pull from.
  • The TimelineJS created by the team at KnightLabs was a wonderful tool.  It was very intuitive and fit our project perfectly.  The ability to add multimedia from multiple sources as well as integrate Google and Twitter interaction help add diversity to our storytelling.
  • When it came to project management, we attempted to use Trello in order to organize the individual aspects of building the project and found that with the short span of time to work on the project it wasn’t as effective as we had hoped.
  • Due to our conflicting schedules we spend most of the time working remotely using Skype and Google Hangout in order to work together.  However, we noticed our greatest efficiency whenever we practiced paired programming and worked together in the same space.
  • Another lesson in scope, we found that having a detailed design figured out before time at least gives you the foundation you need to but to be flexible for time constraints, development issues and story building

Below are some links that assisted us in creating this project as well as other miscellaneous sites that deserve credit:

SXSW: For Better or Worse