SXSW Events You Don’t Want to Miss

Photo credit: credit: Kris Krüg

If you don’t know much about it, South by Southwest is a conglomeration of a huge music festival, tech and interactive festival, and film festival that happens for 12 glorious days every March. SquadUP is the platform of choice for a number of events at this year’s festival, which you can browse here.

We thought we’d share a list of some of the events we think you should check out, if only for the weirdness factor—things that are off the beaten track, original, or just a little odd—because what’s SXSW without a little bit of quirk? If you manage to get to any of these, tell us about it!

Hamburger Helper Is My Bae: Weird Brand Twitter | Monday, March 15, 5:00pm

This panel will be investigating how and why “restaurant chains are attempting to sound like cool teens in their tweets” and why we feel weird about being “friends” with brands—or do we? The speaker is Buzzfeed senior editor Katie Notopolous. 

Robot Petting Zoo | Tuesday, March 17, 11:00am

This event is a chance to literally play with “friendly ground & aerial robots”. It’s about learning how robots are being developed to aid in humanitarian crises and do other amazing things for humanity, but actually we just want to play with the robots…

Photo credit: SXSW.com

SXSW Eco Light Garden | Wednesday, March 18th, 7:00pm

Don’t get us wrong, we love to party – in fact, it’s kind’ve our thing – but yes, even we can appreciate getting away from the noise sometimes. Check out this peaceful escape for a chance to interact with the latest LED technologies.

Steve Jobs – The Man in the Machine | Thursday, March 19th, 2:00pm

Ok, so we’re probably not the only ones suggesting you see this film but we’d be remiss if we did not tell you to go see it. So, go see it.

DeJ Loaf | Friday, March 20th, 9:30pm

If you can relate to lyrics like “I can’t work no 9-5, I ain’t good at taking orders” and “I’m out here grinding for a life that could never be basic”, you will enjoy the show this Detroit lyricist has to share.

Photo credit: ThomasMikael

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck | Saturday, March 21st, 11:00am

This one is going to be heavy but, for that very reason, good. The late Nirvana frontman’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, is the executive producer of the film and, though it includes interview clips with some of those closest to Cobain throughout his life, most of the footage is Cobain’s own written, audio, and video recordings.

Vocka Redu | Sunday, March 22nd, 7:30pm

While some might be exhausted and ready to turn down on the last day of the festival, we suggest you grab a Red Bull and pull it together long enough to shake your ass along with this New Orleans native. You can sleep on the plane, right? Right.

Don’t forget to check out all of these awesome SXSW events and, if you couldn’t make it this year but are already thinking about whether you should attend SXSW 2016, definitely take a look at SquadUP CEO Willie Litvack’s article “Should You Go to SXSW” where he breaks it down as to why you definitely, definitely should.