[dvtrn]

They don’t really enter into the calculus for running or not running these events

I would beg to differ as many "official" SXSW events rely on local venues to host them, Austin Texas is not a large city, geographically. It's just very dense. There is not a surplus of concert and event space outside of Auditorium Shores and the Long Center for keynotes and expos.

Otherwise, the festival HEAVILY relies on local establishments and venues in order to even exist; especially for SXSW Music. Again, speaking from direct experience having worked as a crew lead at sxsw for 12 years, local venues are critical to the success of this festival. And that's where many of these people work. Their availability and their health absolutely factors in, or at least it should.

The workforce behind this festival extends from stage and production crews to bartenders and hosts to unpaid volunteers who live in Austin and simply want to be a part of the festivities (since volunteering qualifies you for free access to certain events, depending on your role) and whose sole job is interacting with festival goers providing direction or interacting directly with people, handling brochures, exchanging money at registers or checking badges.

Downplaying the impact to the local community and the local workers who make the festival happen behind the scenes isn't fair.

[ghaff]

I think you’re violently agreeing with me. I meant that, even SXSW aside, the decisions being made to cancel or not cancel tech events is almost certainly not taking the local impact into account.

[dvtrn]

Expanding the point ;)

But it's a shame, really. I get why such a petition would exist, I also don't envy the position Addler finds himself in these days.

[ghaff]

I would not want to be an event organizer these days. None of these decisions are easy.

[dvtrn]

I mean, small industry events can be a blast and pay really well. In 2014 I put together a crew who ran production for the Austin Technology Council CEO Awards show, it was a small affair for about 30 startups and the ATC, no more than about 200 people.

If you can get a reliable crew and know what you're doing, it can be kind of fun and rewarding with a great deal of technical autonomy.

As I get older part of me wonders if it makes sense to just focus on small corporate events to supplement the daily DevOps job.