Music, audiovisual, media, cleantech, foodtech, deeptech or fintech… Each year, the SXSW (or “South by Southwest”) festival tackles all current topics through the prism of innovation and creativity. Over the years, the event has become a showcase for startups, large groups, tech players and artists from all over the world. These invest the halls of the very serious Convention Center as well as the many hotels, bars or restaurants that make up the capital of Texas. Their goal ? Make themselves known and present their innovations to as many people as possible.
“French Tech” and “French Touch” hand in hand
This year, in order to be more visible in this ultra-competitive environment, the French have decided to join forces. “Since 2014, Business France has supported French companies in the cultural, creative and innovation industries at the SXSW under the “French Tech” banner. This year, the ambition is even stronger thanks to the joint action carried out with Bpifrance, which promotes the “French Touch” banner”, explains Frédéric Rossi, North America Director at Business France.
The event ” The French Touch Rendez-vous » organized on site for a day, is the embodiment of this new ambition: after a series of round tables bringing together startups and actors from the French cultural and creative industries, the day ended in the spirit of the festival, that is to say in music, with Myd, Pedro Winter and Cerrone. For its part, the local French Tech organized an event with astronaut Thomas Pesquet.
A delegation of around a hundred participants also made the trip, as part of an immersion mission orchestrated by Bpifrance, the Ministry of Culture, the Consulate General of France in Houston and Business France. The companies represented range from Arianee to Orange, passing through Mira, Happn, Deezer, Prisma Media or Pianity (already present last year), among many others.
SXSW, an anti-CES?
For the accounting firm Orbiss, specializing in supporting companies setting up in the United States, this festival is as much a means of making itself known as a place of technological watch to identify new tools and partners. “Our competitors go to CES instead. But since our bias is to do accounting differently, we do things differently. And SXSW, turns out much better than CES,” says Laurence Goleret Ruiz, its co-founder, who is already planning to return next year with part of her team.
The same logic led the startup Enchanted Tools to devote a large budget to the event, with the rental of a bar to organize demonstrations of its Miroki robots. “If we only go to robotics conferences, we don’t meet our customers. It’s the same thing for the CES: that’s not where we’re going to find our users. Here at SXSW, on the contrary, we are in contact with very diverse people, who have a certain curiosity. And there is also the artistic dimension, which is very important to us.”, explains its founder Jérôme Monceaux, clearly convinced by the original proposal of the festival to combine technology, culture and entertainment.
