Volunteers at South by Southwest Conferences & Festivals are an essential factor in the event's overall success.[/caption]“We have separate types of volunteers,” Richter said. “We have what we call all-conference volunteers and they work at the Austin Convention Center, a lot of our hotels and throughout the conference. We also have our music festival volunteers, and they just work the nights and the days of the music festival toward the end of the event.”
About 3,000 serve as all-conference volunteers, and another 1,000 sign up for the music festival, Richter said, adding that about 75 percent of participants hail from Austin.
The coordinator team oversees nearly 50 different crews, and each crew has between one and 20 crew managers, or volunteers who assist in recruiting efforts, scheduling duties and attend event-planning meetings. Richter said this year’s event has 375 crew managers and 100 stage managers who manage stages and stage crews during the event.
Richter said her coordinator team consists of staffers who started out as volunteers, much like herself. Richter started as a volunteer in 2000 before becoming a staffer three years later.
SXSWedu is an area of growth for the volunteer operation. When the conference first began, Richter said only a few crews provided support. This year, most of the crews will be on-site for the conference. Between 600-800 volunteers are involved with SXSWedu and provide registration and transportation support.
“We tend to have a lot of teachers that want to get involved; we have a lot of students that are involved—especially if they are going to go into education,” she said. “In exchange, they get to attend as well, so it’s really beneficial for them.”
Close to 2,500 volunteers sign up to work during both the Interactive and Film components of the event. For the music festival, volunteers serve on the outdoor stage crew at Auditorium Shores, the stage crew for official showcases and stage crew relief, which are volunteers who are assigned to various areas as needed as well as a special venues crew, which assist with line control and provide support out on the street, among other opportunities.
First-year volunteers can earn a music or interactive badges if they work between 24 and 31 hours; returning volunteers can earn a platinum badge, which provides access to the entire event. Richter said a number of volunteers have returned to SXSW for 15 years or more. One volunteer has been with SXSW since its inaugural run in 1987.
“The volunteers know more about South by Southwest than I’ll ever know about it,” Richter said. “I always like to say that volunteering is a culture in itself. In a sense, they band together and communicate together, and they really do have the inside knowledge about everything that’s going on at South by Southwest. So it’s pretty impressive—they take full advantage of that badge.”
