South by South West
Why FUF was at SXSW 2026
Every year in March, SXSW, short for South by Southwest, takes place in Austin. Formerly known as a catalyst for app start-ups, the conference brings around 300,000 attendees to the capital of Texas for two weeks every year. Divided into the sections film, music and innovation attendees gather at stages, conference rooms and hotels throughout the city. As a thoroughly tech enthusiastic team, we attended SXSW not only for the content presented there, but much more for the number of different attendees. We now share our impressions and key takeaways from this year in our news blog.
Despite the many articles on SEO, GEO and AEO, the presentation by Kipp Bodnar, CMO at HubSpot, really caught our eye. In an one-hour presentation, he reported in detail on the drop in visibility of website traffic since AI. A phenomenon that we as an SEO agency have been actively observing since the middle of last year.
Probably the most important takeaway here was that visitors who land on a website nowadays already know exactly what it is about and what product is being sold. The goal is therefore no longer to explain the product and reach a broad audience, but to convert MQL's directly. You can find out more about marketing since LLM here: GEO
Since the launch of Claude Opus 4.6 at the latest, many people have realized that software development and prototyping is no longer what it used to be. But how can you still stand out and develop products that not only look good, but also work?
The answer to this question was given by Richard Bennett, CTO of IBM, in a two-hour session. Our key takeaways? Plan first, then develop. What sounds obvious is more profound than it seems. Because if there is a proper plan, it can not only be broken down into individual subtasks in a modular way, but also executed without any assumptions. In essence, this means that if the AI understands the full context, it does not have to make any assumptions and can therefore doesn't cut corners.
One of the most frequently discussed points at SXSW was the definition of a skillset that AI cannot replace. Sandra Peter and Kai Riemer from the University of Sydney shared their impressions and research findings from recent years on the second day already. The most exciting finding? When people work with AI, their brain activity is reduced by 55% on average. However, this only became a problem when researchers discovered that the activity did not increase again after the AI activity ended.
Fortunately, the two did not leave the question of which skills are really needed in the age of AI unanswered. Basically, it can be summarized as follows: Being able to convincingly defend your own position, beeing a life long learner and developing a clear understanding of which areas in the company can and cannot be replaced by AI.
Our takeaway
What SXSW is really about
While all the topics, keynotes, sessions, brainstorms and talks were exciting, we could still tell that they were not the idea of the event. The goal and true spirit of SXSW are the people you network with and get to know on site. The multitude of different personalities is what gives SXSW the flair that it is said to have worldwide.
Anyone who has ever been there understands: You come for the content, but you stay for the encounters.