STORY: Interactive festival opens in U.S. Austin, eyeing power of creativity
SHOOTING TIME: March 8, 2024
DATELINE: March 10, 2024
LENGTH: 0:00:57
LOCATION: HOUSTON, U.S.
CATEGORY: SOCIETY/TECHNOLOGY

SHOTLIST:
1. various of South by Southwest
2. SOUNDBITE 1 (English): HUGH FORREST, SXSW co-president and chief programming officer
2. SOUNDBITE 2 (English): PAOLA PATINO, European attendee
3. SOUNDBITE 3 (English): JUANITA LODRIGUEC, European attendee

STORYLINE:

South by Southwest, an annual interactive feast spanning from new technologies and tendencies to film world premieres, individual music, and extended reality experiences, descended Friday on Austin, the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas.

"South by Southwest (SXSW) has to offer by going outside their comfort zones," Hugh Forrest, SXSW co-president and chief programming officer, said in his welcoming remarks Friday.

SOUNDBITE 1 (English): HUGH FORREST, SXSW co-president and chief programming officer
"We believe in the power of community that together we are much stronger than we are individually. Even more so, we believe in the power of a global community, and there is much more that unites us that we share in common than divides us. We believe that in an age of increasing automation, face-to-face, person to person, connections are still the world's most powerful technology. We believe that doing the right thing by promoting all forms of diversity also promotes more creativity because different kinds of people think creatively in different kinds of ways. And that is promoting more creativity, which always speaks to our mission at South by Southwest."

Hot topics this year range from artificial intelligence (AI), space exploration, new trends of healthcare and mobility during the packed SXSW conference with more than 400 sessions.
   
Among big influencers in the business and technology world, AMD CEO Lisa Su, ChatGPT chief Peter Deng, and Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell, are set to share their visions of leading-edge AI and computing technologies and future challenges they are facing in the nine-day feast.
   
SOUNDBITE 2 (English): PAOLA PATINO, European attendee
"Learning about new technologies and tendencies."

SOUNDBITE 3 (English): JUANITA LODRIGUEC, European attendee
"Yes. We want to understand new trends. We want to understand the impact of AI in different industries."
   
The annual festival can be traced back to 1987. Around 2000, SXSW started to focus more on emerging technologies and has earned the reputation as a breeding ground for new ideas and creative technologies.

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Houston, U.S.
(XHTV)