Visitors to the amazing SXSW Sydney 2024 Festival were able to find their events quickly and easily, thanks to our multi-level partnership with the major global festival.
SXSW (short for South by Southwest) is a festival of music; tech and innovation; film; and gaming. It features hundreds of events in locations across the city. It has been run in Austin, Texas for many years, with Sydney in 2023 the first time it was held elsewhere.
With so many events in so many locations, it’s difficult for attendees to find their conference speaker, event or activity, and attendees often feel overwhelmed or lost.
That’s why SXSW partnered with BindiMaps. We mapped the Sydney International Convention Centre, the Exhibition Centre and two UTS Buildings, providing totally accessible navigation and wayfinding to the event.
Using BindiMaps, users could find their way to any of the festival destinations quickly and easily, as well as to any of the bars, food and drink outlets or sponsor activities.
In a major first, BindiMaps was integrated into the official SXSW festival app, so users compiling a schedule of events could see exactly where the event was held, and how to get there, providing an essential journey planning facility. For example, a user coming out of an event room at the Convention Centre could find directions to another event in a specific space in Building 8 at the University of Technology Sydney, several kilometres away, all from inside the SXSW official mobile app. They could choose walking, driving, cycling or public transport routes, and of course accessible routing.
This is the first time a major event in multiple buildings across Sydney city has had this level of accessible wayfinding detail.
Meanwhile, as part of our partnership agreement, we deployed our new Hyperlocal technology to SXSW Sydney. This meant users could experience highly accurate localisation in the SXSW buildings, including the International Convention Centre. Accurate localisation is crucial for navigating users with blindness or vision impairment, who need to know their precise location as they travel to their destination.
The localisation, with accuracy of as much as 30cm, was achieved with no building infrastructure, so no beacons or other hardware, making setup quick, easy and cost-effective.
BindiMaps had a major presence at the event, with two exhibition booths, one at NSW House at UTS and another in the Exhibition Centre, where attendees could meet the team and hear and see our latest accessible wayfinding technology.
Our CEO Dr Anna Wright also spoke on a panel at the event, From Sea to Space: How Intelligent Connectivity Could Change the Way We Live.
The partnership with SXSW continues our commitment to deliver accessible wayfinding for everyone who attends major global events. Among events we have mapped are the Australian Open Tennis, the Australian Formula One Grand Prix and the Moto GP.
We have also mapped Ability Fest Melbourne held on October 19 and Ability Fest Brisbane, (October 26). Ability Fest, presented by the Dylan Alcott Foundation, is a music festival that promotes access and inclusion within the music industry.
