
City of Austin Cancels SXSW March Events - ceejayoz
https://www.sxsw.com/2020-event-update/
======
txcwpalpha
I find it ridiculous that SXSW had to be forced by the City of Austin to
cancel. If it were up to the SXSW organizers, who apparently care more about
"the show must go on" than they do about people getting sick and dying, SXSW
would still be happening.

The SXSW organizers are foolish for not cancelling earlier in the week when
the major sponsors started to pull out. The writing was on the wall, clear as
day, that it inevitably would be cancelled, but instead of taking the
opportunity to gracefully cancel it themselves or use the time to start making
alternate arrangements, they doubled down and had to be forced by the city to
cancel and now have less than 1 week to figure out how to handle it. Not a
good look.

~~~
OzzyB
Didn't know this and this does shine a different light...

However, I'm guessing that it's better for the organizers to have the gov
"pull the plug" than themselves since this will allow them to (potentially)
renege on all the supplier contracts they must be have in order to put on such
an event.

I'm pretty sure SXSW organizers are in direct contact with City officials.

Edit: Or indeed collect insurance as the other commenter points out

~~~
txcwpalpha
Based on their passive aggressive wording in SXSW's official announcement, it
seems to me that SXSW did not want to cancel at all but are doing so
reluctantly because they are being forced to by the city. That _might_ just be
a PR move, but personally I doubt it.

From what I've seen, the insurance thing is just a rumor/speculation going
around reddit and Twitter. I haven't seen any official information about an
insurance payout.

~~~
ghaff
And you won’t. You can be sure lawyers and insurance companies were putting in
long hours.

~~~
txcwpalpha
[https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2020-03-06/sxsw-c...](https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2020-03-06/sxsw-
cancellation-not-covered-by-insurance/)

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berberous
I wonder how their contracts and/or insurance worked, e.g., if the organizers
were hoping the city would step in and cancel as it would be financially
better for the conference than if they voluntarily cancelled.

~~~
ghaff
IANAL but probably. I saw some legal (by a lawyer) discussion of this the
other day and his conclusion was that, while it depends on the specific
contract, if you have _no_ choice but to cancel something--the headliner band
pulls out of a concert, the city makes you cancel for reasons outside your
control--it's probably easier to collect than if you were just worried about
going ahead with the event even in exceptional circumstances.

~~~
Sparkle-san
The latest episode of OA[1] has a segment that focuses on force majeure
clauses and the enforceability of them around COVID-19

[1] [https://openargs.com/oa366-your-guide-to-the-
coronavirus/](https://openargs.com/oa366-your-guide-to-the-coronavirus/)

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mdorazio
For those like myself wondering, this is close to a $400M revenue impact to
Austin as a whole [1]. I expect rescheduling would only recover less than half
of that, so it's no surprise it took them so long to make this decision.

[1] [https://variety.com/2019/music/news/south-by-
southwest-2019-...](https://variety.com/2019/music/news/south-by-
southwest-2019-economic-impact-1203364879/)

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corybrown
It took a while to get there, but this is the right call. All the other big
conferences have cancelled, holding this would have been terrible PR.

Question is: How far out does your conference have to be for you to not cancel
right now?

~~~
bdcravens
I just registered for AWS Reinforce (2 day security conference at the
beginning of July). I did it feeling pretty good that the worst will have
passed by then, but I'd lie if I said I felt 100% about it.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
I'm going to put this comment out there and see how in fares in 10 months:

I think it's very likely what will happen with coronavirus is what happens
with other pandemics: there are multiple phases, and the second phase is
usually the worst. The initial phase usually isn't as severe; there are
widespread measures to reduce the spread that bring numbers down after the
initial onslaught, and it looks like coronavirus also has a seasonality factor
that lessens its contagiousness during warmer months. Come next fall/winter,
though, people have put their guard down and have somewhat of a "quarantine
fatigue", and that's when the second wave just explodes as latent underlying
cases spread extremely quickly.

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ipsum2
Getting sick at conferences is so common that they have a phrase for it: "con
flu".
[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=con+flu](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=con+flu).
Glad this was cancelled, it would've been a bad outbreak.

~~~
datapunk
I hear 'Con Crud' commonly used. Conferences are like speed dating with germs.

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bdcravens
Meanwhile the City of Houston hasn't cancelled the huge rodeo and livestock
show, with nightly concerts, that goes on through March 22

~~~
slouch
It really depends how many people are flying in from out of town for the
event, otherwise the same logic leads to shutting down all schools and stores.

~~~
bdcravens
We are starting to see COVID19 spread from those who haven't traveled
recently.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/four-us-coronavirus-cases-
li...](https://www.businessinsider.com/four-us-coronavirus-cases-linked-to-
community-spread-not-travel-2020-2)

The recent Houston area cases were from a group that traveled to Egypt
recently; I'm sure at least one person in that group was interested in going
to the rodeo, which averages about 2.5 million attending each year:

[https://www.rodeohouston.com/About-Us/Who-We-
Are/Attendance](https://www.rodeohouston.com/About-Us/Who-We-Are/Attendance)

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whoisjuan
No city wants to become the center of a health crisis. If they didn't cancel
it there was going to be a shitstorm of bad press for the Austin leaders and
the city in general. Millions of dollars will be lost, but the health of
millions + the reputation of the city was at stake. That was the right call
IMHO.

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shreyshrey
We have reserved a booth and planned to launch our SaaS product in SXSW.
Hopefully they will refund. Probably a local positive coronavirus discovery
forced the city. Just guessing.

~~~
OzzyB
My guess is they should and will, if not, call your credit card company and
file a cancellation there for non-fulfillment of goods/services.

Edit: Sorry about your launch being cancelled, the Coronavirus is a bummer,
but you/we are doing the _right_ thing here in trying to curtail its reach.

~~~
shreyshrey
Yes. We are fine with it. Correct decision by the city. Wish they could have
done this little earlier. We would have saved some money - banners, t-shirts
and other stuff.

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dredmorbius
More information from _The Verge_ :

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/6/21162247/sxsw-2020-cancell...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/6/21162247/sxsw-2020-cancelled-
coronavirus-austin-texas-virus-fears-public-health-event)

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bredren
Last night my friend and I made the call to cancel our little trip focused on
the film portion of the event for two reasons: 1\. There is a lot of revelry
in SXSW despite it being more of a conference than a festival and it did not
seem appropriate to take part in that during a pandemic.

2\. While we are both young-ish and healthy, it does not seem appropriate to
participate in an event that would unquestionably increase the spread of
COVID-19 knowing what it is doing to older folks.

Really, the city should have cancelled it days ago. It took all three major
labels pulling out this morning to make this happen.

I believe the most substantial takeaway from the coronavirus so far has been
how every government seems to be focused measures that support short term
finances i.e. worker productivity and consumption rather than taking swift and
far reaching measures to combat this virus.

That said, the next high-profile event I'm watching is Burning Man.

(comment copied from a duplicate post)

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Keverw
I thought the heat was supposed to kill the virus? Something the president
mentioned, but sounds like they aren't 100% certain... Wonder if it got killed
in the summer, if it'd come back in the winter again? Like a new flu?

~~~
ceejayoz
It's spreading in Singapore, which doesn't have anything _but_ heat. Average
highs range from 86-90 year round.

~~~
ValentineC
Most Singapore buildings and its public transport system are fully A/C.

~~~
ceejayoz
If scientists actually thought summer heat would kill the virus, that’d
change.

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claudeganon
Its disappointing, but at least sane.

There’s a great paper about the 1918 flu epidemic that shows how cities that
continued on with things like mass gatherings saw a large uptick in deaths,
while those that banned them and took other immediate interventions remained
within the baseline.

[https://www.pnas.org/content/104/18/7582](https://www.pnas.org/content/104/18/7582)

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AlchemistCamp
Tim Ferriss did a lot:
[https://twitter.com/tferriss/status/1234860126756012039](https://twitter.com/tferriss/status/1234860126756012039)

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michaelbuckbee
This seems pretty reasonable but I am curious for how long it will seem so, if
we had better testing in place would it be better? If we had the vaccine (for
sure) it would be better, but what do we as a society do in the interim.

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gazelle21
Wow can't believe they actually did it

