231
JOB OVERVIEW
Roland Swenson manages and directs the overall
marketing and staging of the
South by Southwest (SXSW), North by Northeast
(NXNE), and North by Northwest
(NXNW) annual music festivals.
SPECIAL SKILLS
"Always in demand at SXSW are people skills,"
says Roland Swenson. "Most of our
work is done in a computer program called
FileMaker. We use that for just about
every aspect of our event, from scheduling to
keeping track of all our registrations,
volunteers, and bands. Having some strong
database background is something we're
always looking for, and people that have strong
graphic skills and can work in pro-
"Failure is not necessarily a bad thing--if you
learn from it."
"Making it in the music business is one of the
hardest things you can do.
Most people have to make up their own job. In
Austin, there weren't
many places that were going to hire me to work
in the music business.
When you don't have any choices, you're able to
do things that you might
not have thought you were able to
do."
CAREER
TIPS
THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT THIS
JOB:
"As hard as we try, there are always people who
are unhappy with what
we've done or how things turned out. Whether
we've invited them to
perform, speak, or use their club. In an event
this big, there are people that
are unhappy with how it turned out and they
complain and we have to
deal with that."
THE BEST THING ABOUT THIS JOB:
"The best part of my job is during the ten days
of the event. It's stimulat-
ing to experience being at the center of this
big storm that, upwards of ten
thousand people, are involved in during the
course of the week. We're all
adrenaline junkies. We've worked for a whole
year for the event to come to
fruition, and the best part is seeing the
results."
VOICES
OF
EXPERIENCE
User Comments Add a comment…