Hugh Forrest — Chief Programming Officer, SXSW

**Hugh Forrest** is the Chief Programming Officer of **South by Southwest (SXSW)**, the annual convergence of technology, film, music, and culture held every March in Austin, Texas. He has been with SXSW since 1989 and has been the primary architect of SXSW Interactive (now SXSW Tech), which grew from a small digital culture gathering into the world's most important technology launch event — the platform where Twitter broke out in 2007, Foursquare in 2009, and where hundreds of startups and technologies have made their public debut.