Interview with Julie Yost, Programmer for the Cities Summit and the Design Track at South by Southwest (SXSW)

Written by Dorothy Levin

We know it’s important to speakers to participate in conferences where their values are aligned. We’ve also heard from both aspiring and experienced speakers that they want to know more about the organizers behind the conference — what’s important to them, how they program, and what they do to create inclusive experiences. Through our new interview series with organizers of notable design and tech conferences, it is our goal to give you that access.

We recently got the chance to speak to Julie Yost, Programmer for the Cities Summit and the Design Track at South by Southwest (SXSW).

The Cities Summit primarily focuses on cities as problem-solvers for social issues and test beds for innovation, equity and inclusion, and arts and culture. She also programs the design track for Interactive, which can be in tech or any discipline, really. More on that below.

Why is it important to create an inclusive conference?

I really think whether you’re a conference programmer or any profession, you have a responsibility to think about how you can serve others. I take that seriously in terms of programming.There are people doing really good work who can benefit from the platform that SXSW has to potentially elevate them. Oftentimes by the nature of our society, those are people of color, women, people from the Midwest and not the Coast. This context is important. As a guiding principle for everything I program, I want a mix of prominent voices and voices that can benefit from being here.

When we talk about diversity and inclusion, we often think about people of color and women, but due to the nature of the current state of society, there is so much good that comes out of cross-collaboration. Live events are a great way of sharing knowledge. The more you can diversify the field, the points of view, and ideologies represented, the better and richer a dialogue created at the event is.

Designers have to learn how to talk to people outside of their own industries. Our design track is specific to designers, but through all these other tracks we’re able to provide even more interdisciplinary ideas.

What has the response been while you’re pushing for inclusivity?

We get a lot of our content through our panel picker platform. It highlights diversity as something we look at as programmers, and shows that we’re leading the charge on that. People know they might be dinged if their proposed panel is all white-male or all from the same company. I did notice many of the solo talks that were submitted were submitted by men. I think the work you’re doing at Women Talk Design is really encouraging people to be confident enough to submit for hour-long talks.

People will pull me aside at events and mention noticing it. I haven’t seen people particularly calling it out if mistakes are made. Overall SXSW is such a diverse event in terms of content and industry.

How do you build your programming team?

We have an advisory board who grades all the submissions. As a team we go through and grade every single submission over the course of several months. The team will go over submissions that the track lead chooses to bring into programming retreats.

How to you cull for the greatest speakers?

It’s really important for speakers to have videos of their work online. We require video submissions, but it doesn’t have to be something as produced as a TED Talk. It can be as simple as them holding their cell phone and being very passionate about their topic.

It’s important to include young people in these conversations, people who don’t have a conference talk under their belt. I’m also a big fan of shorter talks for these people. We do short format talks, and also have pitch competitions, which are 5-minute talks.

Okay, so you get some amazing speakers. What do you do if a speaker backs out?

It’s just the nature of the event and the industry. Due to the luxury of having a known brand, there are a lot of people that want to be involved. Sometimes I can backfill in that capacity. Sometimes you just run a room dark if you can’t fill the spot. Sometimes you have a 4-person panel go down to 3.

How do you get speakers on board? Especially knowing SXSW doesn’t pay speakers, how do you make it valuable for them?

For me, I am less focused on begging people I want to see to come and speak. I don’t try to convince people to come and speak if they don’t see a value in attending. I think that’s really important to consider what you’re asking of people and what they’re going to get from it.

If I’m approaching someone cold, I want to have a conversation with them, pick their brain, see if they have a book coming out, ask about the topic, take their temperature on speaking… A lot of times through those conversations they’ll connect me to other people I had no idea about.

You have to be totally comfortable with people saying no. When I frame it in those ways, being up front that we don’t provide payment — and exposure is not a payment in itself — I do my best to provide value if they see it, and if they don’t see it, no hurt feelings there.

I also try to make sure speakers get what they need. For example, if someone is coming and looking for funding or potential collaborators, I’ll try to set them up with people in those areas or send them to workshops in those areas.

Thanks again to Julie for this insightful interview.

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