Calls to Cancel SXSW Intensify as Facebook, Twitter Pull Out, 30K Sign Petition | Hacker News Reader

Calls to Cancel SXSW Intensify as Facebook, Twitter Pull Out, 30K Sign Petition

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178 pointsgrej181 comments

I tried to cancel (citing concerns not about myself, but Austin), and got this response. The last line putting it on me felt odd.

---

Hello,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

We understand your concerns. We recognize the disruption that the Coronavirus (COVID-19) has caused, and we sympathize with all affected.

Safety is a top priority for SXSW. We are working closely with local, state, and federal agencies to plan for a safe event.

The SXSW 2020 event is proceeding as planned. The World Health Organization’s recommendation is that travelers practice usual precautions. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and will provide updates as necessary.

Please also see the City of Austin’s Public Health Reminders from February 6, February 14, and February 25, and their COVID-19 FAQ, updated February 28.

We have a no refund policy as part of our terms and conditions, so we are unable to reimburse you for your purchase. However, you can transfer your registration to another person.

We hope to see you at SXSW 2020, but understand that the decision to attend is yours to make.

I've seen very similar form letters from other conventions. Largely they all lean on each other -- "they don't offer refunds so neither will we" -- but the bigger factor is that the convention probably doesn't have the money to refund people.

Most fan-run conventions run on a barely-above-breakeven budget at the best of times.

I'm not intending this as an excuse, merely an explanation for people who may not have been involved in the organisation of a convention, or been close to people who have.

With that perspective in mind, I find it hard to blame them. A wave of panicked attendees demanding refunds could well render them insolvent.

SXSW isn't a small independent festival. It has a lot of corporate backing and a lot of big organizers and company support.

All of that being said, they are probably still operating at at near break even. It's still a lot of volunteers (even if some of them are paid or offered by companies). If there's any left over for these conventions, it usually goes straight towards the deposits for next year (or other stuff the organizing committees do throughout the year to raise funds and advertise for the next year).

Even really big festivals usually run like this. It's a labor of love and resume building for organizers. But I agree, there's usually no money to refund. If less than half the people show, it will be just a lot of half filled venues.

I think it's a matter of the venue refusing to refund. They get to be intractable because they know that places that can host such events are few. You almost have no choice but to deal with them.

Not to mention, by renting to SXSW, they are choosing not to rent to someone else. By locking in the dates, then pulling out, the organizer is costing the venue money.

So no matter what, the money paid to the venue is gone. The organizers cannot pay that back. And like you say, they probably were only able to pay that much because of ticket sales. There's likely very little profit from the event after the books are balanced.

They likely know it would be the nice thing to do and that these are extraordinary circumstances. But, like you said, it would likely be them choosing to go out of business.

Straightening out the chain of liabilities would take some knowledge of state and local laws as well as all of the contracts involved. To claim the money is just gone is wrong. If they cancel right before an event, perhaps it is, but the conference itself may have some value. It could be sold off to another owner, for example.

If you purchased something as a consumer, and it wasn’t delivered, someone is liable. As others have speculated some of the conferences may end up going bankrupt. A 100% refund is unlikely but at least partial ones are due. Given the lost revenues from hotels, flights, and conference fee, this is billions of dollars. Large enough for law firms to work on it. On the business side, for losses to exhibitors, it’s all based on what the contracts say.

First, they've stated that the tickets are non-refundable. If they're still hosting the event and allowing people to attend, your reason for not attending is immaterial.

Second, yes, some of that money is gone. It's likely paid to people for services either already rendered or promised.

That's kind of the hitch here. The attendees cannot go after the venue for the money. The venue acquired the money legitimately from the organizer in a completely separate transaction.

The organizer is the focal point. And if they don't have the money to pay people back, it's not like they can will it into existence. And even if law firms get involved, what's the outcome here? "Yes, they owe money."

Cool. It still doesn't exist.

The more likely outcome if a court case found against a convention is that the convention would be rendered bankrupt and simply shut down.

PyCon US will be held in Pittsburgh in the middle of April. They have not cancelled, but are offering full refunds for people that decide not to go.

An arts and music festival has much higher capex than pycon. Pycon really just needs a standard conference center or conference hotel without modifications.

Yea, I feel like Amazon is so good at customer service that people just expect full refunds these days even for things totally beyond the control of the seller. The terms stated the tickets were non refundable. Don’t buy the ticket if you don’t like the policy.

Travel insurance can also be an option if you're worried about having to miss something for reasons outside of your control.

SXSW is not a small fan-run convention though. They almost certainly carry insurance for this kind of thing.

Right, but that doesn't mean there aren't remaining incentives that tempt unscrupulous organizers.

Insurance, if underwritten correctly, just turns a crippling loss into a moderate loss, not into a break-even.

I would be curious to know whether their insurance covers pandemics. That's even excluded from most travel insurance.

SXSW is hardly a "fan-run convention", though.

I do agree money is the reason, for both sxsw and (actually more importantly) Austin. I wouldn't call sxsw a "fan-run convention" or "breakeven", and they certainly have insurance. Austin likely is the bigger issue... it brings them a ton of money every year.

I’m really surprised that they don’t have insurance to deal with scenarios like this.

They definitely have event insurance, but that's for situations like if the entire conference has to be canceled. They have no reason to make a claim just a reimburse an attendee who cancels despite the no-refund policy.

> that’s for situations like if the entire conference has to be canceled

So how does a highly contagious virus with that’s already killed thousands not qualify for the above? I understand the mortality rate of the young and healthy is very low with this illness, but anyone who goes risks transmitting it to loved ones who aren’t in good health.

Would depend on the insurance policy. Probably no coverage for sxsw straight up cancelling without government requirement.

> With that perspective in mind, I find it hard to blame them. A wave of panicked attendees demanding refunds could well render them insolvent.

Couldn't a conference like SXSW buy insurance to cover refunds? It's my understanding that you can buy a policy at Lloyd's of London to cover pretty any kind of unique risk.

Pandemics like this one seem rare enough that the premiums might not actually be too bad.

> Most fan-run conventions run on a barely-above-breakeven budget at the best of times.

Ya, I've had local races get cancelled due to weather, and they also have a no-refund policy. Much of the revenue has already been spent, so I understand.

SXSW is quite far from a fan-run type of convention. There's big money involved with corporate sponsors - Budweiser, Amex and Kia being some. It basically takes over Austin for a couple of weeks. It's also a few distinct conferences - music, film and interactive. To give an idea of it's size and scope here are the stats from 2019:

https://explore.sxsw.com/hubfs/2019-SXSW-Event-Stats_9-10-19...

> We have a no refund policy as part of our terms and conditions, so we are unable to reimburse you for your purchase.

But they can go ahead with multi-100k person event in the midst of a pandemic, knowing that doing so carries a credible risk of thousands of deaths (or even creating an outbreak throughout Texas and surrounding states).

This is deeply, deeply disappointing, considering the power, influence and connections they have.

Maybe the issue is that conferences aren't assigned any penalty for helping spread a virus, which misaligns incentives? Then again, it could be something that's hard to get right, where any reasonable assignment of liability would make it impossible to hold a conference -- I don't know.

Edit: To clarify, I'm just suggesting a possible cause for misaligned incentives; I also added that holding them liable isn't necessarily a good solution either.

I'm inclined to agree. Incentives matter!

It's still deeply disappointing (to me) that the organizers have so few internal incentives to put lives ahead of profits. The entire value of an ethical framework is in the times when following is not what's most personally beneficial in the short term.

True, but at this scale, I expect to not to have to depend on the benevolence of conference organizers -- there needs to be a framework so that they don't have to make that choice.

To quote Deus Ex: Human Revolution:

"I managed to hang on to my humanity -- but the temptation to ignore it was always there. It's that temptation that so worries Taggart. He's not afraid of freedom. He's afraid of the chaos that erupts when individuals have nothing but morality to constrain them."

> True, but at this scale, I expect to not

Why is that a "but" rather than an "and"?

I'm disappointed in the organizers and would like to see better incentives.

Because you were phrasing it as a problem that ethical frameworks rather than laws solve.

That isn't true. At no point did I say or even imply laws weren't required. In fact, I immediately agreed with you!

Laws and ethical frameworks are synergistic in well-functioning systems.

I know that's what you may have felt in your head, I'm just talking about what your comment suggested, even if wasn't directly advocated. You mention ethical codes as filling in a gap here (where there the financial incentives work against you), and my point that it's not really effective for this scale (e.g. the level of coordination for the evil to be avoided). If you didn't mean or realize that implication, fine, I'm just speaking to how it comes off.

> Maybe the issue is that conferences aren't assigned any penalty for helping spread a virus

Darn that right of free association.

Using this argument, airlines should also shut down all flights - they're transporting more than this number, all over, with zero checks.

> But they can go ahead with multi-100k person event in the midst of a pandemic, knowing that doing so carries a credible risk of thousands of deaths (or even creating an outbreak throughout Texas and surrounding states).

You don’t have to go

Given the last part the text you quoted: Austin residents don't have to go where?

UPDATE: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/sxsw-canc...

Sounds like it's time to chargeback.

Write again and tell them you have a roommate who just returned from Iran, you have flu symptoms etc.* I'm curious to find out their response to someone worried they have symptoms and trying to cancel to avoid infecting others.

* Or don't lie & perhaps someone else can do it

Any and all payments made to SXSW are not refundable for any reason, including, without limitation, failure to use Credentials due to illness, acts of God, travel-related problems, acts of terrorism, loss of employment and/or duplicate purchases.

I wonder if they change their tune if enough people say they are coming from effected areas / experience symptoms.

I can understand why people want refunds (it's not their fault), but also understand why SXSW may find it financially impossible to cancel (it's not their fault either).

To be honest, this is the type of call that ought to be made by governments, not individually by private citizens/organizations. Either all conferences nationwide should be cancelled, or none, but that's not a decision any can make individually.

If this is a national emergency, let's take national responsibility and share the burden nationally. Have the government shut down conferences, if that's the right call, and use tax dollars to reimburse the conference organizers to a reasonable level, that they are also forced to use to reimburse attendees to a reasonable level.

Really, how is this any different from flooding or hurricane damage that gets federal money to rebuild? A national emergency is a national emergency, period.

The sane way to do this would be to let everyone take a slight hit.

Some money has already been spent, so full refunds aren't possible nor are they reasonable -- doing so would leave the organizers in the lurch and torpedo any hopes of a future event when this all blows over. But keeping all the money for a non-event wouldn't be right either.

There should be an equitable way to figure out what percentage of the money can be refunded without anyone going bankrupt in the process.

The government's role could be to vet that math and declare that it's OK and if attendees get whatever percentage refund, they're done and have no further recourse. Cuz otherwise a cranky con-goer will suck the place dry with legal fees.

I agree with that. This is a pandemic, no benevolence, no one's fault, everyone will be hurt in different ways. There are costs to prepare an event, the venue will want to be paid even if the organizer cancels and so on. Force majeure as it is called in insurance lingo. A full refund is not realistic.

Calling it a pandemic is giving far more credit than is due at this point. It's essentially only lethal to elderly or immunocompromised people. It would need to kill [0]220x more people than it already has to even be [1]comparable to the flu.

The media is making a huge deal about it, when really the situation calls for more handwashing for everyone, and an n95 mask for those who are or may be infected.

[0]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/coronavirus-deaths-ch...

[1]https://www.health.com/condition/cold-flu-sinus/how-many-peo...

It is technically correct to call it a pandemic since it has spread worldwide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic

Now, the amount of worry based on the connotations associate with the word "pandemic" might be called overblown due to relative amount of risk of death, hospitalizations, and/or overwhelmed heath services. But the term is being used accurately and appropriately.

True, but the term pandemic comes with added emotional baggage. Most people associate the term with the black plague rather than the flu (which has also been a pandemic several times).

Correct. And generally the seasonal flu is exempted.

The best comparisons would be to the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic of H1N1 pandemic in 2009. Especially H1N1 seems a particularly apt comparison point, even though it had a dramatically lower mortality rate.

You can't compare absolute fatality numbers (yet). The flu infects tens of millions of people each year and kills less about 0.2%. (Estimates are between 5%-20% of the US population get the flu each year.)

This coronavirus has only infected a few ten thousand people and has killed between 2% and 20% of the infected population (with the larger %s comprising weakened patients, like the elderly with preexisting conditions or people living in a country without a functional healthcare system, like Iran.

If the coronavirus scaled up to the number of infections as the flu, millions would die.

It drives me nuts when people say that. It's like saying Toyotas are more dangerous than Lamborghinis because look at the fatality numbers!

Yeah, but if Ferruccio himself was cavorting through the streets and giving away Aventadors, the numbers would flip in a hell of a hurry.

Except even the old man himself couldn't give 'em away as fast as this is spreading.

We will see. I think it can kill 220x more people than it already has if it continues to spread like it has been doing so far.

With awareness as high as it is already, I think most infected people will seek treatment and for the most part they'll be ok. That's not to say it won't have an impact, and it may very well be worse than the flu, I just don't think it warrants the level of paranoia and fearmongering that the news has been pushing.

Tax dollars definitely shouldn't be spent bailing out huge, influential tech conferences.

If they choose to run at such thin margins they can't survive one tail risk event and have failed to buy appropriate insurance even after a decade of growth, they shouldn't be able to socialize their loses.

Almost all commercial insurance policies exclude pandemics and terrorist acts.

Where exactly do you propose they buy this mythical insurance policy that includes pandemic coverage?

(On another note, insurance is literally the socialization of losses. It's just a privately run socialization of losses with your fellow policyholders.)

When people complain about socialization of losses, they're talking about socialization across parties that did not consent to bearing those losses, which doesn't cover the privately-run case, so I don't know why you think that comment is applicable.

If I understand correctly, why do you think it's proper for the organizers and attendees of SXSW who would lose money if the event was cancelled, then be compensated for such losses by other individuals who DO NOT consent to bear such responsibility?

I wasn't taking a position on that, I was addressing the oh-so-clever remark that was trivializing complaints of "socialization of losses" with the argument that "duh, that's what insurance is, what's the problem?".

Got it! Sorry. I thought I might not have absorbed the sarcasm.

My original comment wasn't sarcastic.

Insurances that exclude high-cost low probability events... that's funny.

What are they for?

They exclude unmodelable high-cost low-probability events.

The exist to cover modelable high-cost low-probability events.

I mean if we're working on the principle that you take informed responsibility then you can just pass the entire thing onto ticket buyers who didn't even consider getting ticket insurance for their tickets.

Do we have a breakdown of how many tickets are bought by individuals and how many by companies, universities, and other institutions?

I’m sure that one of the conferences my company bought tickets to is going to be cancelled. I don’t expect they care to pursue getting their money back.

Really shouldn't conferences be paying for insurance against X?

Yes but this kind of thing generally falls under "act of god" which you simply cannot buy insurance against.

Now I'd be curious to see SXSW's actual insurance policy, but honestly I don't believe there's anything available they could possibly have done to protect against this.

Force majeure. If that would not be in insurance agreements then every insurance company in the world could go broke in case of a pandemic.

Shouldn't actuaries take this possibility into account?

I am sure they do and that is why it exist. Basically, it is an exemption for Black Swan events that affects a lot of people at the same time.

The problem with this type of call being made by governments, which I hope will become abundantly clear in retrospect, is that governments are incentivized to lie about the severity of the situation (consider CCP response to Wuhan, White House response to unsafe quarantines, etc.).

> The problem with this type of call being made by governments, which I hope will become abundantly clear in retrospect, is that governments are incentivized to lie about the severity of the situation (consider CCP response to Wuhan, White House response to unsafe quarantines, etc.).

No. "[G]overnments" aren't "incentivized to lie about the severity of the situation" any more than anyone is incentivized to lie about anything.

It's true that some governments and some government officials are in the habit of blatantly lying, but that shouldn't be turned into some kind of anti-government generalization. Pretty much all the accurate information and advice we currently have about this outbreak comes from governments as well.

There's insurance for this type of thing, and I'm guessing that the organizers do not have it.

True! Many of the ticketing companies offer insurance in terms the buyer decides to cancel or the event cancels - they still get their money. But it's extra cost, which not everybody is willing to cover!

The government has already shown itself to be wildly irresponsible with regard to testing, allowing community transmission to take place with little hope for contract tracing and effective quarantines, leaving six dead in Seattle.

They should absolutely get their shit together, but we can’t all just wash our hands of our collective responsibility to each other until they do. Adopting their bumbling as a “wait and see” response is just another form of denialism that will cost lives. I’m glad that some companies and events have had enough sanity and courage to respond proactively.

I was honestly amazed to hear that it's still going on. Everybody knows that conferences are giant petri dishes. I know some people who just book time to get sick after a major conference.

I'm sure that a ton of people have bet money on SXSW, of course, so doing the right global thing could be very painful personally. But I think that's exactly the kind of thing government should step in and solve. However bad not doing SXSW would be for the local economy, a pandemic would be way worse.

> Everybody knows that conferences are giant petri dishes. I know some people who just book time to get sick after a major conference.

Common enough occurrence that it's been named "con-plague".

Even in a good year it's almost expected to catch something at an event that brings so many people into close quarters.

Conferences are all about cross-pollination. Sometimes it's ideas, sometimes it's serious illnesses.

> Conferences are all about cross-pollination. Sometimes it's ideas, sometimes it's serious illnesses.

Just like open offices.

Ten years ago

> Each year at SXSW, you hear about "SXSW SARS" or "SXSW Scurvy." Days packed with panels, movies, and concerts are exhausting and wear down your immune system. Learn some ways in which you can prepare for, and stay clear of getting sick at SXSW.

https://do512.com/events/2010/3/12/sxsw-sars

"con crud" is how I've always heard it.

The sheer greed of SXSW will push this festival through no matter what. Talk to any Austinites running local businesses and they will tell you horror stories of code enforcement, law suits, and outright bullying from the SXSW brand.

I know of one coffee shop that closes to the public during SXSW and makes enough from private events to pay off their entire year's lease. Maybe an outlier but there is definitely a benefit for local small businesses.

It may not be sheer greed. It may put them out of business forever.

I would not be opposed for a little creative destruction in this case.

Should we prioritize the survival of human beings over corporations?

I don't think that's what the parent comment is suggesting. Instead they're saying that it might not be greed in the sense of "wanting to make an extra 5% no matter what" but a lose-the-whole-business question. That's not to say it's not the right thing to do, but it does help to realize that the picture isn't so black and white.

Nobody is being forced to go to SXSW, get sick, and die. This is simply about who foots the bill.

While I think this is an interesting and important topic, and a complicated judgement call, I'm trying to figure out why a random internet poll is playing a serious role in the conversation.

As a proxy for the sentiments of the hundreds of thousands of stakeholders (aka regular people) who don't have corporate PR departments to make their views known?

Or a proxy for a few hundred Austin residents who are annoyed by the traffic jams. Or as a proxy for bots representing a competing conference. Or who knows. That's kind of the problem with random internet polls.

I just got word that the Adobe Summit 2020 conference I was set to attend has been canceled. I believe the event had ~17,000 attendees last year, which is but a fraction of the SXSW attendance. Most of the attendees are based in the US too...

Adobe Summit 2020's cancellation was also discussed on HN yesterday [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22470462

These get canceled because employers don't want the liability if they require attendance at a conference and a person gets very ill.

The majority of people at SXSW are there for recreational/personal reasons and are not directed to go there from an employer.

Except, you know...for the people working local venues and establishments during SXSW, right?

And these people will lose big-time if it gets canceled. What's your point?

I think it's that employees who get flown to $1000-a-ticket conferences by their employers get treated better by their employers than food service workers.

I wholly understand that, I'm speaking directly to the employees who live and work in Austin and very likely wont have their shifts cancelled like those $1000-ticket holders would (speaking from experience).

Sorry, somehow I keep forgetting that trying to bring up the fact that there are classes of people not making software engineer money that would be just as affected by some of the hypotheticals on HN is a no-no.

They don’t really enter into the calculus for running or not running these events but there are a huge number of local people who provide food/drink, security, audio, janitorial, registration, etc. for these events who lose a week of work when events are canceled—probably with no compensation.

They don’t really enter into the calculus for running or not running these events

I would beg to differ as many "official" SXSW events rely on local venues to host them, Austin Texas is not a large city, geographically. It's just very dense. There is not a surplus of concert and event space outside of Auditorium Shores and the Long Center for keynotes and expos.

Otherwise, the festival HEAVILY relies on local establishments and venues in order to even exist; especially for SXSW Music. Again, speaking from direct experience having worked as a crew lead at sxsw for 12 years, local venues are critical to the success of this festival. And that's where many of these people work. Their availability and their health absolutely factors in, or at least it should.

The workforce behind this festival extends from stage and production crews to bartenders and hosts to unpaid volunteers who live in Austin and simply want to be a part of the festivities (since volunteering qualifies you for free access to certain events, depending on your role) and whose sole job is interacting with festival goers providing direction or interacting directly with people, handling brochures, exchanging money at registers or checking badges.

Downplaying the impact to the local community and the local workers who make the festival happen behind the scenes isn't fair.

I think you’re violently agreeing with me. I meant that, even SXSW aside, the decisions being made to cancel or not cancel tech events is almost certainly not taking the local impact into account.

Expanding the point ;)

But it's a shame, really. I get why such a petition would exist, I also don't envy the position Addler finds himself in these days.

I would not want to be an event organizer these days. None of these decisions are easy.

I mean, small industry events can be a blast and pay really well. In 2014 I put together a crew who ran production for the Austin Technology Council CEO Awards show, it was a small affair for about 30 startups and the ATC, no more than about 200 people.

If you can get a reliable crew and know what you're doing, it can be kind of fun and rewarding with a great deal of technical autonomy.

As I get older part of me wonders if it makes sense to just focus on small corporate events to supplement the daily DevOps job.

lol yeah I have a hard time imagining food service's actual cost (not what the hotel bills, but what they actually pay the workers and managers of that part) as being more than a rounding error, and still "sorry workers, can't do anything for you".

What about sporting events? 20k people gathering every night in cities all around the country. Are the NBA, NHL, NCAA just going to cancel playoffs? Or play in front of empty stadiums?

Top soccer teams have been playing in empty stadiums, so why not?

https://www.pennlive.com/sports/2020/02/italian-soccer-game-...

Italy has 2000+ cases and the US only has 100+.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-m...

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594...

I understand this might be because of lack of testing in North America (Canada too) but it still makes a big difference with per capita rates like that in Northern Italy scaring people.

One Championship (an Asian fight promotion) did their last event in an empty arena in Singapore and only streamed it.

https://www.espn.com/mma/story/_/id/28725093/one-championshi...

It's probably wiser to cancel/delay games. The leagues and teams aren't going to go bankrupt, and knowing how hard coronavirus is to contain, limiting massive gatherings like conferences, concerts, sporting events, etc. in the next few weeks seems like the wise thing to do.

Does anyone have details on the XFL? The league just restarted, so financially it could be on the edge. I really like the games so far, so I hope they can continue.

If the situation escalates, I would not be surprised if playing in front of empty stadiums will be what happens. I guess it will depend on if loss of TV money will outweigh loss of ticket money or the other way around.

TV money is several multiples of ticket sales for major market teams like LA, NY, Chicago.

Loss of attendance revenues would devastate smaller-market teams.

I heard the Final Four is considering contingency plans, but at this point that's just due diligence.

They're talking seriously about canceling or postponing the Olympics, so yeah.

Let's not forget the political rallies.

Not comparable. SXSW increases Austin's size by almost 50% for a couple days. With that said, the event generally doesn't have a large international presence/component to it, so I think the worry is excessive.

I often times saw my foreign coworkers when they flew in for SXSW. Many people fly in from foreign countries for it.

I'm at a small ~500 attendee conference today and I'd say only about 2/3 of everyone bothered to show up. We're here in NYC where we just had our first covid19 cases.

People are scared.

No - they are responsible. It is irresponsible to show up to these events when the mortality rate for 70+ year olds is so high for the virus.

These events just exponentially multiply community transmission so while everyone there might be 30ish and just gets a bad flu, the bigger point is that they are spreading it to their communities at home and disproportionately at-risk populations.

Also - and this is critical - the more it can be slowed down, the less likely it is that the health system gets overloaded, which would lead to more deaths than if the exact same quantity of people become sick over a more drawn out period of time.

It's possible to be both scared and responsible.

It is fear or common sense that actually make people avoid big gatherings during the pandemic of an unknown virus?

It might actually just be public-spiritedness.

I think it's both.

I was at PAX East over the weekend with a 100,000 strong cohort of people who aren't exactly well known for personal hygiene and I wasn't scared, but it probably wasn't the ideal place to go. As long as you take strong precautions (cleaning shared surfaces aggressively, using hand sanitizer or washing hands after touching shared surfaces or people, avoiding sick people, avoiding confined spaces, etc) then I don't think there is really that much risk short of being coughed on by someone, but not much risk != basically no risk if you don't go. I actually went with a friend who was sick with the common cold and I was more concerned about him getting me sick than me getting COVID-19, and it seems I managed to avoid both.

You seem like you're missing the point. It's not about you. Contagion is a lottery you play on behalf of other people. You will probably not die of the covad virus even if you contract it, but you can kill other people if you get it and don't stay home.

If one of those 100,000 people had the thing then by now many many more of them have it and are now vectors.

Paraphrasing Lord Humungus, "Just stay home. Stay home for a few months and there will be and end to the horror. Just stay home." (The bad guys are the virus, the good guys and their gas is your health, and Mad Max is the guy cancelling your event. It's an imperfect metaphor.)

"Just Walk Away" Mad Max 2 - The Lord Humungus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfL4xKQeSfo

> ... it seems I managed to avoid both.

Unfortunately I don't think you'll know for sure if you got sick for at least a few more days. For COVID-19, I think there is a 5-7 day period where you can show no symptoms (but still pass it on to other people.) And even for the regular cold/flu, it can take a couple days for symptoms to show up.

I agree with everything else you said though; wash your hands often, use hand sanitizer, bring lysol/clorox wipes with you and wipe down any shared surfaces if possible.

It can actually be upto three weeks before symptoms show all the while being infectious.

If it's true that there is a three week latency period while you can still be infectious then we are screwed. There's basically nothing you can do because quarantine becomes impossible short of forcibly quarantining everyone.

If even Xi Jinping doesn't have the political cover to pull it off, the US political leadership surely won't.

The absolute highest outlier (like, only one case so far) seems to be 27 days, with the vast majority being under 5 days.

I've never seen more PAX attendees actually wash their dang hands, though. Normally if the sinks are full people just run back out (ew). Not this year. Almost everybody was waiting to clean their hands.

It's a shame it takes a viral outbreak to make convention-goers wash their hands...

(speaking as someone who's been on both the attendee and organiser side of the convention 'fence')

Seems a simple fix would be to add hand sanitizer stations either in the bathrooms or right outside of it.

For bathrooms that use toilet paper, I've wondered if the hand-washing station should be located within easy reach of the toilet.

Then people could wash their hands immediately after wiping, instead of first having to touch other objects like pants, belts, and in public restrooms, jackets, backpacks, and stall latches.

And now you've discovered why I always try and use the handicapped stall.

People would then have to use them. The hand sanitizers you see all over PAX do not get a lot of traffic.

Nerds be gross, my dude.

You'll only know for sure in two weeks. It leaves yoi plenty of time to infect other people in your community

On average a person gets the common cold 3 times each year. You probably got the cold, but had zero symptoms.

(I was also there, had a great time as usual).

PAX East basically only happened IMO because it was already in motion by the time the COVID-19 concerns really blew up. Ironically, the early date that no one was happy with probably saved the convention.

If it was being held even this week, much less in a few weeks like GDC was supposed to be, I'd expect widespread exhibitor cancellations and likely event cancellation.

The statistics are also totally different (right now), which affects their risk profile. You probably wouldn't have gone to it if it were hosted in China. Or maybe in a year or two from now if double-digit percentages of US residents become infected. But right now, it's not a hugely dangerous gamble.

Even if you do catch it now in the US, if you're not very old or have other health issues, the healthcare system has enough slack space to treat you (potentially crippling debt afterwards notwithstanding), and you'll almost certainly be fine. This may not be the case in the coming months and years, but it's difficult to predict how things will progress (considering there could possibly be vaccines and anti-virals that arrive in time to prevent a full US epidemic).

Going to Channel Partners in Vegas next week. Usually about 7000 attendees. Will be interesting

Given we now have a media/news system that perpetuates such social drama and literally spread fear, then we often see fear itself do way more damage than the crux of the story itself.

Imagine if we had a news/media blackout for a month - life would be so much better overall that you appreciate why so many just avoid social media, a label that is so far removed from the social aspect that it is literally fear/hate media platforms for the extremes in life, whatever side of the fence they sit.

Nice as it would be to have such a blackout the media companies would complain to no end about lost profits. The incentives are totally misaligned. In my opinion, Fox and the AP are not really comparable in terms of quality. The former is for-profit, the latter is non-profit. "If it bleeds, it leads" is less viable when people rely on you writing the more undistilled version of a story to sell to others who put their own spin on it later. That's not to say there's no bias at all in such journalism, but I feel like the incentives greatly affect the content of the story.

If people panicking leads to people watching more news, the news companies will let it happen.

Besides, these people have to put food in the table somehow. Asking them to just stop working because their work is ethically compromised would raise various issues.

What does SXSW even do for the tech industry? Is it just advertising for companies and people peddling themselves as influencers?

Remember that SXSW is more than just tech. It is like three connected conferences: music, film, and "interactive" aka tech.

Oh yea I agree, SXSW music & film are great. But as someone who’s been to SXSW I don’t understand the point of SXSW “interactive”. And in this article it’s talking about big tech companies backing out.

Really what I’m saying is who cares if tech pulls out? Its the worst part of the conference. I can’t imagine anyone other than Austin beer & discount ice sculpture sellers would mind if SXSW interactive disappeared forever.

That's fair. I think that, like many things, it's very important to a specific group of people, and irrelevant to many others. For a long time, SXSW was the cool place to launch your startup, and many people who still run in those circles remember launching their startups there, and have fond memories, etc.

I mostly agree, but you're forgetting an important part of the tech presence: a lot of those companies hold public parties with free beer and food. I've had plenty of VC-subsidized consumables through the years (though I don't know that I could remember a single one of the sponsoring companies... so maybe not very effective advertising).

and gaming and comedy.

That's one heck of a broad church...!

Yes, but that’s not a particularly charitable way to look at it. It’s like the old world’s fairs - it’s a conference where everyone gathers to look at new stuff and say “whoa that’s cool”.

Twitter launched at SXSW. The interactive conference is a lot of things, and was historically a great place to get many eager first movers trying your thing overnight.

A bit OT, but the World Figure Skating Championships are being held in Montreal at about the exact same time as SXSW is suppose to be held(a couple weeks in mid-March). Which is fine by me. They're taking a lot of precautions but a lot of these people who attend these events come from east-asian countries... especially Japan. And they don't offer refunds on tickets which I think could result in quite a few people attending because of the "sunk cost" mentality that they don't want to lose what they paid for.

Governments are extremely reluctant to restrict travel and thus event organizers too are reluctant to do much more if it affects how much money they make.

I live nowhere near Montreal, but if I did I would lobby the local governments to see what can be done to reduce travel from the most affected countries.

One established possibility is that corona won't be contained. With 2009 H1N1 outbreak it spread quickly, eventually to an estimated 11 to 21% of the global population.

H1N1 turned out to be much milder than initially feared, causing little more than runny noses and coughs in most people. And H1N1 is now so commonplace, it's simply seen as a part of the seasonal flus that come and go every year among the global population.

If you're of this school of thought, then the panic may seem a bit much.

[1] https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2020/03/02/how-is-the-coron...

Except there’s enough cases now that show that isn’t the case. The H1N1 was more “mild” than the speculation but COVId-19 isn’t. H1N1 also managed to be starved out more or less, but so far that doesn’t seem to be a real possibility for COVID-19.

If the olympics are being considered to be postponed, and tons of large conferences have already been canceled paired with companies stopping all international travel & discouraging domestic travel that’s more than enough evidence that the right thing to do is cancel your event.

The thing that a lot of folks seem to be missing is as a healthy, young adult you’re probably going to be fine if you get it and take care of yourself. With a longer incubation period than H1N1 though, you’re more likely to spread it to others who may be immunocompromised or at risk if they get it. That’s the risk with a conference, you can end up infecting many folks who infect other folks leading to high death rates.

The only way you don’t do that is you start to make the hard but right decisions to cancel events. China acted very quickly with quarantines outside of Wuhan, which is why the numbers are not growing at the same rate it was previously. There will surely be a second spike with spring break & other travels in the spring as China re-opens more areas but this isn’t going away, it’s only going to stay at the same rate or get worse over the next 6-8 weeks.

> The thing that a lot of folks seem to be missing is as a healthy, young adult you’re probably going to be fine if you get it and take care of yourself. With a longer incubation period than H1N1 though, you’re more likely to spread it to others who may be immunocompromised or at risk if they get it. That’s the risk with a conference, you can end up infecting many folks who infect other folks leading to high death rates.

Yeah, this! It's worth repeating.

Sure, but at this point it’s also one of the strains the yearly vaccine covers. The situation will change dramatically when a vaccine becomes available.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2019-2020.htm

There’s so much money tied up in SXSW for the entire city that I’m sure there’s a ton of pressure to keep it on no matter what.

They may be insured. However they may also have a large deductible and need to eat quite a few costs.

most insurance companies will play the "force majeure" card in order to exempt themselves from reimbursing clients.

No insurance company is solvable against a global pandemic event.

No insurance company is solvable against a global pandemic event.

Except Berkshire Hathaway:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-berkshire-buffett-insuran...

If Warren Buffett himself survives, I expect to see his shareholder letter next year talking about how their losses notwithstanding, COVID-19 left Berkshire Hathaway in a stronger position relative to the rest of the insurance industry, and has improved their outlook for the future.

Only a small number of very narrow segments of business benefit from SXSW - but they benefit a lot. The rest of Austin businesses, and Austinites, suffer degradation and losses. Ask any downtown business that's not in the lodging/entertainment industry.

If the event is cancelled by the city or other government body there is probably event insurance which is triggered which can pay for refunds. Events like this, even ones with lots of sponsorship and corporate interest, do not usually have high margins. As a result, any cash they have right now is needed to pay their suppliers.

I doubt they have money to refund more than a fraction of tickets. The responsible thing is for the local government to cancel it. Ideally SXSW would make this decision but ultimately they are not public health experts.

> "The pressure to cancel SXSW over coronavirus concerns intensified this week with Twitter and Facebook issuing corporate travel bans including the gathering"

Can anyone from Twitter or Facebook comment about what travel ban their employer has implemented? I work for a smaller tech company which has cancelled all international travel, and implemented a 14 day quarantine (i.e. mandatory work from home) for any employees returning from abroad. But we don't have any restrictions on traveling domestically.

By contrast here is what a small conference is doing right now:

https://www.cesmii.org/cesmii-2020-annual-meeting/

Doing this at the current time is a little premature to be so worried, but the general idea is sensible.

Their unwillingness to cancel points to a deeper problem, and I don't think that problem is greed.

I'm convinced it's an insurance restriction.

Anyone know SXSW's umbrella insurance provider?

I also wonder why KubeCon EU haven’t cancelled their conference in Amsterdam happening next month as well..

Maybe we should cancel large gatherings every flu season.

Money before people - nothing new under the sun!

It's just irresponsible that SXSW and KubeCon (Amsterdam) have not canceled. There should be public shaming of the leaders of these large events.

Why aren't people covering their mouths and washing their hands?! I see so many people on the metro behave so carelessly.

Nobody goes to SXSW anymore, it's too crowded these days.

SXSW organizers should be sued by the city if any outbreaks caused by this stupid must-have event.

The city that has the power to force the event to cancel due to a health emergency?

Austin's city government is famously unresponsive to its citizens, viz the city's "CodeNext" building code reforms that are roundly hated by hippies, environmentalists, businesspeople, homeowners, and liberals and conservatives alike. Worse, SxSW pretty much calls the tune the Mayor and City Council dance to. They'll allow SouthBy to go ahead, and the deadly fallout won't be evident for another month or two.

Not to get off topic, but the building code reforms are necessary in order to help control the ridiculous rises in housing prices and rents here. We have the same problem as California, where neighborhood associations want to freeze things as they were 50 years ago, and use restrictive zoning and deed restrictions to prevent building multi-family housing (duplexes/fourplexes/apartments).

The city government is plenty responsive to its citizens, ~55% of whom are renters, not homeowners, and many of whom are young people who can no longer afford to buy in the city. The already-haves in legacy neighborhoods, who file most of the protests and speak in front of the City Council the most, are mad that they are being given equal consideration rather than special consideration as they have gotten in the past.

https://ourtownaustin.org/sign-the-recall-petition/ Austin city mayor and 5 council members are recalled since last Oct.

How many people go to SXSW?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22464405

"HIMSS 2020, a conference of ~45000 attendees from 90+ countries is still scheduled to go forward at Orange County Convention Center Orlando March 9-13 - even as major participants withdraw from the event and Florida declares a state emergency."

Total attendance for 2019 was 417,400: https://explore.sxsw.com/hubfs/2019-SXSW-Event-Stats.pdf (PDF)

I do think these stats may double-count some people, but there's no doubt it's a gigantic conference. It's much larger than most people realize.

That may double count some people, but it also under/fails to count the sheer number of people that just "come into town" for the parties, networking, and nonofficial events.

Also, 45 is a speaker at the conference; they usually get 42 or 43 for the keynote most years: https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/president-donald-trump...

Holy shit. 417K. That's crazy.

I have to figure that a huge chunk of that is people who already live in Austin buying tickets to film screenings or wristbands to see live music. The number of people with actual conference badges has to be a small fraction of that.

I am not looking forward to going to HIMSS this year mostly because of the ongoing scare (with some personal reasons). The worst part is I have no clue if my fear is irrational or well placed. How am I supposed to make an educated decision in this climate.

Does anyone have a personal toolkit of sorts for this type of decision making? Or a pointer to one. I don't mean books, but more of like book-distillates ore something. Heuristics that you use or flow chart-y type patterns which have served you well through the uncharted waters of life.

"Hundreds of thousands flock to Austin for the event each year and its economic impact to the City of Austin was $355.9 million in 2019, according to an analysis by Greyhill Advisors and South by Southwest."

If it looks like a recession and sounds like a recession ...

It's amazing how rapidly confidence in the economy can evaporate.

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