Roland Swenson is a Co-Founder and Managing Director of SXSW; particularly involved in the South By Southwest Music Festival and SXSW Interactive.
The idea for the festival first began in 1986 when organizers of the NYC New Music Seminar contacted Swenson, then a staffer at the alt-weekly paper The Austin Chronicle, about organizing an extension to their festival in Austin. After the plans fell through, Swenson and others went ahead planning an event themselves and the first SXSW Festival began in 1987.
Anonymous on March 10, 2020