Hugh Forrest, who is the director of SXSW Interactive, is by now experienced enough to be able to anticipate and respond to many of the problems that come with running one of the world’s largest mega-conferences. He’s been a SXSW organizer ever since 1989, when he helped the organizers of the then music-only event build and store an online database on his Macintosh Plus. He was the first full-time staffer to join the team. After a two-year break from SXSW, he came back to launch Interactive (then called SXSW Multimedia) and has stayed on ever since. Today, the organization employs about 150 employees to work full-time on the conference.

Forrest, whose desk is crowded with scattered papers and books and sits below a floorplan of the Austin Convention Center printed on large white cardboard sheets, says that the organizers have made all the mistakes several times and have now honed their duties to the point where they can just use the last week’s solutions to respond to problems.

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