Participants of the 2019 XOXO Festival in Portland network.
XOXO / XOXO
As many people have experienced during the pandemic, working online can be isolating.
Even before the pandemic, Portland’s XOXO festival offered independent creatives and designers a chance to connect in person. After a five-year hiatus, the event is now back for one last hurrah. Festival co-founders Andy Baoi and Andy McMillan spoke with OPB Morning Edition host Jess Hazel about what to expect from the final XOXO.
The festival is sold out, but you can watch videos of past speakers and other event highlights at XOXO website.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Jess Hazel: For someone who isn’t familiar with the idea of a community of online developers, can you explain exactly what XOXO is?
Andy Baoi: XOXO is an experimental conference and festival that brings together creatives of all kinds who live and work primarily online. They work on the internet. They are largely independent, bypassing traditional gatekeepers like studios and publishers and trying to do their own thing.
But over the years it has developed into a real community that supports each other in the dark and difficult times, with the challenges that come with living and working online.
JH: And since the last festival in 2019, the online working world has changed a lot. How have the challenges for creatives changed with this change or are people still struggling with the same problems as before the pandemic?
AWAY: If anything, everything has moved even more online. People who were already online during the pandemic have moved to remote or hybrid connections. And I think people are just really craving that connection.
JH: You said that it is an experimental festival. In the spirit of the experimental method, when you were planning it, did you initially have a hypothesis in mind about what would happen? And has this hypothesis been refined over the years?
Andy McMillan: I don’t know if we went into this in 2012 with a plan, and certainly not with a plan for what it would look like in 2024. We did it more or less one at a time. And it was around 2014, 2015 that we started to see that this was becoming much more significant than just a conference and a couple of events that people come to Portland for every year. It’s like there’s a kind of movement forming around it. This community of people is what’s driving this. And so we were always surprised by what this community was capable of.
JH: This will be the last XO. Why is it the last? And are you sure it will be the last? Because I’ve heard some people joke that it’s like a last tour for a band that keeps getting back together. Are you really done?
AWAY: Yes, this is definitely the last one. I think we got that reputation early on when we started in 2012. We told people we didn’t know if there would be another one. We decided every year whether we would do it again. And the first one was so successful that we kept going. But yes, by 2020 we had decided that was it.
The reasons are complex and multi-faceted. It’s financial reasons. It’s sponsorship not being what it used to be. It’s the complications of running a festival during a pandemic with seasonal wildfires. Also, we feel like we’ve said a lot of what we wanted to say. Now, after five years, it feels like a combination of a wrap party and a reunion all at once. So we’re really excited that we can now properly close the doors on this thing that we really love.
JH: It seems that the community that XO has created is very important to the visitors. What connections have you noticed throughout this festival?
AM: There are a lot of them. A surprising number of people have gotten married over the years. We have XO babies now. Of course, a lot of families have started, you know, generally speaking, a lot of people come to the festival and meet other people who are great weirdos and extremely online. And these people start talking and then come back a year or two later. And it turns out that they worked together on some project.
It has been great to see the way this community has grown together over the years and grown beyond the format of an annual festival. And we are sure that this group of people will stay in touch even when the festival is no more. This community will not disappear just because the festival is no more. The last five years have shown that. This group of people is more than capable of sticking together as a community even without the event. And we are sure that this will continue after this year’s festival.
