XOXO Festival

XOXO is an annual festival and conference held in Portland, Oregon that describes itself as "celebrating independently produced art and technology." XOXO was founded in 2012 by Andy Baio and Andy McMillan with funding from prepaid tickets and other contributions via Kickstarter, and it was described by the New York Times as an "experimental" conference.

The inaugural event was held in Portland's Yale Union Laundry Building in September 2012 with approximately 400 participants. The first day of the conference focused on talks from independent creators from fields such as film, comics, music, art and illustration, video games, hardware design and product design, while the second centered on technology, and those building tools to facilitate and encourage independent creativity through the web. Speakers and performers included Dan Harmon, Adam Savage, MC Frontalot, Chris Poole, Bre Pettis, Julia Nunes, The Kleptones, The Limousines, and the creators of Kickstarter, Metafilter, VHX, Simple, Diesel Sweeties, Indie Game: The Movie, and World of Goo.

Associated events included live music, film screenings, an arcade of independently produced videogames, a pub crawl, a market, and food trucks.

News media and bloggers noted an "impressive list of speakers", a focus on "democratizing media and innovation", and an "intimate tone" missing from other technology-focused conferences. Ruth Brown wrote "the audience was overwhelmingly white, male, middle class and educated."

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Wikipedia