Sam’s speaking at SXSW Sydney: Digital Sovereignty for creatives

Next month I’ll be speaking at SXSW Sydney about something that has become a bit of a personal mission for us: digital sovereignty. Put simply, it’s about understanding what you actually own online, what you’re renting, and what could disappear without warning.

For years we’ve poured our creative energy into platforms like Instagram, Spotify, Substack, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube. They’re brilliant tools, but they’re not ours. These are rented spaces and they can change the rules, throttle your reach, or shut you out entirely without notice.

If you’re an artist, creative, small business, or not-for-profit, your digital presence is a huge part of how you connect with your audience. That means where your work lives, how it’s accessed and who controls it really matters. When we build our entire digital life on platforms we don’t own, we also accept their limits. Their algorithms decide what is seen. Their moderation decides what stays up. Their business decisions decide what features vanish. We don’t get a vote.

In the session, Digital Sovereignty: Don’t Build Your Castle on Someone Else’s Land, I’ll walk through what happens when a creative career relies entirely on rented space. We’ll look at real examples of data loss, the slow death of organic reach, the impact of Australia’s under 16 social media ban, and how platform design shapes the art we make and the audiences we reach.

But this isn’t a doom session. You have far more power than you think.

We’ll break down the difference between owned, hybrid and rented platforms, why your website and mailing list are still the strongest foundations you can build on, and how to use social platforms as the spokes that feed your hub rather than the hub itself. We’ll also cover hybrid tools like Shopify, Bandcamp, Substack, and Patreon, and where they fit in the bigger picture of ownership and control.

Most importantly, you’ll leave with practical steps you can put in place straight away. How to protect your work, how to build a stronger digital foundation, and how to keep reaching your audience even when platforms shift around you. Your content is too valuable to leave entirely in the hands of systems you don’t control.

If you’re heading to SXSW Sydney, come along.

Digital Sovereignty: Don’t Build Your Castle on Someone Else’s Land
Tuesday 14 October
11:45am
Meeting Rooms C2.5 and C2.6, ICC Sydney

See you in Sydney.

Update 15 October:

Thanks to everyone who came along – so much great conversation! Keep you eye on this space or join our mailing list for the next time we run the digital sovereignty session.