Building a Midwest House

Relationships are built on shared experience. Let's start building.

Midwest House was born in an East Austin backyard at SXSW 2015.

We were simply Michigan House at the time and it was supposed to be a one year project. A 24' Penske Truck was rented, filled with Michigan Made goods, and driven the 1300 miles to Austin, TX. Included in the truckload was an ice cream cart that needed to be plugged in when we stopped at a hotel to keep the ice cream from melting and an O.G. Sandy the Penny Pony that Meijer lent us for the festivities.

For 4 days we turned that backyard into a celebration of everything that the Great Lake State could be. 17 bands. 100s of guests. 2 very friendly visits from the Austin PD. And untold connections made. It was kinda magic. We had no idea - like no fucking clue - how much it was about to change our lives.

Fast forward five years. Michigan House has become a nice little platform for the state’s innovators and creatives. We’re a known commodity at SXSW with a downtown venue and enormous plans for SXSW 2020 and beyond.

Y’all remember 2020, right???

So yeah…the enormous 2020 plans were traded in for months of quarantine, Zoom fatigue, and unending use of the “Everything Is Fine” meme. In-person events were dead and it seemed like Michigan House might be as well.

But there were whispers. Five years of building connections had left us with lots of friends and lots of people to talk to while we were stuck inside. Many of them didn’t live in our mitten-shaped state. One of whom were the folks at Atlas Partners and Loud Capital in Columbus, OH. Wolf and the Pride Fund Team had been planning on a SXSW 2020 activation as well, and we’d passed along a few pointers along the way. After everything crumbled, we commiserated and also started to ask, “What if?”

Because there were others. Folks in Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and on and on - who were looking to start a larger conversation. Like us they believed that the problems of the future don’t care about lines on maps or lines on state budget allocations. They believed that collaboration can be a super power, and that the Midwest is overflowing with underestimated talent, dreams, and opportunity. Again we started asking, “What if?”

What if we built a platform to serve a region of forward thinkers and not just a state? What if we were to convene a collection of connectors that usually only get to see each other on screens? What if we were to give the Midwest a stage worthy of its best and brightest? Who says no to that?

So we built a Midwest House for SXSW 2022, and over four days more than 4000 people stopped through to tell us we might be on to something.

We’re doing again in 2023 and this little diary is your chance to follow in the process. They’ll be conversations and events and opportunities to get involved along the way, and hopefully this little record will be an experience itself. Something for us to talk about in Austin next spring.

Follow along. Bring a friend. Let’s build this House.