🕵️ Missing Meredith
SXSW Sydney quietly lost two of its major drawcard speakers — Signal’s Meredith Whittaker and billionaire Lucy Guo — as it becomes better known for its side events than the main program.
SXSW Sydney quietly removed two of its international keynote speakers from the 2025 lineup, with Signal Foundation president Meredith Whittaker and tech entrepreneur Lucy Guo both withdrawing from the festival without any public announcement.
One attendee told Capital Brief they only discovered the no-shows when they used ChatGPT to search the conference schedule for Whittaker — one of the first international names announced for the event — only to find she’d vanished.
SXSW Sydney buried the withdrawals in FAQ updates and amendments to old announcements, citing only “unforeseen circumstances” and “circumstances beyond their control”.
Whittaker, who leads the encrypted messaging app Signal and is a prominent voice on AI ethics, was removed from the lineup on 11 September.
