From its beginnings as a music conference and festival in 1987, attracting 700 registrants to Austin TX, SXSW quickly established itself and grew – fuelled by the growing international interest from the creative community – with Film and Interactive components being added in 1994.
"SXSW's original goal was to create an event that would act as a tool for creative people and the companies they work with to develop their careers, to bring together people from a wide area to meet and share ideas. That continues to be the goal today whether it is music, film or interactive technologies.”
The Interactive element (SXSWi) is now a thing in its own right, attracting huge crowds to Austin every year, with official attendance doubling within the past four years to reach 32,000 for 2014. It’s the annual conference where it's expected that ‘the next big thing’ in tech will be revealed - possibly as Twitter ‘launched’ there (or at least gained traction and a lot of buzz) in 2007, and expectations are therefore high.
As with any long-running popular event it has its detractors – either through dislike of the increasing corporate influence (there’s huge amounts of money thrown at SXSW from some big companies) or that it doesn’t live up to expectations – something ‘big’ should happen every year?
SXSW is the ultimate Web 2.0 silo.
— Dave Winer ☮ (@davewiner) March 8, 2014
The farcical merry-go round of weak news and parties, otherwise known as SXSW, may actually have become interesting http://t.co/8IBEuLMpSq
— Paul Fabretti (@paulfabretti) March 8, 2014
Breaking: More fascinating photos of Silicon Valley elite at #sxsw pic.twitter.com/EKgr8VA1bD
— Aral Balkan (@aral) March 9, 2014
There was some reference to this growing feeling in last year’s IPA retrospective of SXSW 2013, which I attended with Simon Landi, but we also heard and saw how much value could be had from attending and what me might expect in personal development and also return on investment for our agency.
So with that in mind, we headed off to experience 'the ultimate farcical Web 2.0 corporate party merry-go round silo’, before it lost its grass roots authenticity and we could no longer say we’d been to SXSW when it had just 32,000 attendees.
What's to see?
The 2014 SXSWi schedule was organised around the core themes; Art, Science and Inspiration, Content and Distribution, Design and Development, Entertainment and Immersion, Global Impact and Policy, Health and Business, Intelligent Future, Social and Privacy, Social and Relationships, Startup Village… it goes on and on. With a mixture of keynotes, core conversations, workshops, training, panel discussions and pitches around these themes it’s hard to imagine that there isn’t something for everybody. I don’t think I fully appreciated the scale of the conference until I arrived and also the task in hand of planning what to see. There’s a big difference between what’s available to see and what’s possible to see, either through wanting to attend overlapping sessions, logistics of getting between venues with adequate time, or available space due to popularity of particular sessions – and of course when to take stock and enjoy a beer or two.
With access to the very decent online schedule planner, and some good advise from a old colleague who’d been several times, I decided to go with the flow, plan day by day as it took my fancy and take the bits in between the official sessions as part of the experience.
Here’s a little bit of what I managed to see…
Lots of Wearable Technology
If there was one big theme, rather than one big thing, to come out of SXSW 2014 it was 'wearable tech’. Investors think so too having gone in big with deals involving Google Glass and Luxottica Intel and Basis Science and Facebook’s headline grabbing $2bn deal for Oculus Rift That deal had nothing to do with me having tried out a demo from London-based Inition, and saying “yes, It’s not bad that”.
As well as Facebook looking to Oculus to provide users with “unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life" there’s always the more immediate application of shoot ‘em up gaming. Passing through the SXSW Gaming Expo (an event worthy of its own massive space and enthusiastic crowd) I saw a demo of the Virtuix Omni - a rig that looks to take 'immersive experience' to the next level by adding a physical activity dimension to the VR headset. Not one for couch potato gamers.
The one piece of wearable tech that stood out for me though, for its simplicity and almost limitless applications, is the Nymi Authentication Wristband. It promises to break down the barriers between man and machine (without crossing the line into implanted technology) by removing the interruption of logging in or entering passwords. Anyone that uses the fingerprint recognition on iPhone 5 can start to get a sense of how liberating this might be across multiple devices and services.
And how long before our clothing is taking our biometic data and monitoring our health in real-time or how alert we are at the wheel of a car?
The Future of how we will make things
Made in The Future
Last year’s Next Big Thing was 3D Printing (a catchy way of saying custom one-off fabrication of things), with Cody Wilson even making the mainstream news for creating the world’s first ‘printed gun’. This year, slightly less controversially and hopefully more socially beneficial, '3D Printed Food’ continued the develop the theme, from the fun application of 3D printed Oreo cookies to the more serious application of efficiently transporting and reconstituting food where there is a human need.
On the theme of making, I ensured I attended Made in The Future. Joie Ito, Director of MIT Media Lab and Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO discussed 'how everyone from you to your grandma might design, make and consume products or experiences in the next 10 to 15 years.
I could listen to Joie talk all day. Particularly interesting were his thoughts on '3D Genetic Printing’ - and a time when we might see one-off custom manufacturing of modified genes for human use. His thoughts also covered the implications of this and the likelihood of it leading to a mass extinction event (to a room full of nervous laughs). Heavy!
The development of custom bio-manufacturing is already quite advanced, for example the research work into stretchable electronics and its use in monitoring and treating heart disease.
I was also fascinated by the experimental work at MIT exploring how digital and biological computing can work together in manufacturing and fabrication. Like the beautiful Silk Pavillion project.
SILK PAVILION from Mediated Matter Group on Vimeo.
Design that actually was ‘Rocket Science’
Building Next Generation User Experiences at NASA
So popular was this talk, (and so close to the start was I, due to a speed walk across Austin) that I missed the first 10 minutes. Persevering with the 1 in 1 out queue, I managed to squeeze in at the back and I’m glad I did.
The talk from Sam Hashemi and Steve Hellinius was humorous and insightful and looked at the challenges of implementing ’Next Generation User Experiences’ at NASA – an organisation literally relying on mission critical software that has been developed and evolved over many years. Their goal was to replace archaic systems with a 'Pinterest for Scientists’ by utilising open source technology, introducing modern web conventions, and collaborating directly with the mission control operators.
As the often overused phrase goes, non of what I heard was Rocket Science, but it was reassuring to hear that many of the approaches and open source software we utilise to overcome challenges in our own client work have been used by the team at NASA to reinvent their software.
There’s also an underlying philosophy to the design direction at NASA that both clients, designers and developers can surely appreciate. Software should be:
- Visual
- Inviting / collaborative
- Inventive
- Helpful in telling a story
An product of this philosophy is the brilliant work in visualising potential star systems from the data captured through The Kepler Space Telescope. Rocket Science!
Next-Gen Interfaces at NASA from Sam on Vimeo.
A healthy dose of optimism and ambition
10 Best Startups in Austin
This was my opportunity to see 10 of Austin’s ‘best startups’ pitch to a packed room of investors and observers.
- Cratejoy - www.cratejoy.com
- Mahana - www.getmahana.com
- NuHabitat - www.nuhabitat.com
- Spokefly - www.spokefly.com
- Railyard - www.railyard.com
- Aceable - www.aceable.com
- Loop & Tie - www.loopandtie.com
- Famigo - www.famigo.com
- Weeva - www.weeva.co
- Local Plant Source - www.localplantsource.com
Most have raised less than $1 million and are focused on acquiring enough customers to become profitable as their next milestone. It was interesting to see the different styles and approaches to pitching, with each pitcher having an investor advocate to introduce them to the crowd.
All were great pitches in one form or another, with interesting business ideas presented with passion. It was a worthwhile time spent to see how to pitch to investors and how to get across what they need to know in just 10 minutes. Definitely something that could be applied to my ‘day job’ and our agency Innovation Project.
If I was to invest, I’d have put my money on what might be perceived the least sexy business. B2B supply of plants with Local Plant Source.
What was sexy about this tech was something that is often overlooked. Simplicity, identifying a niche, expertise in the sector and solving a genuine problem… not to mention a scalable revenue model.
Creative Coding
Art + Design with Cinder
Animated words and pictures behind touch-sensitive glass is no longer enough to amaze digital natives. Now more than ever, digital installations and other interactive experiences require inspired technological creativity in concert with conceptual creativity.
This session demonstrated the possibilities of ‘creative coding’ and the magic that can happen when blurring the lines between computer science and art. It also linked it nicely with the wider theme of wearable tech, with coders now having greater access to new input devices such as Microsoft Kinect, Oculus Rift, Leap Motion, and the NeuroSky Mindwave brain wave reader.
2013 US Open Fan Experience from Red Paper Heart on Vimeo.
The presentation also highlighted the enormity of modern large scale interactive projects, with the job titles and credits on such productions now closely resembling hollywood movies - an opportunity and challenge for any agency looking to grow their digital and development team.
I couldn’t decide whether or not this session crossed the line into agency pitch, but the work on display was beautiful, inspiring and motivating and the Cinder coding framework that has been developed is released as open source - so hats off to Keith Butters of Barbarian Group, and Toby Bordeaux of Control Group for driving this project.
Was it worth it?
So SXSW might be a circus, a tech silo, increasingly influenced by corporate excess, but to me it’s more than the conference, the individual talks, the parties, free beer and Mageritas. It’s more about the stuff you can’t plan for; the chance meetings, the discussions, taking time to look outside of your day job, absorbing ‘new things’ or just ‘different things’ – and that absolutely does contribute to being better at your day job.
South By South West (SXSW) was so much greater then the sum of its parts.
As they say in Austin, SXSW was Awesome.
