On 6 March 2020, the city of Austin cancelled the South by Southwest festival just 7 days before the event was due to open, making it one of the most notable early casualties of the pandemic. Catastrophic for the festival organisers and the city, it also robbed 200,000 attendees of the eclectic mix of stimulus that the SXSW festival serves up across its three main tracks, so it was fabulous to see it back in full swing this year. Whilst music and film provide the entertainment, the conference, with its diverse programme encompassing technology, health, brand, design, social media, culture and climate change to name a few, provides the discussion and ideas. It is a rare and welcome festival of progressive thinking. Here’s a snapshot of this year’s SXSW.
Society and culture
A strong theme of discussion at this year’s conference centred around how we respond to societal changes. The Atlantic magazine hosted an inspiring series of “The Future of…” talks including one on democracy featuring the passionate former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. Echoing many themes throughout the conference, Nancy urged us to reclaim a greater sense of community in politics and society and referenced a lesser used part of JFK’s famous “Ask not what your country can do for you” inauguration speech of 1961 when he asked of “citizens of the world… ask what together we can do for the freedom of man”.
AI
With developments in generative AI front of mind for many attendees, it was no surprise that the keynote with OpenAI President and Co-founder, Greg Brockman was the most over-subscribed sessions. Amongst insights into ChatGPT’s development, Greg outlined a future where we might all be using the tool as a “manager”, asking it to deliver complex tasks on our behalf and “giving everyone a promotion”
Providing a forward-looking view, Amy Webb of the Future Today Institute, in her Emerging Tech session, asked the question about how “freaked out” should we be. Pouring no water on the fire, she outlined two paths for AI over the next 10 years, giving only a 20% chance of it following the “optimistic” path where freely available AI tools make our lives easier and more seamless with providers operating in a transparent way for the good of all. The immediate postscript of the open letter penned by a range of industry leaders including Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk to pause the rapid pace of AI development, clearly echoes that concern. Watch this fast-moving space!
Healthcare
One of the most interesting sessions in the Health & Medtech track took the subject, The Digital Patient – Healthcare’s Next Frontier. The title begs the question why is it not the “now frontier” given the scale of digital transformation in so many other industries. Caroline Chung, Chief Data Officer of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston provided some answers. Aside from issue of digital adoption of elderly patients, she cited challenges of data privacy, data ‘ownership” and lack of system interoperability as key challenges to overcome before we achieve effective two-way digital healthcare. She also highlighted the difficulty in gathering personalised, contextual healthcare data which she recognised as being vital to accurate diagnoses.
One success story shared at a lively panel discussion on diabetes, concerned the growth of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). Here, a combination of developing technology, political lobbying to generate insurance reimbursement status and showbiz profile in the form of Nick Jonas and his hugely popular Beyond Type1 online diabetes community, have helped transform the lives of people with diabetes. Diabetes can be an unglamorous subject, but a bit of showbiz stardust does wonders for its “brand”.
Design
SXSW tends to provide a different take on the subject of design and this year was no exception. The brilliant John Maeda, Vice President of Design and Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft and computer scientist-turned-designer renaissance man, spent a compelling hour unpacking his history and relationship with design, creative thinking and the progression towards what he called “computational design”, where we combine creativity with machine learning. With AI asking all sorts of questions about the future, it was exciting to consider how important creativity will continue to be. With this in mind, amongst many thought-provoking ideas, one favourite was a campaign to put A (for Art) into “STEM”. Can we look forward to a STEAM powered future…? John’s Design in Tech report is well worth a look.
Work and business
Visitors looking for inspiration to develop their careers or their business need not look far at SXSW.
The irrepressible Kathryn Finney is founder of Genius Guild venture capital firm that invests in high growth companies using innovation to build, grow and promote healthy communities and environments. Her recent book, Build the Damn Thing, is both a rallying cry and a guide for founders from from black and under-resourced communities. It’s worth a read!
The always-interesting Fast Company Grill hosted Everett Taylor, Kickstarter CEO and a strong candidate for coolest guy at SXSW. As well as outlining his thoughts on the future of crowdfunding, Everett shared a little of his personal career journey. Having risen to CMO at Artsy (“Art saved my life!”), he gave some great advice on achievement and business progression. Noting that it’s unusual for CMOs (rather than COOs or CFOs) to rise to CEO his philosophy is: “if you are a great performer and you are driving value, you can have an honest conversation about progression”.
Climate and sustainability
Sustainability featured in the SXSW Innovation awards with two paint-based winners.
The World’s Whitest Paint, developed at Purdue University is comprised of barium sulphate nanoparticles reflecting 98% of sunlight. Applied to aircraft, cars and buildings, it has the capability to keep interiors cooler and reduce the need for air conditioning. Recent developments have reduced the required paint thickness from 400 to 150 microns, greatly increasing its range of applications.
At street level, roofing and waterproofing specialist GAF’s community project in Pacoima neighbourhood of Los Angeles gained deserved recognition as Best in Show. Their Beat the Heat by Cooling Streets initiative explored how cities can address urban heat at a community-wide level. Using GAF’s Streetbond pavement coating, the project achieved reductions of 8-14 degrees as well as neighbourhood revitalisation and community engagement.
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