I’m sitting in a darkened theater watching a comedy show. The room seats 90 people. It’s a late show, and I only stayed out because there’s a writer from The Daily Show performing. Then the host comes out and says, “We have a very special guest with us tonight…Mr. Judd Apatow.” That’s right, the director behind mega-hits like the 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up came out to do a set for 90 people. And he killed.
And that is SXSW in a nutshell. The most insane experiences come at you seemingly out of nowhere. When you embrace the conference, you can have some absolutely magical moments.
One of the panels I was the most excited about seeing was Lawrence Lessig talking about the Mayday PAC, an organization designed to help campaign finance reform. During the sparsely attended address, Lessig announced Version 2 of Mayday, as Version 1 was not very successful in the 2014 election in moving campaign finance reform forward. Afterwards, I was able to interview Lessig, which is certainly the biggest interview of my life. Lessig reminded me a lot of Edward Snowden’s keynote from last year. It was an incredibly important issue that needs the focus and energy of people to change a broken system.
I, once again, visited the Mashable House and had an absolute blast. Instead of Miley’s wrecking ball, visitors got to climb atop Katy Perry’s majestic lion from her performance at the Superbowl. There were also emoji temporary tattoos, booths for Pied Piper and Hooli (from HBO’s Silicon Valley), and a Mastercard elevator-pitch elevator. Hooli even had a huge array of cameras set up to take a Matrix style image where the person being photographed was encircled and an image was produced showing off the scene from a huge swath of angles. If that’s confusing, just watch the Instagram video embedded below.
One of the coolest moments of SXSW for me was when I saw Michelle K. Lee sworn in as the first female Director of the United States Patent Office. Getting to see anyone sworn in would’ve been exciting, but hearing Lee talk about the need for more women in science and tech was inspiring. And then to see her sworn in as the first woman in this position was remarkable.
The coolest panel I saw at SXSW, however, was the Storytelling With The New Screens panel. Three members of the USC Annenberg Lab discussed new and fascinating ways to tell stories. They talked about hands-on storytelling devices, like the 21st century Teddy Ruxpin Winklebean toys that pair with a smartphone to tell children stories that they interact with.
The panelists also discussed devices like Oculus Rift and other VR simulators that will change the way stories are told. Imagine using a wearable to watch a movie with your parents that you saw years ago, but they’re just getting around to seeing. You could turn on the director’s commentary on your wearable so that you can have asymmetrical, but synchronous viewing experiences. This same technology could be used to load subtitles for a film still in theaters for only the person that needed subtitles using their Google Glass or another wearable.
What was particularly mindblowing was when Geoffrey Long and Francesca Smith discussed augmented reality ways of storytelling.
“The real new screen is no screen at all.” @FrancescaMSmith #NewScreens #SXSW #SXTXState
— Jordon Brown (@THEJordonBrown) March 15, 2015
Imagine tours of London that capitalize on Harry Potter with interactive displays that augment your perception of reality. The world of Minority Report is coming, and that impact on storytelling will be massive. Epcot has already embraced this augmented reality by having children decode puzzles as they travel the globe and once they unlock the secrets, the environment responds to them and directs them on their way.
“You can start collapsing the distance between reality and fiction.” @geoffreylong #NewScreens #SXSW #SXTXState
— Jordon Brown (@THEJordonBrown) March 15, 2015
This is my second year at SXSWi. A year ago I wrote that “I can’t imagine not going to SXSW from here on out” and that is just as true today. SXSW is such a surreal experience, it’s difficult to give a full recap to people that haven’t been. Being at SXSW is like drowning in a sea of awesome. It’s incredibly overwhelming, and the days are long and difficult, and your brain becomes mush by Tuesday after trying to process so much information, but I wouldn’t trade that feeling for the world. The nerd is strong in this one, and I love every second of it.