2016

Augmented reality and the future of retail

One theme of SXSW both this year and last has been augmented and virtual reality. But while companies, organizations and individuals may want to harness the power of this technology, often they don’t know where to start. At the 9:30am Saturday SXSW Interactive presentation “More than Mobile: Augmenting Today’s Retail Reality,” Annie Weinberger provided several […]

Three Takeaways From Obama's Keynote

There was a fervor in the air on the first day of SXSW Interactive. Obama was appearing. Everybody knew this was big. Hugh Forrest even suggested that it might be the biggest thing to have ever happened at the conference. The lucky ticket-winners, which I thankfully count myself among, waited in line for hours. Eager audience […]

Casey Gerald preaches an inspiring Gospel of Doubt

On the opening day of SXSW Interactive, Casey Gerald found himself in the unenviable position of delivering a speech that was the opening act for President Obama’s keynote. No doubt, this was a prestigious position to be in, but it cannot have been easy to speak to a house packed with people who had just […]

Fluidity and Honesty: Gen Z and Identity in 2025

As a millennial, I’ve never thought much about Gen Z. Unfortunately for marketers, many brands haven’t thought much about Gen Z either, and Jaclyn Suzuki, Creative Director at Ziba Design thinks that’s a grave mistake. Gen Z today includes 5 to 20-year-olds, born between 1995 and 2010. 83 million people in the US are Gen Z and they have […]

Comedy Journalism: Why It's Here To Stay

Keli Dailey is at SXSW to tell us comedy journalism is real journalism. At her SXSW Interactive panel “Comedy is the New Journalism,” Dailey took the audience through several comedy news clips, why they’re relevant as well as providing some comedy herself. She started with a few quips about Jon Stewart and his legacy (“Stewart’s […]

Can computers recognize beauty in photographs?

What makes the beautiful photo? While there’s no such thing as a perfect photo, programmers are working on developing machines that can choose aesthetically pleasing photos. This is the topic of the panel “The Photographer’s Lens: How Do We Define Beauty?” On the panel were Danielle Strle, the director of culture and trends at Tumblr; […]

What You Need to Know About Doing Business in Cuba

Having an International Relations undergraduate degree and having traveled to many cities abroad this panel seemed very much relevant to my personal and academic life. There have been shifts in U.S. policy recently and Cuba has presented an opportunity for U.S.  companies to expand revenues, stimulate the economy for the good of the Cuban people […]