SXSW 2018: That’s a Wrap

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Wow, SXSW was a blur of activity once again. I spent 11 days in the Convention Center, starting on March 7 with my talk on Is Your Curriculum Digital Enough?, going through Interactive with these fantastic students and wrapping things up with some Music panels and shows.

Here are a few of the main takeaways I saw in attending SXSW this year.

Social engagement was an underlying message throughout the conference. Engagement requires a different kind of strategy and many organizations don’t understand how important it is. It’s not just your message going out. What are people saying about you and how can you encourage that? I went to a great panel by Pandora/Next Big Sound personnel on Music and Data that looked at social mentions divided by followers. That simple formula predicted where an artist was on their career curve. I think all organizations could benefit from this type of analysis.

Brian Solis SXSW

 

VR/AR are mainstream now. There were so many exhibits and panels about VR in every area. I particularly loved Nonny de la Peña’s talk about her groundbreaking VR work in journalism. She really gets the empathy angle.

 

Apple seems to be all-in on AR and handheld devices, according to the talk by Eddy Cue. This was a great interview, a rare chance to hear directly from an Apple exec.

 

AI and Machine Learning:  We better understand this and figure it out. It is going to affect every kind of content. We need to be training people in conversational design to be able to better manage bot conversations. There will be a lot of content being created by bots, news stories, songs, videos. There will be benefits and ethical challenges.

 

Blockchain: There is tons of potential for this outside of currency. It can be a way to make all kinds of data more open, transparent and reliable.

 

The biggest disappointment was Susan Wojcicki, YouTube CEO. Her comments were superficial and her answer regarding the “male-dominated” tech industry was tone deaf. While she might have “worked hard” and been “persistent” in her own career, there are many gender-related problems in tech culture that a CEO should be prepared to discuss and address.

SXSW continues to converge. I personally think it is at the point where it just needs to be one big digital conference. The moves to provide programming later in the week on VR and Journalism and to have panels on emerging issues in Music really makes it all run together. I really think Music people would benefit from attending Interactive proper, as it is still the place with the most cutting-edge insight.

I love SXSW. Where else can you see Priscilla Presley,in a relatively small room, talk about a new movie about Elvis, go down the hall a few feet and listen to legend Nile Rodgers talk about his career and working with David Bowie, Madonna and more and then drop in a talk with musical idol Kim Deal? It’s magical.

 

I’m really proud of what this group of students created and learned during SXSW. This group had a particularly good “work-hard-play-hard” mindset, evidenced by the spaces they carved out to open their laptops and get down to business. There were some fantastic interviews, like Megan Boyle’s walk-and-talk with Senate hopeful Beto O’Rourke and Steffanie Agnew’s post on the Virtual Cinema. They had a very extensive and well thought out social engagement strategy. It is gratifying to see students working with the topics and techniques being discussed at SXSW. And it is always great to see the students go from newb to excited attendee to full fledged SXSW community member in just a few days. They are working on panel proposals for next year now.

Stay tuned for some Music coverage on my onthatnote.com site.

Kudos to the SXSW staff for once again pulling together the most progressive thinkers of the moment. I am impressed with their ability to continually grow and change this event. Until 2019, ya’ll!!!

Megan interviews Beto O'Rourke

Students working

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