SXSW 2018 Wrap-Up: Innovation and New Ideas

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South by Southwest was an incredible experience, and I’m really glad to have participated. Before the program, I didn’t quite know what to expect at SXSW Interactive, but I knew there would be many interesting speakers. Students who participated in the program last year said it was an incredible experience, and I knew I wanted to be a part of it also. Participating in SXTXState was an amazing experience and I’m really grateful to have had the opportunity to participate.

The panels and panelists were incredibly inspiring. Every panel that I attended was centered around something “new” or innovations in the speakers’ industries. These panelists were riding the wave of change and trying new things, or commenting about changes that their industry were facing and what they were doing to keep up.

The first panel that I attended at SXSW Interactive, was a perfect example of this. NASA has wanted to send a probe to the sun for 60 years, and for the past decade, their scientists have been hard at work building the Parker Solar Probe which will set out on its journey this summer.

The last panel that I attended on my first day at SXSW Interactive was similarly inspiring. Three journalists,Β Natalie Hansen, Otto Stangvik and HΓ₯kon HΓΈydal, from the Norwegian news magazine Verdens Gang, combined coding, data-analysis and journalism on the dark net (Tor network), to uncover the identities of two major runners of a child abuse network and track international police operations aimed at taking them and similar abusive networks down. Their investigation led them to police operations in Australia, France and the United States, and ultimately the two individuals responsible for running the network they were following were arrested. This panel was a different look at how coding and data-analysis could be combined with journalism to solve important issues.

One of my favorite panels that I attended came at the end of my second day at SXSW and was called, Design Technologists: Today’s Dev / Design Hybrid, and the panel title perfectly describes the panel. Two speakers from HomeAway’s design team, Michael Daross and Joie Chung, spoke about this new emerging role that they described as the missing link between UX and front-end engineering. When it came time for questions, many attendees were really excited about the idea of having a role like this in their company. I had no idea a position like this existed and I was really excited about it as well. For myself, I would be interested in possibly exploring a career as a Design Technologist after graduating.

Many panels that I attended also spoke about experimenting with VR, and after attending the Virtual Cinema, I found that this new technology was being explored across a variety of industries from music to comic books to educational to gaming. Virtual Reality will be the next big innovation, I think, and it will be exciting to see how it keeps evolving.

One of the most fun panels was a questions and answers sit-down with Elon Musk. He spoke about exciting ideas he has for his companies Space X and The Boring Company. With Space X, Musk wants to help humanity get to Mars and he spoke about what life on mars would be like and what society would look like. For the Boring Company, while Musk downplayed it’s role in his business operations, it’s still looking to revolutionize transportation between cities.

SXSW was amazing. Every panel felt like I was on the edge of people and companies trying new things and innovating their industries, and it was great to be a part of that. Read more about some of the panels I attended. I’m already planning to attend next year. While the badge price might be a bit steep, I learned that SXSW gives free badges to volunteers and you can work your volunteer hours anytime during the festival, so that might be something I’m exploring for next year and I would highly recommend for anyone else wanting to attend but for whom the badge price might be a barrier. Regardless, I look forward to attending again in the future!

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