Simply put, SXSW was an amazing experience and I now hope to return every year. I attended a number of panels covering workplace trends, futuristic planning, blockchain technology, an ADP lounge with interactive discovery tools, some marketing and journalism sessions and even watched Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez share her ideas in governance.

Through all the sessions there was one common thread: empathy. As Michael Ventura of SubRosa said in his preview, empathy is not simply about being nice, though that is a component. Empathy is finding out from where the other person in each dialogue is speaking from, and responding on their frequency.

In the workplace, empathy among coworkers and between the boss-employee relationship creates a cohesive, inclusive and diverse workforce that not only gets the job done, but everyone is happy to do it. With empathy, diversity is welcomed and alternate perspectives share space. Problems get solved without strife and solutions are found that help a wide range of customers.

Empathy with the customer-base leads to designing products that customers not only want to use, but are happy to do so. It is often called audience-centric design, but it is the first step in making a product or providing a service people want to use. In the case of BenevolentAI, the dedication to finding medical treatments as quickly as possible is a very pure form of having a focus on their audience.

Even in the debates about blockchain, the issue was phrased in the most basic terms by Naveen Jain of Tari: “Start with something that solves a problem for somebody.”