Design and Development

An Interview With Yik Yak's Founders

SXSW Interactive saw Yik Yak founders Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington sitting down Monday with Carmel DeAmicis of GigaOm for what DeAmicis called a rare interview. This is the first SXSW experience for both founders, who related that a year ago they were still working furiously on the app and probably wouldn’t have believed they would […]

Engines, Rockets, and Engineers

To fly humans to Mars we will need a very big rocket to lift the hardware needed to live on another planet for several months before heading home. The planned habitat will likely be the same size a two-story house. This means the rocket will be bigger than the mighty Saturn V of the Apollo […]

BIG Health Data & HIPAA

When trying to understand the many different view points on Health data being at a place like SXSW is very helpful. The panel Why HIPAA Won’t Save You covered a verity of topics ranging from the patients, the health care companies to the scientific researchers who will use this data. How to keep everyone’s health […]

Physics Education in Gaming

The Kerbal Space Academy uses the  game Kerbal Space Program and Twitch TV to inspire creativity and give a basic knowledge of physics. Their goal is to encourage the gaming community to be curious and learn. Here at the gaming expo at SXSW there are many unique takes on how to present games and what […]

Well Designed: Creating Empathy-Driven Products

“Where do great products come from?” This was one of the first questions Jon Kolko, the Founder and Director of the Austin Center for Design and Vice President of Consumer Design at Blackboard, asked the audience at his Friday-morning SXSW Interactive panel, Well-Designed: Creating Empathy Driven Products. “Is it vision?  Process?  Or just hard work?” He continued […]

Young Astronomers & JWST

At SXSW gaming expo NASA contractor Northrop Grumman has some young University of Texas Astronomy post docs and undergrads talking about the new James Webb Space Telescope. The JWST is launching in  2018 and will work with Hubble in our investigation of the cosmos. Eventually taking over Hubble’s role. Testing is going on right now […]