The 4-minute SXSW
Top startup trends & breakfast tacos from a week of Panels, Pop-ups, Parties and Pitch sessions
Top startup trends & breakfast tacos from a week of Panels, Pop-ups, Parties, and Pitch sessions
I’d been standing in line for an hour and was starting to lose sensation in my feet. The line to get into the MashBash was barely moving. A reported 14,000 people had RSVP’d. My iPhone battery was on its last legs, and the glow-stick necklaces being passed around offered little consolation. I began to wonder, was this really worth it?
You’ve probably heard of SXSW, the annual festival in Austin for tech, media, film and music. On one level, SXSW Interactive is a technology conference. On another level, it’s a giant Spring Break for nerds. And on even closer inspection, it’s a sprawling mass of people scurrying around to charge their phones and hail Uber pedicabs while munching breakfast tacos and streaming it all on Meerkat.
The all-important badge. Don’t leave home without it
An estimated 30,000 people converged on Austin for the 5-day festival. There were over 800 featured sessions, hundreds of startup booths handing out swag and thousands of people waiting in line to get into the Mash Bash.
Austin Convention Center, ground zero for the techie masses
Between panels, speakers and late nights partying (“networking”), the sheer volume of people and information at the event can be overwhelming. And everyone knows millennials have limited attention spans. With apologies to Tim Ferris, 4 hours is just too long.
So if you weren’t able to be in Austin for SXSW Interactive, here’s the 4-minute recap.
“If your dream only includes you, it’s too small.” — @AVAETC, Ava DuVernay, Director of Selma
Geoff Ling of DARPA on the new generation of brain-controlled prosthetic limbs
HealthTech
Key trends transforming healthcare access, delivery and quality:
Doctor home visits on-demand, e.g. Pager
Electronic health records facilitating new modes of patient care
Physician/ Scientist data sharing — ChartRequest, ResearchGate, Benchly
Crowdsourcing health info — e.g. CureCrowd
Home-based cognitive testing — NeuroPace, Lumos Labs, Neuronetrix brain scanner
Biosensors linked to mobile notifications, e.g. pill bottle tracker
DARPA developing new brain-activated prosthetic limbs for amputees
Cloning pigs for “unlimited” supply of transplantable organs — United Therapeutics
Wearables / fitness trackers — Fitbit, Apple Watch
“The story of wearables is digitizing physical space and then changing the experience we have in the analog world” — @shawndubravac
“In next 5 years, AI will go from category to layer — predictive intelligence embedded in every app, understanding intent. Rote learning will go away — you’ll have an encyclopedia attached to your head.”
“The best companies have a data analytics person who reports directly to the CEO” -@bgurley
Waiting in the endless line for the MashBash
Analytics
New approaches to collecting and analyzing huge amounts of data:
Big data & predictive analytics — everything can be measured, optimized
Visual data analytics to drive decisions — e.g. Palantir, Quid
Cloud computing, virtualization — Amazon Web Services
Use cases of AI: e.g. Wearables & smart devices gathering data to build better predictive algorithms
“Our brains are adapting to our new technological environment. Instead of focusing on long-term memory, our brain is changing connections to focus on information at hand, stimulus at the moment — we’re using our brain for greater processing in the moment.” — @RaashiBhalla
ImageThink draws up pretty cartoons for each major session, this one on Food Tech with David Chang
EdTech
Using technology to enhance education quality and access:
Gamification of learning — e.g. ClassCraft
Continuing education — TED, Coursera, Skillshare, EdX
Job-training programs for incarcerated & military — Pigeonly
“The future of marketing is philanthropy. Especially young people — they’re attracted to meaning. If there’s 2 sodas to choose from, and they know one helps children get fed in some developing nation, they’ll choose that one.” -Biz Stone
eCommerce
Next-generation tools to power online transactions:
Cryptocurrency — Bitcoin, applications & regulation
Curation of ecommerce, e.g. Scratch, Spring
Box-of-the-month clubs — BirchBox, BarkBox, etc
Curation of local experiences, e.g. SideTour, Living Social
“We approached University of Georgia and said, ‘Hey, there’s this really cool app called Yik Yak and everyone at Georgia Tech is using it. Why aren’t you guys using it?’” — @TheDrollest
Jay Pharaoh comedy show with Vanessa Bayer, Eliot Glazer and Two Fresh
“Yes, Facebook is addictive: Getting likes activates the same center in your brain as smoking a cigarette” — @RaashiBhalla
#Truth
Social
Connecting with people virtually has never been easier (or more confusing):
Geofenced bulletin boards — Secret, Whisper, YikYak
Ephemeral media sharing — SnapChat, Confide
Social commerce, e.g. Olapic, Soldsie
Mobile dating apps / “social discovery” — Tinder, Happn, MeetMe, Zoosk
Rallying online activism to support sociopolitical change — Princess Reema Bint Bandar Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, Al Gore on climate change
“You have to start with fun. If you want to build a platform capable of toppling a despotic regime, it also has to support fart jokes.” — Biz Stone
Biz Stone on Jelly, Super, Twitter and the importance of personal meaning and social impact for entrepreneurs
Media
Live streaming — Meerkat, the breakout app of SXSW 2015, lets users live stream anything they see and share it with their Twitter following — the app amassed 120,000 users within two weeks after launch
Stre.am, another live streaming app, also got a lot of play
New media platforms with fancy Content Management Systems — e.g. BuzzFeed, Vox, Vice Media
Curation of media content, e.g. Thrillist / Daily Candy
Content marketing — NewsCred, Contently, Percolate
Millennials consuming bite-sized content on the go — 3-minute videos from BuzzFeed
Meerkat “leaderboard” on day 3
“Monetize Your #SxSW Experience by AirBnBing Your Brain” — @odannyboy
On-Demand Economy
Aka, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free:
Uber / TaskRabbit of X — Washio, Handy, Pager docs on demand
Sharing economy — Airbnb of Y, Sidecar, Breather
Support platforms for Airbnb hosts, e.g. Peers.org
Support platforms for on-demand workers, e.g. Tabby, tax mgmt s/w for 1099 Uber drivers
GPS — location is now a layer, not a feature — part of any app
Most interesting man in the world loves SXSW
Local
Apps for community info exchange, e.g. NextDoor
Platforms to support local government — e.g. Seamless Docs
Local architecture — Google Genie / FLUX — s/w for construction & architecture to design buildings around community needs. $8 T a year industry, still mostly artisanal — had to create s/w ecosystem
Dozens of people waited in line to get their picture taken with Grumpy Cat. This one was made entirely from bacon
“Millennials don’t watch linear TV, they watch chunks on the go — mobile is their ‘first screen’”
“We call it ‘Continuous Partial Attention’ — nobody pays full attention to anything anymore”— @paulrholland
Entertainment
Aka, “How do I get funding for my new web series?”
Virtual Reality — Oculus, Samsung, VRSE
TV: Rise of Web TV, Netflix / Amazon OTT services, Vimeo, “High Maintenance”
Twitter / Instagram campaigns driving success of shows like Scandal, Empire
Online communities for TV/ film development, e.g. Slated, Black List, Tracking Board
Podcasting & curated audio content — Gimlet Media, Clammr
CrowdFunding — niche versions of Indiegogo / Kickstarter, e.g. TapTape for record labels
Grumpy Cat face
“Anyone who’s tried to meditate knows that your brain is like a big drunk monkey. Tech has advanced beyond our abilities to manage it.” — @paulrholland
Lifestyle
Adult “play” — UCB, Camp Grounded, Club Getaway, Soul.camp
Fashion Tech, e.g. ClosetSpace, StyleBook, Glamsquad
Millennials / Brooklyn hipsters care more about experiences than ownership — less desire to own a house or car
Yahoo lounge for Harmontown podcast & “Community” season 6 premiere
“Every company will try to out-Siri Siri until we have cyberconsciousnes. It will be like water that rises and rises, and before we know it we’ll be in an ocean of cyberconsciousnes…this will create the greatest mirror humanity has ever developed to understand ourselves.” — Martine Rothblatt
“Google ditched the steering wheel because people are unreliable” — @astroteller
Martine Rothblatt, highest-paid US female executive, cyberconsciousness visionary
Hardware Tech
Robotics — for disaster relief, scientific exploration, automated delivery of goods
3D printing — toys, games, artwork, appliances, artificial limbs
Drones — delivery, surveillance, Google Project Wing
Driverless cars — Google X, Tesla
Alternative energy — solar, wind, Project Makani
Beacons — micro-location data for brands to tap into
Internet of Things (“IoT” — more than 70 sessions at SXSW made reference to this term) — Dweet.io, Nest, Canary all-in-one smart home monitoring system
“The more bumps and scrapes you get when you get out in the world, the better. If you’re not failing at least some of the time, you could be learning faster” — @astroteller
“SXSW: It’s all about Meerkat and BBQ.” — @GuyKawasaki