SXSW Interactive 2015 Recap

SXSW Interactive 2015A Recap for the Knomatic Team

Session Take Aways

Major Themes

Photos & Videos

Life in the Oasis

“Ready Player One” envisioned as ‘what if Willy Wonka made video games instead of chocolate?’

Also inspired by “Man on a Mission” documentary on Netflix.

- Ernest Cline

“Video games fill our hunter gather needs we spent centuries perfecting but are no longer necessary.”

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Digital ShiftTomorrow’s Relationships & Ideals

Digital Shift Take Aways

Tethered Self -> More Immersive Experiences -> Manicured Self

Creativity + Nature (or VR?) + Connection = Happiness

What happens when everyone is capable of perfection?

Ethical challenges will outweigh technical challenges

Steve CasePardon the Disruption: Entrepreneurship in Third Wave of the Internet

History of AOLAOL originally founded in 1985; not legal for consumers to connect to “internet” until 7 yrs later.

AOL was originally AppleLink until Apple yanked the licensing last minute.

The 3 Waves of the Internet1985 - 2000: focused on infrastructure; Cisco, Netscape, AOL, etc. Getting plumbing in place.

2000 - 2015: not focused on building the internet, focused on building on top of the internet. Google, Facebook, Twitter.

2015 - 2030: will focus more on integrating internet into daily life; will disrupt healthcare, education, energy & food industries.

4 Trends in Third Wave

Capital for All

Strategic Partnerships Reemerge

Social Enterprises or Impact Investing; Purpose + Profits; B-Corps

Entrepreneurship goes both regional & global

Biz StoneCreativity & Redefining Success

Biz Stone on Creativity

Super.me app, pivoted from Jelly

Empathy & feeling based communication

Emotional investment in what you’re working on

– Biz Stone

“If you want to build a platform capable of toppling a despotic regime, it also has to support fart jokes.”

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@garyvee vs Jack WelchWhat It Really Takes To Win in Business

@garyvee vs Jack WelchSelf Awareness is critical

Can’t judge businesses based on numbers; also must have cultural fit

The generosity gene is the one thing you should look for in a boss

Scale of new businesses in 2 - 3 years much larger; examples of Uber & Snapchat

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Consumer DataThe Good, the Bad, and the Not-So-Ugly

Consumer Data

Consumer Needs // Business Needs // Technical Capabilities

Share Early & Often with Stakeholders within your business

Customization vs Personalization: personalization is driven by behavior, not settings

Consumer Data

Avoiding Being Creepy

Target Predicting Pregnancy

Amazon’s Anticipatory Shipping

Hello Barbie Wi-Fi Connected Doll

TiVo knows what you’ll watch, and when…but doesn’t necessarily tell you

– Margret Schmidt

“I don’t think I should own a watch that costs more than the resale value of my car.”

Phil LibinBe Epic: The Art of Bold Decision Making

Evolution of a Company

Scissors: scrappy startups

Rocks: mid-sized companies

Papers: giant, established companies

Epic InsightsWhen you do a pros/cons evaluation, you typically take the least bad option, not really focusing on positives

When thinking strategically, you need to choose the option that has the best upside

Focus on upsides, the positive outcomes if “we don’t screw this up”

Saying no to stuff you don’t want to do isn’t focus. Focus is saying no to things that you would want to do.

Bold Lessons

Avoid the Rocks: don’t go into a market that has 3 to 4 rocks already in it

Focus: be “impressive” at first; exert “sustained pressure” once you reach rock phase

What if it’s Great: focus on the upside, not the downside

Martine RothblattAI, Immortality & the Future of Selves

Transhumanism

Mind Clones

Identity Will Transcend Your Body

Disagreements with Your Mind Clones; Divorce from Clones; Voting Rights for Clones

More Transhumanism

Parallels between mind clones & illegal aliens

Don’t want to create a slave vs free construct between cyber beings & physical beings

New industry for cyber psychiatry

Lifenaut website available to create/preserve your own mind file

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Your Connected WorldWhat did you sign up for? Quirky CEO, Ben Kaufman

Connected WorldImportance of Retail Education

Smart vs Connected

Products who “think” about their owners (Ex: toothpaste)

Thread protocol for simplifying Zigbee

Change UI based upon home or away

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Design & Tech Trends 2015John Maeda, KPCB

Design Focused CompaniesMajority of designers consider themselves self-taught

Ratio of designers to engineers in new reality is 1:4 to 1:5

Design for the “after wow”; the long term wow based on earning your user’s confidence

MobileHow To Build Beyond the Phone

Beyond MobileNatural language processing will play an increasingly important role

Importance of haptic/taptic communication, especially for illiterate

Very few future wearables will have their own screen or own UI

Importance of mobile payments & extinction of paper money to ensure accuracy in tax collections; Greece may be 1st mover

Beyond MobileAdvantages in designing for smallest screen first, then scaling up from there

Increasing need for emotional context to communications; Emoji have attempted to fill this gap

Dumb Screens will proliferate, on which smart devices will “project” data that may be viewed on watches today

API Layer between the various services really becomes the most important part

Magic Leap Retinal Projection

https://youtu.be/kPMHcanq0xM

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How Innovation HappensEric Schmidt, Megan Smith, Walter Isaacson

Keys for US InnovationBest jobs of the future will be those that combine the best of humans with the best of computers

Focus on digital service to country

Must encourage creation of entrepreneurs

Fixing female enrollment in Comp Sci (was 34% in ’85, only 13% in ’15)

Universal broadband the key to the knowledge economy

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A Look Inside DARPADan Kaufman, Director of DARPA’s Information Innovation Office

A Look Inside DARPA

Last 10 years have been decade of data; next 10 will be decade of biology

Capturing rat brain tissue to transfer learning; digital intermediary also works

Planet X framework for cyber warriors to be extremely effective even if they don’t know how it all works

A Look Inside DARPACode Diversity: make software slightly different per instance to make it more resistant to virus attacks

Don’t worry about replicating a human with a computer; instead create one that works with a human to accomplish together what neither could independently

Value in asking your AI “Why?”

Example of getting non-snipers to shoot like snipers when similar brain activity states are achieved

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Moonshots & RealityAstro Teller, Director Google[x]

MoonshotsHuge Problem + Radical Solution + Breakthrough Technology = Google[x]

Embracing Failure

Building Social Norms via Glass Explorer Pgm

Project Wing Flying Delivery Airframe

MoonshotsProject Makani Airborne Wind Turbines

For self-driving cars, autonomous tech was “done” 3 years ago

Had to go back to drawing board because humans were not reliable backup

Key Take AwaysMajor Trends at SXSW Interactive 2015

SXSW 2015Meerkat is everywhere

Ethics matter more than ever

Human needs rarely change; just the tools

For better or worse, government will become increasingly involved in technology

Photos & VideosAustin through Juston’s iPhone 6