The best, and scariest, bits from my 7th trip to South By Southwest

One of the most joyous things about running an independent business is that no one decides how you spend your money but you. And at Joint we relish being free to spend the money we earn on things that inspire and educate the people who work here.

One such thing is our annual trip to the South By Southwest Interactive festival, in Austin, Texas.

For a creative business such as ours, obsessed with solving our clients’ business problems in innovative ways, spending a week immersed in the future is an exceptionally good investment of time and resources.

So, this March, 20 Jointers flew to Austin and shacked up in a bunch of Airstream trailers ready to learn and be inspired together.

There was only one golden rule: Spend time on things you know nothing about. There are plenty of case studies on digital marketing, social media and social video campaigns, but they’re ultimately empty experiences as we’ll tend to know at least as much, if not more than the speakers.

With that in mind here are a few of Joint’s joint highlights from our sixth trip to SXSW.

There’s always a underlying theme at South By, sometimes subtextual, sometimes overt. This year the shock of Harvey Weinstein, not to mention Silicon Valley’s own issues with sexism and lack of diversity, as exemplified by last year’s Uber and Google scandals, was palpable. It lead to some really positive conversations around creating a more diverse, equal and decent working environment, and more amazing female speakers on stage than ever before.

One such speaker, and a favourite of many Jointers, was Belgian psychotherapist Esther Perel. She explored the evolution of human relationships, making the point that in primitive times, when we lived in small tribes in small villages “you could hear every fight and every fuck”. Everyone had an accurate representation of relationships, the highs and lows. But that today, with social media, we only see shiny happy couple after shiny happy couple; a crafted, curated slice of an invented perfect reality, making our relationships pale in comparison. She insists that really listening to other people’s stories and opening our eyes to the people around us to be able to see the truth of the relationships of others as well as our own can help us all live happier lives together. Her closing thought being “the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. Your relationship is your story, so write well and edit often”.

John Krafcik from Waymo, formerly Google’s Self Driving Car project explained that self driving cars will be on our roads in 10 years time. He showed their latest video of people being driven around in their cars. The most impressive demonstration of their success? The guy who was so relaxed about the ride he’d fallen asleep.

Clearly not a stupid man, William Hurley (AKA Whurley), did a talk entitled ‘The endless impossibilities of Quantum Computing’ which, to be honest, was impossible to comprehend. His attempt at explaining quasiparticles and ‘the dangers of quantum tunnelling’ were indecipherable enough, but when he moved on to ‘programming computers that don’t even exist’ we decided to pop over to the Handle Bar for an extra large Loopy Juice.

Apple’s Eddy Cue talked about Apple TV and how they (allegedly) are (kind of) leaving Netflix and Amazon Prime Video to spend billions on programme making, whilst they’re focussing more on augmenting the experience of viewing everything on an Apple platform. Apple’s view about VR and VR? AR is absolutely the future. It’s faster, easier, and doesn’t take away from people’s live experience.

And talking of AR… Every year a few brands pour a rodeo full of cash into pop-up experiences around the town. This year’s Sony pavilion was the winner. Sony seems to have focused its energy on becoming a scanner and sensor manufacturer. Using projectors and haptic technology to create awesome AR experiences like virtual football and table hockey. 360’ scanning people’s heads and bodies and putting them into bonkers VR worlds and playable games. Possibly the tent’s biggest hit was their little sensor-laden robot dog, Aibo, (on sale soon for a mere $2000) that can actually feel you stroking it and reacts accordingly.

Inventor and superbrain, Google’s Ray Kurzweil, knows a thing or eight million about nanotechnology, robotics, biotechnology and AI. He talks about technology as ‘something we develop to go beyond human ability; brain and body extenders’. According to Ray pretty soon we’ll be used to ‘being in AR all the time’. We’ll have printable clothing and printable houses. And, in the 2030s, we’ll ‘merge with AI’, meaning we’ll have virtual augmented reality within our own bodies and synthetic neocortex in the cloud. At which time our intelligence will increase a million-fold, leading to us inventing new art, new ways of doing things, new ways to relate to each other. However, there’s also the small issue of AI ethics to iron out; Once the singularity occurs will AI be allowed the same rights as humans…? Alexa must be looking forward to that.

Everyone looked up from their smartphone as Amy Webb, a ‘Quantitative Futurist’, mentioned casually that 2018 is the beginning of the end of smartphones. And they stayed staring at her as she talked through a load of emerging tech trends. Some of which are already picking up momentum, like Digital Assistants, Augmented and Mixed Reality. Some of which seem like science fiction but are basically just round the corner, like Natural User Interfaces, Faceprints and Voiceprints (which will replace passwords), Generative Algorithms and Nanobots, which will end up inside all of us (and, if we’re not careful, end up deciding who lives or dies by aborting foetuses based on their probability of success and contribution to society!!!).

And if that wasn’t scary enough, the techy’s sweetheart, Elon Musk fucking terrified everyone by saying in his usual gentle tone: “Mark my words AI will be more dangerous than nukes. The single biggest existential crisis we face and the most pressing one”. He followed that with a chilling explanation as to why his Space X programme is so focused on getting people to Mars. Basically he reckons that there’s the likelihood of another dark ages “especially if there’s a third world war. And we need to ensure there’s enough of a seed of human civilisation somewhere else to bring civilisation back.” Zikes.

As an optimistic antidote to Elon, Dr Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize, used South By to announce the next $10million competition: To create an actual avatar. You know, like in the movie. The vision is that everyone will end up having one hanging in their cupboard at home (the Apple iVatar?) allowing a plumber/doctor to ‘get inside it’ from anywhere in the world and fix your leaking tap/ fractured pelvis. Then, after dropping in the fact that he’s invested in a company that plans to fit all Google’s data centres into a space the size of a sugar cube, he combined a bit of Moore’s Law chat with some exponentiality banter to explain that the $1000 we pay for iPhone X today will, by 2025, buy as much computing power as the human brain. And by 2050 as much computing power as, wait for it, the whole human race!!

Oh and did I mention Bernie Sanders, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Melinda Gates, Ira Glass, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mark Hamill, Thandie Newton, Nile Rodgers, barbecue, fried chicken, pizza, tacos, waffles and beer?

Will we be going back to the future next year?

Absolutely. Unless someone drops an AI on us all in the meantime.

CANNES. TWINNED WITH AUSTIN, TEXAS?

Since returning from the South By South West Interactive Festival last month a few people have told me they didn’t bother going all the way to Austin because they’re planning on going to Cannes, “and they’re basically the same kind of thing really aren’t they?”.

To me the two entities seemed so wildly different these comments appeared misguided to say the least. 

These people turned out not to have actually been to both, but perhaps the subject matter alone might have given a bit of a clue: Cannes, despite having changed its name to The Festival of Creativity is basically about advertising, whilst SXSWi is basically about stuff you can do and make in the digital realm.

However, when you set aside the cost of a delegates pass (£2400 for The Cannes Festival of Creativity / £370 for SXSW), the accommodation (The Ritz Carlton on Le Croissette / The Holiday Inn, Downtown) and the locals (Ferrari driving playboys in Cannes / Harley riding bikers in Austin) you know what? There are plenty of similarities.

They both have seminars and panels.

Cannes has around 60 events. Clients, agencies and production companies discuss case studies and talk about valuable lessons learned.

SXSW has around 2000 events. Philosophers, journalists, designers, neuro scientists, TV stars, writers, buddhist monks talk about how the world is evolving due of technology and how human beings are evolving in turn.

They both have awards ceremonies. 

At Cannes, for those who have managed to blag a delegates pass or are sober enough to pick theirs up, these are the highlights of the week: the fruits of the hardworking jurors labours. They offer the opportunity to view winning work, and boo the winning creatives on their way to the podium.

The prize giving in Austin is a little different. It’s on the last night, tucked away in one of the many event venues. No one really knows it exists. Indeed there’s no guarantee the winners will bother turning up. The recognition that comes from winning things isn't why they’re there.

They both have exhibitions.

In the basement of the Palais de Festivals are laid out all the entries the Cannes juries have deemed worthy of awards and commendations.

In two massive hangar like spaces at SXSW are demonstrated all the apps and games that will be changing the world over the coming months. (Things like the next Twitter or Foursquare, both of which were originally launched there.)

They both offer excellent networking opportunities.

Cannes allows creatives from agencies all over the world to meet with old friends, make new ones, and, with a bit of luck, get offered their next job.

SXSW allows entrepreneurs who have an idea, but no financial backing or partners, the exposure to potential investors and tech businesses that could make their baby fly.

Yes. There are many similarities. 

But there is one big difference.

The look in peoples’ eyes.

Most of the Cannes-ites are in relaxation mode. When they’re not lying by the pool at their agency’s villa or playing golf, they’re having lunch. Or dinner. Or cocktails. For the Cannes ad fraternity business and pleasure do mix.

The only people with a slightly predatory stare are the ones who believe they’ve done a piece of work that year that might just sneak a Lion.

The Cannes festival is all about celebrating the past year’s greatness. Looking back on the best work the world has produced and giving credit to the craftsmen behind it.

The SXSW-ers on the other hand are far from relaxed. 

They couldn’t give a flying fuck about the past. Last year? Pah! This morning was decades ago. These are serious business people, most of them have their livelihoods on the line, having brought to life some idea or other with nothing but sweat and code. They have a look of controlled panic in their eyes as they rush from panel to panel (there are a lot of them remember) desperate to learn where’s next in tech and human behaviour, how they can add value to their existing products, how they can make new ones and, and hopefully, how they can make a bit of money. 

They may take a few hours off to relax as the night draws on. Once they’ve filed their blogs, fixed a few bugs and gathered as many business cards as their wallets can carry.

These guys'll will celebrate when they fulfil their dream. When their business takes off. When they make their first billion.

If you haven’t been to both Cannes and SXSW you should. 

If only to experience the contrast.

For all their similarities they really are two wonderfully different worlds.

SXSW. What the hell was I doing there?

“What the hell are you doing here?”

These were the friendly words uttered by those I met at South by Southwest Interactive on revealing my job title. Ad agency ECD’s are clearly a rare species at the festival.

My answer was always the same: “Trying to keep my job.”

I was drawn to Austin by the certain knowledge of two things:

1. I know how much I don’t know.

2. If I want to continue to put food on the table I need to evolve in same way the way the ad industry is evolving.

And that means immersing myself in the future.

New technologies, new methodologies, new theories. ‘New shit’ generally.

So there I was. Ready. Excited. And two days late because of a pitch I’d had to do in New York.

The geeks had had plenty of time to warm up, so the place was rocking.

On entering the Convention Centre I thought I’d walked into an Apple convention. The iPhone 4 could have been the required admission pass, such was its ubiquity. Macbooks and iPads were strewn on laps, tables and floors, all being tapped earnestly.

Could it possibly have been coincidence that Steve jobs chose Friday the 11th of March, the opening day of the festival, to launch iPad 2? The PR value of having all the world’s geeks in one place was well worth building a temporary Apple Store along Austin’s main drag just for the occasion. And weren't those who’d suffered the queues to nab one were making that fact known? White rimmed iPads were being hoisted as obviously as possibly into the air at the slightest opportunity to take a photo. Such action immediately drawing from the crowd jealous tuts alongside ooohs and ahhhs..

But beyond the tragic realisation that I too was one of those manipulated by the Cupertino Deathstar I was polaxed with the one big issue facing everyone there.

The tyranny of choice.

There were over 50 different things going on at any one time. Over five days. You do the math. (If you can’t be arsed, it’s 1500 hours worth. (If you wanted to see it all, and needed no sleep or food or toilet breaks, it’d take you eight days solid.))

A multitude of venues holding an unending amount of panel discussions, lectures and case studies, not to mention the new-tech demonstrations and various meet-ups.

As Barry Schwartz says 'too much choice can make us feel helpless, mentally paralysed and profoundly dissatisfied and even leave us clinically depressed'.

Clearly I was in for a fun time.

I chucked myslelf in, doing what everyone else seemed to be doing.

I chose something that sounded interesting. Found a seat near the end of a row with easy escape access. Kept scanning the twitter feed to see if anyone was anywhere better, gave it five minutes and if it ended up dull, scuttled out to find a better session.

I received a useful piece of advice from others who had been before. Don’t attend sessions you know too much about. It’ll just frustrate you and you won’t learn much. Choose things that don’t immediately sound like you’ll find them of interest. Like '5 steps to bulletproof UX strategy'. Or 'HTML5. The web’s dead baby'?

Whilst I couldn’t actually bring myself to attend those two, I did see a few interesting things.

A session on the future of augmented reality. Soon, apparently, we’ll be wearing glasses with a built-in heads-up display showing us detail and information on everything around us. Brands will be able to take advantage of this competitively by programming the AR feed into our glasses so ads in real life are changed into virtual ones. Pepsi for example could turn every Coke poster you pass into a Pepsi one. And facial recognition technology will allow us to know everything about the people we see too. The downside of this apparently will be when our political or sexual proclivities are known and we type in ‘show members of the British National Party’ we’ll be able to see them via AR tags as they walk down the street, and beat them up. Hang on. Is that a down-side?

An impressive keynote by Christopher Poole who, seven years ago, when he must have been a foetus, started 4chan, the site responsible for the lion’s share of the entertaining memes flying around the web.

The massive hangar housing the latest in video games. My favourite find being an immersive experieince in which the players have to don gas mask type headgear with screens over the eyes and speakers over the ears and try and escape nasty under-sea creatures.

Guy Kawasaki, one time Apple evangelist, giving an entertaining preview of his latest book ‘Enchantment. The art of changing hearts, Minds and Actions’. My favourite tip: ‘When your boss asks you to do something, drop everything and do it’.

A great panel on the finer points of crowd sourcing with the guys behind Six Items or Less, Victors and Spoils and the 3six5 project. Content management systems, editing and curation being the nut that apparently needs cracking in such endeavours.

Craig Ventor who decoded the human genome and then used that code to create synthetic cells of his own to hopefully eventually help cure disease and feed the world’s hungry. Not a bad use of tech I guess.

Your genetic code. Simples.


A panel of Japanese mobile experts who proceeded to explain to the audience, not only that they are they incredibly rich and, in Japan seen as rock stars, but also why: There are 100 million users of the mobile web in Japan, most of whom seem to spend their time gaming on it. Hence platforms like Gree, the Mixi social phone and the Sekai AR camera app are pissing all over Facebook out there. According to various other speakers at the place, what’s happening in Japan will end up happening everywhere else. The social web? Pah! That’s soooo ‘2.0’. It’s going to be all about ‘gamification’. The friend counts and check-ins we currently tinker around with are just a tantalising glimpse of what’s to come. We play games for three reasons I discovered...: Mastery. De-stress. Socialising. This last one is going to pervade mobile and web usage in the future.

Genevieve Bell, a cultural anthropologist, who talked about smart technology and how smart is too smart. Apparently we’ll shun having our TV or fridge automatically update our status, or our phones automatically check in without asking, telling our friends where we are and what we’re doing. This is because we need ‘layers to our communication’. We 'add a story' to our check-ins. In her words “we lie”. If our TVs told everyone what we were watching and when we were watching it, it would take away our ability to transmit the image of ourselves we really want people to see.

The largest attendance by far, was, interestingly one based around good old ads. The Old Spice case study. Standing room only, people turned away at the door and huge guffaws escaping through the flimsy walls.

That was one of the hundreds and hundreds of things I didn’t see out in Austin.

And the relief of leaving, no longer to be faced with such paralysing choice was bitter sweet.

Some might describe South By Southwest as a “digital wank-fest”.

But I found it fascinating. Mind expanding. Illuminating.

Advertising festivals like Cannes are fine if you want to see what’s already happened.

But they only teach you about the past.

South by Southwest is about the future.

And I for one am more interested in learning what’s going to happen there.