With a strong team of 4, we tackled the Sunday of SXSW and saw some amazing and inspiring talks. See what our favourites of the day were:
"How Brands Who Speak Gen Z Slay" - Jamie
Had some amazing crypto talks but this was my favourite. As well as learning the meaning of all the words that Bertie uses (Sus & savage & hangry & hard & tea & basic & sauce & roasted & shook & salty & lit & dumb lit & fire & clean & cringy), it was fascinating to hear all the research done on Gen Z and how they have evolved having been ‘born with an iphone’.
“They know they can change the world and influence by the age of 7.”
- SAMANTHA SKEY SheKnows Media @samskey7
"Emerging Tech Trends Report" - Tim
Without doubt my session of the event so far was Amy Webb’s presentation of the Future Today Institute’s 2018 Emerging Tech Trends Report. The FTI have identified 225 trends, 10 weak signals for 2019 and dozens of futures scenarios across 20 industries.
"Learning UX from board games" - Laura
My highlight of the day was a small talk at Antone’s called ‘Learning UX from board games’ by Stephen Anderson, Head of Design at the Innovation Garage at Capital One.
Board games are rich, nuanced and engaging experiences and we can learn a lot from them, from ensuring a focus on the whole, experience driven orientation, use of space and friction. A key takeaway from the talk was to consider how games use space to signify meaning. Grids serve the technology but not necessarily the content in the most useful way to the user. He recommended resources for further research and this should definitely be explored.
"Can we create consciousness in a machine?" - Juliette
This talk was very philosophical, and offered different points of views from the panelists, some that contracted each other.
Can machines be conscious? Yes probably, us humans are also complicated machines who are conscious. It is about connectivity & information – which gives you consciousness. How do you create something that is conscious? There is no current research (Deepmind) on this specifically. It’s not directly measurable. If a machine is puzzled by its own consciousness, have you created a conscious machine?
Visual Diary
An impression of SXSW today, baby goats and puppies are a thing this year.
An interesting VR art experience by Mashmallow Laser Feast. A 3-part experience, where you initially are one of two very big deep sea fish, when making sounds or singing you interact and create objects in the environment. Four people are spectating in the 2nd section of the experience, so your activity directly affects their VR experience. When I was in the 2nd part of the experience, a giant pink wave swirled around me, the experience is a great example of what the possibilities are for experiences and how art and VR can come together.
Who did you meet?
We had a great conversation with some people from Lush cosmetics on how the company is developing and the role of Lush in reducing waste. We're becoming more and more aware of the need to recycle but also to reduce/minimize waste.