There is diversity at SXSW Interactive 2018. Yet, it is more of the same.

The United States, Australia, Brasil, Mexico, china, Indonesia, Belgium, Great Britain, Iceland, Canada, Portugal, Italy, France, Turkey, Poland, The Netherlands, and Argentina.

What do all these countries have in common? For the next few days, representatives from each country are occupants of a single room at the South by Southwest Interactive trade show in Austin, Texas. 

SMU graduate students Christopher Calhoon and James Williams explored the SXSW Interactive Trade show and discovered that nearly every country was at the show offering a similar mix of products. Tech ruled, with emphasis on demonstrations of different realities (xR) including VR, AR and MR (mixed reality).

 

PhotoBloomAR is an interactive print platform that allows photos to come to life with movement and sound. Basically, they’re a Shutterfly for videos. The demo was a photo of a dog that when viewed through the app came to life as a video of the dog licking ice cream. 

After doing a few laps around the trade show floor and spending a few days here, we did not find one killer app, groundbreaking technological breakthrough or “paradigm shift” to come out of this year’s SXSW. Along with the country booths promoting a country’s technical abilities for business, there were many booths from biotech and medical tech companies promoting various products and services, but each seeed to be applications of current technology.

One fun idea from a startup based here in Austin is a sock subscription service called Sock Club. They started small by curating socks from other labels, and soon decided that they wanted to focus on their own manufacturing. Now all of Sock Club’s socks are designed in Austin, and the company has CSR at heart by controlling the entire production process, sourcing high-quality cotton, following eco-friendly processes, pay their workers are a living wage. 

While there were many countries represented on the floor and many languages being heard at the festival, the products being featured at the show are becoming more similar, competing on incremental improvements of already advanced technologies. Funny enough, this is where branding has it greatest power. When products have similar attributes, messages and brands become greater points of differentiation.

 

SXSW Interactive 2018: Day 1 Surprises

Maloree Malone and Dalya Romaner were teamed up to describe the first day of SXSW Interactive.

I have been to South by Southwest before, but never with an Interactive badge and my first day was really fun and interesting!” said Maloree Malone, TAI Graduate Student.

I am very interested in fashion and the business side of it, but I was always disappointed, because I never seemed to find any fashion sessions. It was great seeing all the different topics this year. Yesterday, I went to 3 sessions, and I got something out of them all.

Dalya Romaner, TAI Accelerated MA program student expressed, “SXSW perfectly encapsulates a conference experience. I started the first day with a schedule for every session I would attend, plus a few social and networking events. Everything was laid out perfectly in the SXSW app and I was ready to go.”

However, that plan went out the window and instead we followed Sandi Edgar, TAI Marketing Coordinator, into a session about Techfugees, a company dedicated to changing the refugee narrative using technology. Bernie Sanders was the next speaker and we wanted to get good seats, but we were hooked by the end of the talk.

A Rotten Tomatoes Film Debate was a hilarious, totally silly show with film critics debating film fans. So over the course of one hour, I went from discussing DACA and political engagement to hearing things like, “La La Land was more basic than a Pumpkin Spice Latte.”

While I wish I had gone to some of my sessions like “Anatomy of a Trend” and “Sustaining Brands” for the future,” these sessions were both educational and offered a nice glimpse into how every brand works to keep themselves current and innovative to a broad audience.

The days are long at SXSW and more opportunities revealed themselves. Dayla found a a panel discussing the future of women in tech, went on part of a bar crawl, and had Shabbat dinner (traditional Jewish Sabbath dinner held every Friday night) with fellow Jews attending SXSW.

None of this was laid out in an original schedule. Dalya didn’t attend a single pre-planned session, yet it was an amazing day. Maloree agrees, “I had a few sessions planned and thought I would strictly follow it, but I’ve learned that you have to sometimes play it by ear, because I hadn’t planned on going to the Rotten Tomatoes  session, yet it was the most fun.” Dalya concurs, “That’s the beauty of SXSW – you can go with the flow and find yourself learning more and meeting cooler people than you ever would have if you had your head in your phone, walking along the set path all day.”