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Convention Virgin

The first panel I arrive at has been canceled. First panel of the day, SXSW, what the hell!? Regardless, “Brands as Patterns,” my second or third choice I’m pretty sure, had been substituted in the same room. The panel consisted of a couple of creative directors, a strategist, and a composer. They described the importance in “consistent inconsistencies” when telling the story of a brand. Way over my head, but I stayed till the end hoping for some intelligence by osmosis to occur. My next talk of the day, “We Made This and It’s Not an Ad“, gets at an important piece of why and how we operate at Denuo. This one was a solo performance from a San Francisco company, Duncan/Channon, a group that’s creating products outside of client work; obviously for their own benefit, but also for the benefit of those of us who are hungry for more “stuff“. Creating something from the ground up, anything, regardless of its success intrinsically creates valuable knowledge as well as that “thing”. If you learned from the process, it was a success.

Networking

It’s day two, we left our rental car downtown, and the sign in the elevator informs me that the hotel will not be providing shuttle service. Awesome. I talk to the Concierge and he assures me that the Hilton down the road has a shuttle to the Convention Center and there will be a van arriving soon to take a couple of us to the Hilton. We get to the Hilton and I am in desperate need of water and COFFEE. As I sip on my horribly satisfying Starbucks, a doorman steps in and asks if anyone wants to take a cab. Immediately me and three others bolt for the doors and politely jog to the cab. We nod at each other as if to congratulate one another on our “transportational triumph”. But, before we can leave the cabbie tells us he has to use the bathroom, leaving the three of us awkwardly standing by the cab. So now other people come out, seeing the cab with no one inside, and as they walk up and reach for the door we promptly explain, “It’s our cab, the cabbie just had to use the bathroom.”

The situation made light of our introductions and it was my first chance at networking. I talked with this nice couple from Detroit. The wife was tagging along while her husband, a very tall German fellow, gave me a pitch on his company that does CGI graphics for video and print ads. He showed me an awesome app that utilized all the features of the iPad. It was brilliant. From a design perspective, it was beautiful. The app was for Volkswagen and he showed me how you would use the app to see the interior of the car, by turning the iPad in whatever direction you wanted to look inside the vehicle. The coolest feature was when he showed me the airbag section. “How do the airbags work?” He shakes the iPad as if he’d crashed the car and, poof, the airbags deploy. It was so cool. When we get to the Convention Center, the deathly silent suit in the front seat offered to pay for the cab. As we part ways, I invite the couple to the Razorfish party later on and the German dude gives me his card and says, “For sure!”.

I meet up with Albert and we start with something light: “Top Chef: How Transmedia is Changing TV.” Essentially, it was a panel of two celebs from Bravo and three peeps from the marketing team. They talked mostly about the show, played “Plead the 5th” with the host, and answered tweeted questions that were submitted during the talk. Some were funny, none were particularly interesting; it was just good fun. During the audience Q&A, a woman began to plug her new alcohol concoction, and we all booed her to shame. Good times.

After that we headed outside to meet up with one of Albert’s Chicago friends for lunch. We walked around looking for food, but every place was packed. (We really only walked around the perimeter of the Convention Center.) On our way back around to the entrance, we spotted a brightly colored Airstream trailer that was giving out free DoubleTree cookies and sweet tea. That would hold us ‘till we found some eats. We gave up and decided to eat the pre-made food that they had in the convention. We met up with another midwestern colleague and headed to our next thing: “How to Read the World,” a keynote given by a comedian, Baratunde Thurston. We loved this one. He worked for The Onion and gave his keynote on how satire and technology are shaping our discussions about important political topics. He shared a great example of this in the creation of a show called Parazit, the Iranian equivalent of The Daily Show with John Stewart. This was not over my head.

“We Are All Cyborgs”

I began day three picking Albert up with the intention to eat ASAP. We are both weary from the previous night. We drive into downtown searching for a spot somewhere close to the Convention Center but ended up four or five blocks out. On our walk down, we find a taco truck, with no line, giving out free tacos for convention-goers. This is great for us but not so much for the people at the homeless shelter directly across the street. Not sure this was the best location for this sponsored truck.

Our first stop for the day was a keynote by Amber Case, a UX designer and Cyborg Anthropologist. Nerd alert: “Ambient Location and the Future of the Interface.” Immediately, she informed us we were all cyborgs – awesome. She gave examples of great cyborg creations, like Mika Sitomi’s Massage Me jacket. We loved the keynote, her new endeavor GeoLoqi, and her view of a better day when we don’t have to stare at our phones or tablets in order to get the most out of our technology. My second talk of the day was a few blocks away and sounded like I could get a lot out of it: “How to Be an Idea Factory,” given by a cartoonist for the New Yorker, Matthew Diffee. I didn’t realize he was a cartoonist until he began, apparently the title was just too appealing. Though, I did find it helpful and applicable to my day-to-day as a designer. The last panel of the day, “Digital Immortals: Preserving Life Beyond Death“, I attended out of a deeper interest on the matter. I’m sure we’ve all experienced a friend or family member passing away, leaving a fully-functioning Facebook page still live. It’s a little depressing to think about, but I was very curious to see what designers see as a way to preserve or chronicle the images and blog posts we all put up on the Internet. There were interesting conversations but no real solutions. The best anyone can offer, thus far, is a password key chain or final farewell video through Facebook.

Convention Fatigue

I had spent the night at Albert’s hotel (separate beds, guys…) because it was within walking distance from downtown, and we may have done a bit too much “networking” the night before. I woke up to Albert’s alarm for his early AM conference call in a slightly less than ideal state of body and mind thinking, “Thank God I’m not Albert.” I get a text shortly after from a fellow Denuoer, Matt, asking for a lift to the Convention Center via my rental car. Of course, the one day Matt can make it down to SXSW is also the one day I’m feeling hung over. I pick Matt up from his hotel and drop him off at the Convention Center, and hurry back to my hotel to catch a quick nap and a shower before my last day at the convention.

I head back downtown and leave my car at Albert’s hotel instead of fighting the parking wars and tag along with Matt for the next couple of talks. We’re looking for options that would create the best “post conference talking points”. The first was a keynote: “Expanding Our Intelligence Without Limit.” OOOO! Ray Kurzweil’s attempt to impart inspiration and knowledge proved unsuccessful. I felt he lost the audience when he started every answer in the interview with, “When I created ”. Though, this seemed to be a common thread through a few of these talks. The thread continued with our next panel: “Changing the Channel: The Golden Age of TV.” Again, similar to one of the first panels I went to, the panelists had conversations about their new shows and how TV apps are changing the way we consume. Nothing new to most of our industry peers, but cool to see the adoption continue to spread regardless. The last one was about a new school that used gaming mechanics to teach. It was kind of exciting and yielded some good insights into The Institute of Play. The interesting thing here is that the faculty is mainly made up of creative directors, UX designers, and game designers who impart their problem solving experiences as a tools for learning. Pretty cool.

Reflecting

The next day, Matt and I decide to grab some of Austin’s famous breakfast tacos before catching our flights home. I had the steak and eggs taco and a fried avocado taco, and they were damn good.

SXSW is far from polished, and throughout the conference, there were great conversations about what can be done to improve the experience, like making interactive panels and talks more interactive. Why would an interactive designer want to just sit and listen to someone talk about interaction? Interact with us! Or, how can we make it easier to get a badge so the line doesn’t wrap around the Convention Center twice. Little things, I suppose, but when there’s so much great content to see and digest, you want to get to the good stuff as soon as you can. I also learned that doing the research to create a fulfilling schedule helps, but only so much. What I gained from SXSW was a few tools and a healthy amount of inspiration. Not just from talks, but from all the little experiences along the way. But, I suppose that’s what it’s all about.