5 Key Trends From SXSWi 2015 - HeyHuman - with notes!

Editor's Notes

• #2: Overall SXSW melting pot where we debate tech and innovation and can this become culture or not. 1250 session, 2,700 speakers, 34,000 – Glastonbury for geeks Some of it is really out there but wherever possible we’ll try and connect tomorrow with today in terms of business opportunity First here’s a flavour of what it’s all about…
• #3: If you’ve heard a good speaker in Europe chances are they nicked their content from Austin. Global thought leaders – Al Gore, Malcolm Gladwell, Eric Schmidt of Google, Pete Cashmore of Mashable, and countless others
• #4: Since the festival launched in 2007 people have become more and more excited about technology and it’s role in defining culture. This peaked in 2013 when in one afternoon we saw Elon Musk, Al Gore, Tim Berners Lee However, with all the NSA scandals, 2014 saw a downturn. Julian Assange, Ed Snowden 2015 was a bit of a resurgence, but with a more mature perspective
• #5: So what was the overarching theme?It’s difficult to pin it down to one thing as it’s such a sprawling event, but we’ll give it a stab. Previously we were finding a place for tech in the world. Now we’re finding our place in a world transformed by tech.
• #7: So the first big trend is about nowism. As we have become more dependent on technology, we’ve set much higher expectations on instant gratification. It’s amazing how quickly the idea of sending someone a letter has become ridiculous – why would you wait 3 days for someone to receive your letter when you can Facebook them and get it instantly? Why would you wait till the weekend to go to a shop to buy something when Amazon can deliver it in just a few hours? Why would you book a taxi days in advance when Uber can bring you on with 2 minutes notice? People are placing a much higher focus on real-time, and with this comes a lot of expectations for products and platforms to deliver into the now. There was some really interesting examples at SXSW of brands and services helping people to get that real-time fulfillment.
• #8: One of the biggest successes of SXSW this year was the launch of Meerkat, and to a certain extent Periscope. For anyone who doesn’t know, Meerkat is a mobile App that lets people stream what they’re doing in real-time. It sounds a bit pointless, but it’s a logical progression if you look at where social media has been heading over the past few years. From Facebook and Twitter, where we’re looking at people’s considered thoughts, to Snapchat, where we’re looking at what someone just did, and now with the rise of Meerkat and Periscope it’s about what’s happening in that exact moment. It lets us see through someone else’s eyes, and experience what they’re experiencing as they do it. At SXSW Meerkat was the big star of the festival, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jimmy Fallon using it live on stage in their sessions. Very shortly after you saw brands like Red Bull, Starbucks and the Miami Dolphins all jump on it. But, as with a lot of these things, it wasn’t long before Twitter launched their own version of the App called Periscope, which has taken over completely since then. Both these apps are still in very early days, but they offer a really interesting opportunity for brands to think about extending real-time experiences. If you’re doing activations at any events – such as festivals, sports games, fashion shows – these real-time apps can offer a really interesting way to extend these experiences to a much wider audience, and tap into the growing desire people have for real-time.
• #9: And it’s not just Apps. Another company called Mophie were the talk of the town at SXSW too. They make phone charging cases, which at SXSW is one of the most desirable products you can imagine, because everyone is completely dependent on their smartphone and running around manically trying to live tweet everything that’s going on. But Mophie are quite a small company, and they couldn’t afford the big headline sponsorship that people like McDonalds were doing, or crazy high tech installations like IBM were doing. They had to out think rather than out spend. So they created a Twitter campaign that let people tweet their location and their battery percentage, and for emergency situations where someone might be left without a smartphone for a few hours, they’d send out a pack of St. Bernards equipped with charging cases to come and save you. This is a really nice example of how brands can cut through at events by thinking about utility first. While every other brand was thinking about the message they wanted to push, Mophie thought about the experience people wanted to have, and they managed to get amazing cut through in one of the most media saturated events on the planet by delivering into people’s ongoing desire to live in the now.
• #10: So we’ve moved from looking at what’s happened in the past to what’s happening right now. Immediacy is becoming more and more important, and brands that can’t deliver into the moment will get left behind. But where’s it gonna go next?We’re already starting to see products and services moving into the anticipation space. People are so desperate to experience the now that they’re looking to leap frog it and find out what’s going to happen tomorrow. A great example of this is Mashable’s new tool, Velocity. Velocity is an algorithm that analyses all up and coming news stories across the web and tells people what’s going to go viral before it even happens. It gives people a chance to be the first of their friends to know about an exciting piece of content, or a crazy news story. It feeds into the whole concept of social currency, and how people use social media to peacock to their friends. As this area evolves we’re going to see a much bigger focus on what’s coming next, and brands are going to be expected to be quicker, more responsive, and more fluid in their communications.
• #11: The second trend is the metaverse. This sounds like a crazy sci-fi word, and that’s because it is. The word ‘metaverse’ comes from a sci-fi book called Snow Crash, and it describes the merging of the physical and digital world. As with a lot of this stuff though, what starts off as sci-fi often ends up becoming reality, and this word was one of the main inspirations behind Facebook’s recent purchase of the Oculus Rift for $2bn.
• #12: The second trend is the metaverse. This sounds like a crazy sci-fi word, and that’s because it is. The word ‘metaverse’ comes from a sci-fi book called Snow Crash, and it describes the merging of the physical and digital world. As with a lot of this stuff though, what starts off as sci-fi often ends up becoming reality, and this word was one of the main inspirations behind Facebook’s recent purchase of the Oculus Rift for $2bn.
• #13: There was also some cool snapshots into where virtual reality is going next. Certain companies have been doing a lot of thinking into how we will interface with the metaverse, particularly since Zuckerberg has gambled $2bn on it being a big part of our lives in the future. One of the most interesting ones was this company Sixense, who have created gesture controls that let you put your hands into the virtual environment. They had this awesome demo that lets you move your hands in the air to take part in a virtual light saber fight, which is obviously a life long dream for 99% of the people who attend SXSW.
• #14: And virtual reality is only half of the metaverse right now. While Facebook, Sony and Samsung have all been investing into virtual reality, Microsoft and Google have been focusing on augmented reality. And this has existed in various forms on our smartphones for quite a while, but Microsoft’s HoloLens and the Google invested Magic Leap are taking it to the next level. They’ve created new headsets that place a layer on top of our world, blurring the physical and digital. It’s difficult to say which route is likely to win at the moment, but as with a lot of these things, the truth is often somewhere in the middle. Virtual reality and augmented reality both allow us to do amazing things, and the devices we’ll actually end up using in the future will probably do both. In the short term brands can start to think about what possibilities this layer on the world opens up. When these things become more popular we’re going to be working to a new playbook for storytelling, immersion, and live experience, and the brands who get learning today will be leading tomorrow.
• #15: The third trend I wanted to highlight was the sharing economy. The ways in which we consume, contribute, and participate are all changing. There’s been some big technological changes in our lives that have made it much easier for us to connect with each other, and as a result of that there has been a change of priority with consumers. In the past people used to care about ownership, but now people are caring a lot more about access. An example of this that was discussed quite a bit at SXSW was the rise of Uber. Bill Gurley, one of the main investors at Uber, held a session with Malcolm Gladwell where they talked about how Uber is a symptom of this change in priority. In the past, owning a car was the coolest thing possible. Everyone grew up dreaming about what car they’d have when they were older and even had posters of them on their bedroom walls. Cars used to be a status symbol, but now they’re just a vehicle to a status update. Uber gives everyone access to a car when ever they want it wherever they want it. And it’s been hugely successful – they’ve now got over 8 million users and have over 1 million rides a day. Our priority shifting from ownership to access has led to huge growth for the sharing economy, and 64% of the UK are using it already, even though they might not realise it. Boris bikes, Wikipedia, Airbnb, Kickstarter. These are all examples of the sharing economy that have become integral parts of our daily lives, and it’s only going to grow.
• #16: An example of this that got talked about a lot at SXSW is Magic. Magic is a new peer to peer delivery service that has become incredibly popular in the US. People can send a text message to Magic with anything they want, at any time of day, and Magic’s has this whole network of people that will go out and find it for them. For a small fee they’ll bring you whatever you want no matter where you are. We saw loads of people using Magic as a barbecue delivery service in Texas. Obviously Texas is amazing for BBQ, and some of the best grills had queues upwards of an hour to get in, so people were using Magic to send someone to queue on their behalf and bring it to them without them leaving the conference hall. A writer at Wired spent $500 trying to stump Magic. He ordered some obscure craft beers, an authentic mexican wrestling mask, a ukulele chord book, a joint of medicinal marijuana, and a tiger, and it was only when they got to the tiger that Magic were unable to deliver. Magic is the latest in a series of new start-ups trying to removing friction in people’s lives, and making it easier than ever for them to get access to brilliant experiences and things. So where is it heading?
• #17: In Back To The Future they went to the future and saw flying cars. That was the year 2015, and at SXSW this year we saw them for ourselves. A unveiled the latest version of their flying car, which was just as comfortable driving through a city as it was flying above the skyscrapers. They spoke about their vision of the future where these cars would be able to merge with existing transportation really easily. And while this is undeniably very cool, and proves that Back To The Future was right once again, it also has really interesting implications for the sharing economy. Before these guys have even got a car approved by the DMV they’re already looking to the next stage. In their session at SXSW, Aeromobil talked about their plans to make self-flying cars. They envision a world where you will be able to order an Uber that will arrive in minutes and has the ability to fly you to a different country instantly. All of these examples have a really important lesson for brands – people don’t care about ownership as much as they care about access anymore. Service design is going to become much more important, and brands will win by making people’s lives easier and removing friction wherever possible.
• #18: The fourth big trend was the tension between man and machine This has been growing for years now, and seemed to get a lot more attention this year Maturing of AI and robotics has led to some really interesting ideas Man + Machine – machines do heavy lifting we cherry pick the options (CENTAUR reality) Question is where is the freaky line…
• #19: One that triggered a lot of discussion was a promotion for a new film, Ex Machina To get people talking about this film, the creators put one of their AI creations, Ava, on Tinder They tricked people into thinking Ava was real, before they directed people to her Instagram where they could win prizes to the premiere AI - Managing expectations and making it human and witty…
• #20: Breeding more intimacy there was also the robot petting zoo Field Innovation Team (FIT), a non-profit technology company, wanted to get people hands on with some of the cutting edge disaster relief technologies They put together the zoo at SXSW this year to showcase drones that could help scope out disaster zones, & communicate with survivors on the ground during a natural disaster, and a cute little cardboard robot that could talk back to them.
• #21: Martine Rothblatt – CEO United Therapeutics… “There is no line in the sand for where human consciousness has to lie…” MIND CLONES - allowing people to become immortal by uploading a copy of their brain to the internet As a proof of concept she is working on Bina 48, an AI robot version of her girlfriend This will really freak you out… THE REAL AND ARTIFICIAL BINA SEEM TO DISLIKE EACH OTHER! How mean is the garden question?
• #22: The 5th and final trend was around humanising data Data can be incredibly powerful, but consumers don’t care about data – they care about what it lets them do A big focus moving forwards is going to be around humanising data This means focusing less on the data itself and more on the human benefits – what does it let people do?
• #23: Data about movement… A nice example of this was the SXSWesteros installation for Game Of Thrones Let you build a beautifully stylised portrait of yourself using the movement of you waving a sword, captured through a Kinect
• #24: IBM also had a great installation called ‘cognitive cooking’ – Watson IBM’s super computer Food van that asked you to suggest a meal ingredient and a cuisine It would then scan thousands of recipes online and find things that work Using its artificial intelligence of taste combinations it would then create a brand new recipe that has never been made before Great example of using TONS of data to create something very tangible and human
• #25: GUTO REQUENA - a Brazilian production company They used sensors that record heartbeat, voices and brainwaves and got people to talk about being in love with their partner Using the data generated from this they used an algorithm to create unique visualisations of each person’s love, as intricate as snowflakes These were 3D printed and given to each couple as a physical expression of their unique love
• #26: Dr Genevieve Bell, “Technology’s roll is to keep us in flow.” Previously we were trying to use technology to define the world This year we seemed to accept that technology is defining the world we lived in, the last interface we need to worry about is us… Make it more human, make it more meaningful, make the experience the thing RIGHT NOW AT EVERY LEVEL