How to Turn ‘The What’ into ‘The How’ at SXSW 2024

I’m back from our first visit to South By Southwest in Austin. Taking in sixteen talks and eight brand experiences over five days.

With so many sessions to choose from there’s a real knack to cutting through the ubiquitous and overused clickbait buzzwords ‘storytelling’, ‘culture’, ‘trends’, and ‘strategy’.  Much content focused on WHAT a brand has done rather than HOW it achieved that. Talks become ‘state of our world’ rather than ‘change the world’ talks.

However, if you take the right guidance and make good choices there’s an amazing wealth of expertise and inspiration to be found.    

My Key Takeouts

Happiness

It feels like that post-Covid spotlight on ‘resilience’ is shifting to a more optimistic focus on ‘happiness’ with repeated calls for happiness to be seen as a national index level with economic GDP. 

• A psychology session focusing on new proof that employee contentment leads directly to a company’s profitability with five new tips to drive it within your organisation (Embracing Negativity, Time Affluence, Self-Compassion, Job Crafting and Social Belonging).  
• The inspiring John Maeda pivoting his design session by making the audience recite the list of Top Five ‘People’s Regrets When They Are Dying’. 
• A brilliant session about UK project Ranvier - depression is the leading cause of death for men under 50 and one of the outcomes of at least a third of all pregnancies. It impacts all aspects of society and productivity. A new ‘covid test’ style diagnostic tool is imminent that exploits the data connection between ability to taste and presence of depression to finally diagnose and measure improvements. Genius.

AI, VR, AR  

AI was an inevitable big presence - with some nervousness, some scaremongering, little practicality, and many confusing the term with good old-fashioned data.  

• A highlight was the brilliant, entertaining John Maeda who started with a scattergun approach to references from the SORA AI film, Josh Clark’s approach to AI as just another material, to the simple joy of Sinerider. He moved on to empowering definitions (large/small, open/closed, mono/multi-modal, embedding/completion). Before finishing on a rare note of AI optimism celebrating the power of critical thinking within non-profits, and how technology challenges us to find our own human values.  
• Responsible design and usage took centre stage – how should brands use AI ‘ethically’ to facilitate better connections (and more effective results), who polices that, and can it even be policed? As with the ongoing challenges with social media giants there is no clear, mandated guidance – yet brands, Big Tech, and national legislators should be taking learnings from the last 20 years. A consistent approach is lacking.  
• With so much previous focus on VR, the shift in attention is to the revolutionary power of 

Trends

It wouldn’t be SXSW without some forecasting - when it’s done right there are true moments of revelation and inspiration.

• Amy Webb, the veteran SXSW presence, was as great and entertaining as ever. She presented a balance of the subjective and objective, equal parts scary and inspirational, and made connections between different aspects of culture and technology to declare the arrival of a 'technology supercycle' we’ve not seen the likes of since the Industrial Revolution. She makes a fascinating introduction to the low energy, high speed emergence of organoid computing – scientists have already created a computer from living tissue that can play Pong! This talk is freely available on YouTube and well worth 69 minutes of your time…… 

We Know What We're Doing

Sometimes it’s not about learning, it’s the reassurance that you as an individual and the organisation you’re in are smashing it. 

• Many sessions emphasised the need for a common thread from emotional to rational, from physical to digital, from attitude to value proposition ……which has been a fundamental tenet of all we’ve done at Collaborate over the last 12 months and the reason we use creative journeys to double check the experience and zones within.  
• Speakers talked of the importance of cohesive ideation, production and social culture that respects and plays on individual strengths and weaknesses – this is something Collaborate has heavily invested in. We already have a fantastic work culture and put in the work around well-being and shared beliefs – and it was powerful to feel reinforced by a great talk by Professor Laurie Santos on five key improvements (Embracing Negativity, Time Affluence, Self-Compassion, Job Crafting and Social Belonging).
• A big highlight was the excellent Archetype session by TinyWins’ Lillian Marsh that reinforced the way we’ve been using the brand strategy tool for 20+ years. 
• An interesting panel of Editors from Hearst, Conde Nast, Time and National Geographic discussed the ongoing battle for attention span between magazines and influencers.  Great lessons for our Experience Content offer across differentiation, tonality, consistency and sense of belonging.

Top Tips

If you’re thinking of going next year, you’ll need a fair amount of forward planning…

• Seek out help from friends who’ve been…. just to navigate the basic how, why and where of your visit. 
• Don’t ignore the 9am rush for tickets for the following day. Getting express tickets on your phone becomes a breakfast ritual like sorting Glastonbury tickets. 
• Allow at least three hours per day for margaritas, fajitas and sourcing cowboy hats! And enjoy.