Seven Things from SXSW That Will Make You Shit Yourself

SXSW 2018 felt like a spaceship that crash-landed in a box set of Black Mirror. When I wasn’t bombarded by AI, VR, MR, blockchain and the future of human-tech interfaces, I was street hustled by aliens promoting Spielberg's latest sci-fi flick premiering at the SXSW Movie Festival.  

I only knew I was back on planet earth when the Music Festival properly kicked in and attendees’ headwear morphed from directional hair and bald patches to Stetsons, sun visors and baseball caps worn backwards, styled with neck or body jewellery. The Interactive crowd doesn’t accessorise like your Gen Z rapper or country music producer.

I’m neither a virgin or a veteran of SXSW but each day I hope to feel a little scared; good scared, like the after-effects a parachute jump. You know you’ll live, but you’ve pushed yourself to the limits. Here are a few themes that made me ever so slightly shit myself.

1. China’s creation economy

Over the past decade, the energy and intelligence powering its economy have given rise to a new breed of rockstar geek, revered and rewarded for their innovation. Key factors driving China’s creation economy include new wealth and China’s love affair with mobile technology. Today China has thousands of nimble upstarts in an ecosystem with eye-watering evaluations and access to capital that not only rivals Silicon Valley but blows it out of the water.

More than 40% of Honey’s revenues are from China and we see a pace of unrivalled technological evolution unmatched in Europe or the USA. Look on your atlas for Shenzhen, because that’s the innovation hub that’s working on an algorithm to eat your lunch.

China’s modern-day contribution to society is the AI revolution, smart tech, open source cloud computing, shared bikes, high-speed rail, e-commerce and mobile payments. Nowhere else on earth does this at such pace and scale.

2. Don’t be a man

I attended several seminars on diversity in the workplace and after a one-morning marathon that included the chief branding officer of Uber dressed in a sequined catsuit sporting a giant afro, and a more soberly-dressed Melinda Gates, I sobbed my way down Congress contemplating a sex change.

The fierce femininity trend fuelled by #metoo and #timesup has rightly spawned a movement that puts many bad men in their place, out of business or in prison. But the unintended consequence for me of being a white, bearded, middle-aged male board director led to some serious self-analysis and motivation for office equality.

There are more women than ever in the workplace, but why hasn’t it evolved?  #metoo has sparked a day of reckoning and realisation that the gig economy and AI-driven businesses need to employ a diverse team of people. We have to grasp the opportunity now and for the lazy boardrooms, maybe tie their bonuses to a diversity KPI.

3. Voice is the new OS

2018 is the beginning of the end of smartphones. Sales are down so voice is humanising the interface. There’s a gold rush between Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and a legion of supporting tech companies.

We all sound different and have unique speaking patterns through words, accents, inflexion. Our voiceprints can not only verify who we are, but the tech can understand your location, the size of the room you’re standing in, and how many people are with you.

The standard biometrics of passwords, eye scans, and fingerprints will disappear - conversations will replace passwords. We have been masters of language for centuries, but machines are catching up. Search is evolving from being results-driven to answer-driven, anticipating needs and solving our problems - all because of what we say. The next generation of digital natives will grow up with VUI. Imagine that.

4. Blockchain, obviously

If you know that Ethereum Gas isn’t something to rush to the doctor about, then you have nothing to fear. Cryptocurrencies, distributed applications, and blockchain technology have all grabbed the spotlight, but they aren’t new. Blockchain today is like the internet in the 1980s or streaming Netflix on a mobile phone, it’s in its infancy but promises a limitless bunch of applications and benefits.

The world will be on the Blockchain soon because we don’t trust institutions whether public or private. Maybe two years ago we trusted the social networks and even doctors, now those relationships are strained. The Blockchain negates trust, it’s about verification.

So if you’re not at least half way up the curve you’d better worry, because in less than 10 years most payments will, in some form, be made with tokens and your business will be irrelevant, if not Block-ready.

5. Beware of the Blind Share

According to a Columbia University study, 59% of all links on Twitter are not clicked on at all, but they are shared, while 70% of Facebook users share an article without reading it. People are sharing without ever having read past the headline, and it has a buzzword - the Blind Share.  Is it the end of intelligent thought as we know it?

What’s behind the Blind Share phenomenon? 68% share to give people a better sense of who they are and what they care about - they share their values.

Should you be worried that the content you agonised over and spent a fortune on is not getting read - apart from the clever clickbait headline? Actually, this teaches us masses about consumer behaviour. As a marketer you need to maximise the moment - whether that’s seven seconds, 30 seconds or half an hour.

6. Millennials vs Gen Z

Why is it that so many marketers don’t know their X from their Y or their Z? That’s scary, but what should make you more scared is the potent power of influencers and the erosion of traditional media’s place in the schedule for any work targeted at anyone over the age of 30.  

Sometime in the next five minutes, you will have to seed control of your brand to 12 smartphone-toting 16-year olds who cumulatively have direct access to 100 squillion close friends - your customers. If you don’t know the definition of authenticity, find out fast.

7. Artificial everything

You know you’re in trouble when your toothbrush has AI and you can ask Alexa to flush your toilet. AI itself is nothing new, but it now permeates our daily life and progress is dizzying. AI is in our toasters, smartphones, streaming services, cars, work tools, the food truck outside your WeWork, and even SXSW’s mobile app, although you wouldn’t think it.

There is much-misplaced optimism and fear of AI - will it save us from ourselves, or will robots kill us all after they’ve taken our jobs?  The first AI “child” has been born, it's called NASNet and its parents are Google. Google unveiled its AutoML project last year, with the aim of making it easier to design machine learning models by automating the process.

Like a child, NASNet gets smarter, it recognises objects from people to cats and traffic lights to backpacks - in real time - and currently has an accuracy rating of 82.7%. NASNet outperforms other systems created by humans and when NASNet is a grumpy teenager, the world will be a very different place.  

SXSW spawns creative with piercing tech whilst oozing the future. Choose your future, but hurry because the game will evolve again at SXSW 2019.