The final two days of SXSW Interactive were a little less frantic than the first three, if only because some portion of the attendees left town to go back work. I also went back to work, but managed to catch some panels nonetheless. On Monday, I sat through a real snooze of a talk on emerging technology in the green building industry. The best part of it was some examples of open source modeling technology that simplified the design process for architects. That couldn’t save it, however, and I would say the panel was moreso an attempt to do something (anything!) green without much regard for relevance.
Tuesday held much more of interest. Some of it was confusing, other parts enlightening, but suffice to say it all made me think. I started off in “Welcome to your Posthuman Future”, a fake product launch for a neural implant that basically turns you into an iPhone. You can take pictures by blinking, send emails by writing with your finger on a wall, etc. The weirdest part was that some 11% of the population would get one of these things – if they actually existed. Thanks, but no thanks.
Next, I crammed into the largest room for the final keynote interview of Chris Anderson (from Wired) by Guy Kawasaki (VC guru). They were playful and combative, but also knowledgable while discussing the power of Free and what it means to us. Anderson argued that all digital content will eventually be free because the marginal cost to reproduce it is zero. One current manifestation of this phenomenon is the “freemium” model; a basic free version for 95% of us, and premium paid version for the other 5%. Think Gmail, where it’s free to use but you can pay for more space.
I wrapped the day up with a great session on mobile technology for social good. We heard from the folks at UNICEF, Vodaphone, and others as they described using SMS text messages and mobile internet for charity work. Did you know that more people in Africa have cell phones than in the US or Europe? True story. This panel also utilized twitter most effectively of all the panels I attended; they displayed all tweets with the panel’s hashtag #goodmob, actually took questions from the tweets, and responded to tweets during the panel. Can you say plugged in?
In any case, I really enjoyed getting to immerse myself in the SXSWers and their uber-tech mindset for a few days. Until next year, SXSWi.
Posted on March 23rd, 2009
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