SXSW Top 10 Trends: Entrepreneurialism, Making Data Meaningful, Hacking for Good, Digital Becoming Physical, Branded Content, Real-Time Marketing, Sharing Economy, Social Change, Smart Video, New Verticals, Crowdsourcing & Crowdfunding. Plus additional slides on how these trends impact the transportation industry.
2. Entrepreneurialism
• “America‟s Secret Sauce” = Leaders in Innovation
• The 2nd Internet Revolution will be harnessing the Internet to disrupt
and transform other industries
Manufacturing: 3D
Printing
Community Organizing: Virtual March for Immigration
Education: Virtual
classrooms
3. Making Data Meaningful
• Interpretation and visualization of data to make it meaningful and
useful
Nate Silver correctly predicted all 50 states in the
Presidential election
Foursquare checkins by
venue in downtown Austin
4. Hacking for Good
• Solving government or societal problems using data and open-
source solutions
5. Digital Becoming Physical
• Transforming the intersection between physical objects and digital
spaces
• Augmented reality, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, wearables
6. Branded Content
• Using the art of storytelling, content curation, and content creation
to target specific audiences with meaningful brand experiences
Branded Documentaries
Oreo’s Super Bowl Twitter Ad
Web Content
8. Sharing Economy
• Sharing allows for private economic assets to be financially
optimized among communities
9. Social Change
• Through social media, everyone can be an advocate and agent
for change
Educational Website on Pandemics
Tie-In with Movie Contagion TV Programming for HIV Education
Cory Booker Saves Newark Using Twitter
10. Smart Video, New Verticals
• Video dominates the social media landscape as the most
engaging medium with the most new verticals and technologies
New Comedy Channel
Backed by
Google/YouTube
Multi-Media Channel
Focused on
Sustainability
Video
sharing/suggesti
ons like Pandora
12. Branded Transportation
• Conference branded transportation options
• Chevy‟s „Catch-a-Chevy‟, test drive a Volt
• HBO‟s Game of Thrones and Uber pedicabs
• Rented bikes
• Buses & trains
Co-Founder of AOL and now Chairman of Case Foundation and Revolution, Steve Case has reinvented himself and is no longer all about your Mother’s Internet service. His new mission is to encourage us to tap into “America’s secret sauce” as leaders in innovation and growth. His perspective is that we had the first Internet revolution already, and the second will be using the Internet to disrupt and transform other industries like government, transportation, manufacturing and education, which will happen outside of Silicon Valley. He believes that through the American spirit and entrepreneurial mindset, we can reinvent these industries. Education can be reinvented by enabling students to have access to the best educators virtually. Manufacturing can be reinvented through technologies like 3D printing. And community organizing can be reinvented by enabling more people to participate through activities like a virtual march for immigration.
Marketers are drowning in data these days, but interpreting that data and making it both meaningful and usable in different formats for different purposes was the topic of many sessions. Nate Silver, America’s most famous statistician, was credited with forecasting the presidential election through data in state and national polls. His success has inspired new ways to crunch data. Digitas helped make sense of SXSW demographics, trends, influencers, and social reach through its own social data visualization tool called SODA, which pulled data from Twitter. This map used Foursquare to chart people based on check-ins at venues in downtown Austin that can be filtered by venue type. SXSW got into the act this year with badges that included QR codes that were scanned upon entering each session, tracking our conference activities. How Did He Do It?By aggregating and analyzing large digital data sets from many different sources (national polls, state-level polls, electoral outcomes, historical polls, economic variables, demographics, and party registration figures to name a few), Silver came up with his own prediction model. He correlated data, used statistical models, ran simulations, and focused on probabilities.In short, Silver created his own custom method for data analysis based on the metrics that mattered.Just think what you could do with targeted strategic data about your business.
Hacking officially has a triple meaning. The first has more negative implications: seeking and exploiting weaknesses in a computer system or network – a practice made infamous by Anonymous. The second meaning is a more positive one that focuses on solving problems using data and open-source solutions. Several sessions focused on hacking and the promotion of hackathons for a more collaborative and accessible local government. Two examples are Code for America and NYC’s Code Core, both of which tap into volunteer technologists to solve local government initiatives like disaster relief or urban blight. The third definition of hacking is to hack events like SXSW and to show up without a badge. There were many people who arrived this year without credentials and had meetings and attended offsite events to take advantage of networking with attendees.
The intersection between physical objects and digital spaces is set to transform marketing in the next few years. The most awe-inspiring technology at SXSW this year was 3D printing, through companies like MakerBot. The Digitizer takes physical objects, scans them, then creates laser points and wraps those laser points into a 3D model, allowing the objects to be replicated. Leap Motion’s 3-D gesture-control device is set to take huge market share from Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s Kinect, especially at the $79.99 price point. There were many sessions on augmented reality, artificial intelligence and wearables, a trend that started last year by Nike’s Fuel Band, which monitors your daily activity. Google’s experimental Talking Shoe is a hacked sneaker with a Bluetooth and speaker in it, telling you things about yourself to encourage behavior change. And Google Glasses enable you to take photos and videos from the first-person perspective. And through a mobile app called Moves, Pulsar was able to track miles walked during the conference. We averaged 3 miles per day.
Continuing a trend from 2012, branded content focuses on the art of storytelling, content curation, creation, and the tools to do it. It’s now accepted that marketers need to be in the content development game with the creation of meaningful content that is targeted directly to their specific audiences and in support of their brand story. http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP15722 From product design, to packaging, to advertising and beyond, everything tels a story about a brand. And these stories are living, evolving, fluid entities that we can interact with at all touchpoints – across mediums and devices, ads and apps, in both physical and digital worlds. EX – Google Chrome’s campaigns, Dear Sophie AdVolkswagen campaigns, Starwars partnershipEx. Flow Non-Fiction creates branded documentary content for Tide, Bing, Pantene, Forrd and more.
Oreo made a big splash at the Super Bowl this year by creating and posting an ad on Twitter during the blackout with the headline “You Can Still Dunk in the Dark.” At SXSW, they promoted their Grab & Go product in front of an interactive booth. Most marketers don’t have the budgets to do real-time marketing, but it's a trend worth watching for those who do.
With technology, you can now turn your home into a hotel with Airbnb, or trade homes for a vacation with Home Swap, share a home-cooked meal with SupperKing, share a ride with SideCar or Lyft, or even catch a ride on a private jet you don’t own with BlackJet.
Cory Booker’s inspiring session emphasized that we all need to get back to our “advocation,” not our vocation – and that what defines you is not your position, but your purpose. With social media, we can all be change agents. Other sessions focused on sparking social change with content integration through partnerships between non-profits and Hollywood. From creating awareness of pandemics, HIV, autism or sustainability, public awareness of topics can be measured before and after exposure to programs and content to demonstrate their impact.
Videocontinues todominate as the most engaging medium with new verticals and technologies popping up. Cory Booker’s new startup Waywire.com is like Pandora for video in that it houses your video identity and enables you to collect and organize videos into wires you can share. Jash is a new comedy experiment backed by YouTube and Google with an all-star comedy cast curating videos that will make you laugh. Blip produces and distributes all episodic web series from well-known producers or up-and-coming producers. SHFT TV is part of a multimedia platform that creates original digital programming ranging from food to fashion, to urbanization and technology.
Crowdsourcing is taking a task or problem and outsourcing it to people who share a common vision or values with the topic. There were many sessions focused on crowdsourcing, from digital device design, mental health, or building new products or apps, to new startups focused on hiring, collaboration, or online shopping. The latest incarnation of crowdsourcing is now crowdfunding – raising money for your idea, company, movie, album and even for investing or participatory budgeting by networking and pooling resources via the Internet through companies like Kickstarter, Crowdfunder, and Indiegogo. 2013 Oscar winner in documentary short category called Inocente produced by local DC producers got its money through kickstarter.
From Chevy’s “Catch-a-Chevy” and showcase of the Volt to HBO’s Game of Thrones pedicabs to rented bikes, getting you from Point A to Point B is all officially sponsored. HootSuite owl bus. Uberpedicabs, taskrabbit car.
Ridesharing has arrived alongside carsharing as an “almost but not quite” accepted alternative form of transportation. Peer-to-peer on-demand ridesharing applications stormed SXSW this year including: Wheelz, Zimride, Lyft, Getaround, Sidecar, and Relayrides. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) recently reached an agreement with Lyft and Uber to withdraw fines against the ridesharing and limo services, allowing them both to continue operating while it evaluates potential new regulation. The issue at hand is how the CPUC classifies new transportation services that rely on mobile applications to enable ridesharing and handle fares charged to riders. Those battles continued for Lyft and Sidecar in Austin however, as the Austin City Council passed an ordinance that unlicensed drivers who accepted payments for rides could have their cars impounded. To get around this, Sidecar offered free rides during the conference and Lyft took an out-of-the-box approach by offering free piggy-back rides instead of shared rides by car. A petition on change.org is now urging Austin to embrace ridesharing, and the city will soon vote on new ordinances to address this new transportation alternative.
Ridesharing and carsharing have inspired other transportation alternatives such as Scoot Networks. Scoot Networks are electric scooters that come with helmets, don’t require a motorcycle license and are available in garages and at transit hubs in San Francisco. Your smart phone is your key, dashboard, and payment method. And Uber Technologies is evolving from offering an on-demand private driver service to launching BlackJet, which books passengers on private planes that are out of use or have extra space.
The most usable application at SXSW was the transportation aggregator RideScout. Formerly known as GoingMyWay, RideScout is a real-time aggregator and comparison app for all transportation options – buses, transit, subways, taxis, limos, shuttles, carsharing and pedicabs. What’s simply brilliant about this application is that each transit option can be compared by cost or the time the trip will take, so the user can decide which option is best. Currently only available in Austin, but with offices in DC, RideScout is sure to expand quickly as a potential solution to aid in promoting alternative forms of transportation. Dadnab is another Austin-based business that enables you to get transit directions by text message. And Moovel is a German application that also integrates all transportation options into one, enabling you to decide which mode is ideal in each moment.
Several other companies are using technology to connect to people in cars and bikes, through wearables, and even to give guidance to the blind. Ford’s Applink infotainment system is expanding its app network with its recent integration of Spotify, joining Pandora, Slacker, Amazon Cloud Player, Mog and Rapsody. The system is connected through a smartphone that can be controlled via voice commands or use steering wheel buttons to give drivers access to their smartphones without taking their hands off the wheel.Not to be outdone, the Chevy booth at SXSW touted the Chevy Spark and Sonic’s ability with MyLink radio to access Apple’s virtual assistant Siri using a Bluetooth button in the steering wheel.The Fukushima Wheel, a specially outfitted bicycle with environmental sensors and a mobile app, measures live city data like radiation, temperature, and humidity, so that you can visualize your own carbon emissions as you bike. The app enables you to navigate to places of interest via Foursquare and plans to use location-based advertising to support the project. In a session called “Making Accessible Transportation Modern & Cool,” TRX Systems touted a project funded by the Federal Highway Administration to build a navigation system for people with vision impairment and blindness. The TRX Neon Indoor Location System is combined with an app that uses a smartphone’s camera to guide the visually impaired in complicated environments and to verify that the user has reached the correct destination. Google Glass was one of the hottest technologies at SXSW, glasses that enable you to record video, take photos, find directions, ask questions and share with your friends, all hands-free.