Highlights from #SXSW2019

In March 2019 I had the pleasure of travelling to Austin, Texas to attend South by Southwest (SXSW), the annual tech, music and film conference that has grown in influence since it began over 30 years ago. SXSW attracts a smart and curious selection of speakers and attendees, with its finger on the pulse of emerging trends. Maybe it's a Texas thing, but everyone I met was bold, generous and eager to share what they're thinking about, which resulted in some very spirited discussions and lots of takeaways to explore.

Key insights I took away from this year's event include:

1. Our future will emerge as a confluence of adjacent trends

Amy Webb is a professor, best-selling author and quantitative futurist whose diverse academic background includes economics, computer science, music and sociology. Of all the incredible speakers featured at SXSW, she was by far my favorite. Amy's annual tech trends report does a fantastic job of cutting through the internet chatter to identify the trends that are shaping our future and has become required reading for entrepreneurs, policy makers and investors across the world.

"To understand the future of your field, you need to watch trends in adjacent industries"

Amy's keynote speech focused on the importance of paying attention to trends outside one's immediate focus area as the increasingly interconnected nature of our world means adjacent areas carry potential for tremendous impact on one's core business. In driving this point home, Amy gave the example of Walmart, which must consider advances in gene editing, 4D printing, smart farming and green technology in determining its forward strategy. When combined, trends in each of these areas could result in food being grown from engineered seeds at indoor plant factories housed in rival Amazon's Whole Foods grocery stores, located in dense urban areas. If this confluence of trends were to transpire, Walmart would face increasingly stiff competition from Amazon, which would have access to cheaper groceries grown closer to their urban clientele. These trends would also affect farmers, whose production would become inefficient by comparison to indoor farming, and transportation logistics companies whose services may no longer be needed if food can be grown and distributed in close proximity to end consumers.

I found Amy's work so interesting that I attended another one of her talks, using the Q&A to ask her which popular trend she considered to be a complete red herring. I was delighted when she responded by discussing how our fascination with flying cars obscures the greater trend in automated mobility and how it affects so many aspects of our daily life.

Video of our exchange is available below, including Amy's perspective on which jobs are most likely to be immune from automation.

2. Solutions to our challenges can exist in unconventional places

In one of the most interesting talks I attended, Danish architect Bjarke Ingels discussed a project commissioned by the Dubai Future Foundation to envision life on Mars in 2117. In light of the red planet's limited resources and environmental challenges, Ingels' team had to be creative in designing structures that could accommodate life in this seemingly uninhabitable environment. In tackling the assignment, the team began by comparing the conditions on Earth and Mars to understand gaps in resource requirements and ultimately create structures that could accommodate human life while retaining a sense of familiarity we associate with home. In addressing the red planet's resource constraints the team were able to extrapolate ideas for a more sustainable future here on Earth.

"It's very likely that the answers to our problems on Earth may be found on Mars"

Throughout his presentation attendees were able to get a sense of how the team considers problems from different angles, breaking challenges into their component parts and rebuilding them again in new and compelling ways. From his flood mitigation plan for lower Manhattan (cheekily named "the dry line") to his vision for a floating maritime metropolis of interconnected platforms, Ingels appears to relish the opportunity to follow his curiosity in imaging alternative ways of creating built environments.

3. Tech vigilance is important and should be taken seriously

One of the great features of SXSW is the diversity of its speakers. Although the majority of the talks I attend are in the Interactive stream (business and tech), I always seek out interesting topics and speakers in other areas. This year I was excited to hear T Bone Burnett talk about his experience in the music industry. T Bone is a 10-time Grammy-winning producer and songwriter best known for his work with the Coen Brothers on films including "O Brother, Where Art Thou?". Like many in the audience, I was surprised at the sharp tone of his keynote speech in which he took big tech giants to task for not doing more to use the internet and social media for good, rather than merely for profit. His key argument is that policy makers have allowed big tech to operate in a virtual no man's land, abandoning their duty to the general public in the process.

I encourage you to read the full speech and consider what we are giving up in exchange for "free" products, such as gmail and Facebook. The phrase: "if you're not paying for the product, you're the product" certainly comes to mind.

“I will stay with the artists. Artists contain the accumulated knowledge of generations. Artists create conscience. The artists are our only hope.”