Students at the University of New Hampshire developed this Raspberry Pi cluster to visualize the operations of a supercomputer. Whenever a particular server is processing its arm extends, showing the flow of data operations within the cluster over time.
Innovation is the raison d’être of SXSW Interactive. The world gathers each year to hear and see both what’s new and what’s next. From one perspective, SXSWi could be summarized as innovative Innovators innovating and sharing their innovations.
Sometimes these innovations are truly revolutionary. Paul Gaudio, Global Creative Director for Adidas, is in the process of completely remaking this established brand. From the materials used to make their footwear to the manufacturing process to the sales experience, Adidas is re-thinking everything as part of an initiative they call Futurecraft. Imagine walking into an Adidas Speed Store in your local community, working with a sales representative to design your shoe and then watching as it is printed, finished and delivered. Adidas has partnered with materials developers and process engineers to create the potential for local product manufacturing that can scale from cities to in-store – a truly amazing shift for an international brand. The drive behind these innovations is to create a more sustainable infrastructure and to inspire local economies. The marketing revolution inherent in these changes is personalization: Adidas for you in a very specific sense.
Google continues to innovate at an incredible pace. In just one and half years they have developed the software infrastructure and hardware to create a self-driving vehicle that is statistically and demonstrably safer than human drivers. The platform is not flawless, but it is very close. In a demonstration by project director Chris Urmson, the SXSW audience watched as Google Cars mapped the world around them and responded intelligently and intuitively to everything from normal to highly chaotic driving environments (imagine people intentionally running out in front of Google Cars to see how they will respond). The depth of detail, the speed of the calculations and the fact that all of this data is completely interchanged between Google vehicles is simply astounding. Within three years, Google projects, we could see the first iteration of self-driving cars operating in specific contexts for specific purposes. In 30 years? Who knows? But Google imagines that interconnected self-driving vehicles will be the norm, bringing increased safety to the roads and additional opportunities for riders.
Adobe is also innovating its product lines. The Adobe platform is the industry standard for millions of creatives and marketers worldwide. As anyone who has used the Creative Cloud at any time in the past six months knows, Adobe is in the process of overhauling its user experience to revitalize it and make it consistent across all three of their cloud product lines: Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Marketing Cloud. Shawn Cheris, Senior Experience Design Manager for Adobe, leads this initiative (called Spectrum), making the kinds of interface changes where minute features used by only 1% of their user base still impacts over 20,000 users. Since the experience of the Adobe interface is the brand, the company hopes that cleaning up the design and normalizing the experience across its products will be worth the total cost of user angst over the changes. The response has been overwhelmingly positive thus far, but as the innovations go, so does the brand, so it remains to be seen how Adobe will fare by the end of the process. I, for one, am optimistic. Alongside these interface changes, Adobe is also creating two new creative platforms: Comet and the Nimbus Project. These new tools promise to bring ease of use and flexibility in developing interfaces and a platform for engaged learning.
The SXSW Trade Show has historically been a key touchpoint for innovation. In past years it is here where venture capitalists found the next viral app or the hardware innovations that inspire the next generation of thinking. While there are a few bright spots (the University of Michigan, the University of New Hampshire and a few international startups) this year’s show is noticeably smaller than previous years and I have yet to see anything earth shattering. Maybe I’m jaded because this is my fifth year and my expectations are sky-high. There are plenty of brand-driven demonstrations featuring VR technology and other forms of tech play, but this year (at least so far) I am missing the truly revolutionary, next level developments that we have all grown used to seeing at SXSW. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of interesting booths that are relevant to SXSW Film, Interactive and Music. However, most of these booths are representing established products and not reaching for the bleeding edge of innovation.
While the trade show is a bit disappointing, there continues to be a robust culture of innovation at SXSW Interactive. But sometimes innovation is not about tech. There are times when we ourselves need to be innovated. Enter Dr. Brené Brown, Research Professor of Social Work at the University of Houston, TED talker, and bestselling author. Brown spoke to the entire SXSW Interactive audience about her research into the experiences of shame, vulnerability, courage, compassion and recovering from failure. The culture at large and the business climate within organizations represented at SXSW do not routinely support values like vulnerability, love or compassion. These cultures are often driven by fear of failure, shame and disempowerment. Survey data Brown collected from 150,000 participants over the course of a decade shows that these cultures tend to demotivate and depress people. She encouraged a revolution of vulnerability in organizations, which breeds cultures characterized by openness and the sort of courage that is able to find the resources to persevere through setbacks and failures. While there are some great technology innovations on display here at SXSW, Brown’s may be the most important because the empathetic culture she imagines forms the foundation from which future innovations may both emerge and thrive.
The innovations unveiled at SXSW Interactive continue to push the horizon of possibility across the fields that are represented here in Austin. This spirit of innovation remains the driving inspiration behind the SXSW experience.