My take-outs from SXSW 2024

It's been on my bucket list for at least a decade, but this year I finally made the 24-hour trip from Australia to Austin, Texas.

And it was impressive. While I've heard this year may have not been the best year ever, it still blows away my relative comparisons in terms of sheer size and complexity, and I came away with some great new connections and insights.

In previous years there have been 200k - 300k attendees and this year 30% came from outside the US. There were 1600+ sessions, activations, exhibitions, gigs and screenings over 10 days.

The first three days - Friday, Saturday and Sunday - were definitely more busy, I imagine because locals and those nearby could take one day off work but still get some decent time at the festival.

I posted a daily summary of my take-outs from each day - which can find further down - but here are my five broader insights from the sessions I attended:

1. Overwhelming and exhausting, but experience > expectations
2. The difference is culture
3. AI is the everything-engine
4. There's a coming convergence of technologies
5. Climate is a critical, core challenge

Overwhelming and exhausting, but experience > expectations

• It took me 10-15 hours to get my shortlist (~400 sessions), add it to a spreadsheet to see official + unofficial events in one view (see above), and then refine it down to first, second and third preference (and apparently the average person takes 30 hours!).
• Having a plan was definitely the right option, but I found myself making session choices based on how I was feeling on the day, and the FOMO eventually dissipated.
• While I was staying with others from Adelaide, I was largely by myself, and having to be switch on the whole time was exhausting, with very little space for downtime - though it was my choice to push through and get value for time and money.
• I thought I'd get 70% value from content and 30% from the experience, but it was easily the other way around; being surrounded by like-minded people and meeting people doing interesting and impactful work outweighed learning new ideas and concepts (although that was inspiring too).
• I also didn't expect the late nights (partially jet-lag, partially the offer of free drinks), nor the music part of SXSW. But seeing the Black Keys, plus a host of smaller, random bands in smaller, random bars reminded me of how good live music is.
• And I found myself to be hungry almost the whole time; there wasn't a lot of time in between sessions and exhibitions, and lines were long. Even dinner was a challenge - some meetups and events had free food, but if not it just seemed too hard! And eating the equivalent of junk food every night just doesn't work. On day 7 I just wanted a plain bowl of pasta but I had to walk 25 minutes to get there!

The difference is culture

• There's a perception, even a myth, that entrepreneurs and innovators in the US are far superior to us everyday folk in Australia, and for that reason I was given advice to not attend sessions where I was already an expert in, but instead go to sessions that will expand your thinking.
• I did find that everyone I met was having similar challenges to me, they thought in similar ways, and they weren't the 'tech bro' stereotype. There was friendly and constructive discussion and I was able to offer advice or insight to a number of them.
• But what I found to be the difference between here (at least in the circles I run in) and the US is the culture. Failure is seen as part of success, not it's opposite. The concept of 'failing up' was prevalent. Mark Cuban said it “doesn’t matter how many times you fail,? you only gotta be right one time and then everyone calls you a genius”.
• Noah Kagan (CEO Appsumo) left me with a simple, but powerful line: "now not how”. What is the one thing I can do today to move the needle, instead of endless planning. He also said the Fear of Starting and the Fear of Asking (people to pay for your product) and are the two main reasons people don't start a startup/business.

AI is the everything-engine

• I counted over 100 sessions with AI in their title, but it came up I think literally in every session I attended. It's clear that it was the theme this year, and it's also clear why.
• I only attended one or two AI-specific sessions, but the session descriptions appeared to largely be similar, so I think I got the gist.
• Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO) said in 2017 that "software is eating the world, but AI is going to eat software".
• There was also a sense that the hype around AI is beginning to be tempered with a realisation of some of the problems and challenges they raise.
• While the 'usual' challenges of AI were discussed (eg job destruction/ creation, provenance, productivity, etc), an interesting example was raised by Chris Dixon about the future of search. People search in Google, Google sends traffic to websites (=data), LLMs use that data to learn, people use LLMs. But if LLMs foreseeably replace the web search then there's no traffic or data to learn from, so we may need to create 'data farms'.
• Separately to SXSW, last week the EU passed the Artificial Intelligence Act, which will soon become law and apply to companies in the EU and those selling to EU consumers. It’ll start in as little as 6 months and take up to 24 months to be fully imposed and imposes strict regulations on AI use, banning harmful applications and categorizing others by risk level. (read)

There's a coming convergence of technologies

• While AI may have stolen the hype and attention, there are a number of other key technologies that continue bubbling under the surface - XR (mixed reality) and spatial computing, robotics, blockchain and the distributed web, 3D printing, biotech, 5G, sensors and IoT to name a few.
• But AI is also helping accelerate and improve many of these; it's the rising tide lifting all boats. It's helping in areas like science, medicine and genomics where it's able to analyse huge data sets and spot trends or find new clues.
• AI and the blockchain is an interesting one as the two appear to be a fundamental shift in how the future web looks, but they're also opposites in a lot of ways. Regardless, Vitalik Beuterin (Ethereum cofounder) has outlined his vision for how crypto and AI can work together (read).
• Some technology is also not as far would be liked - quantum computing and autonomous vehicles (AVs) being two of the big ones.
• While I didn't understand a lot of the language and theory, I do know that quantum computing isn't just a faster version of a classic computer and it will be years, if not decades before it's used in a similar way. Today it's really used for two main things: breaking current public key cryptography, and simulating quantum physics and chemistry.
• And for AVs, there are still too many variables on normal roads with human drivers. Anthony Levandowski - the 'father of AVs' - said "we don't have a sensor problem, we have an intelligence problem", that "you can’t have an AV that gets it right 95% of the time otherwise it may crash three times on the way home", and that “there are three areas where AVs make sense today - dangerous, dull or dirty” (which is why mining fits that bill).
• But the promise of AVs - eventually - is amazing. Electric, shared AVs with modular designs tailored to the orderer/user that can use biometric and external information to help us arrive feeling better than when we left, using the journey as a 'moment to pause in a hectic life'. And when you think of AVs as another room in our house, then a $70k car no longer sounds as expensive.
• Oh, and the Cybertruck is real - I saw a number of times both parked and driving!

Climate is a critical, core challenge

• It felt like sustainability was another one of those topics that came through in many sessions I attended, even when it wasn't the subject. It's clear that climate is a critical, core challenge; one that is daunting but where there is still hope and progress being made.
• One of the best lines I took away was from someone I met at a meet-up: “we’ve moved from human-centered design to earth-centered design”.
• Transport was where a lot of effort is being put in, predominantly in EVs and ultimately AVs.
• Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber CEO) spoke about their plans to become carbon neutral by 2030 in US, Canada and the EU and 2040 everywhere else
• There were a number of future visions about how an ecosystem of AVs + renewable energy + reliable energy storage will create a zero-emissions circular utopia. But there are many challenges here.
• Glydways was a really interesting example of how trying to solve traffic congestion and the move towards AVs. These are personal, small autonomous electric cabins that drive between two destinations on a closed loop no wider than a bike lane. They’ve been awarded a couple of contracts in some US cities to go between the airport and another drop-off station.
• Ben Lamm (CEO & Founder of Colossal Biosciences ) and actor Seth Green spoke about de-extinction and the goal of bringing back the Woolly Mammoth by 2028. An audience member asked a great question: "Could we use this technology to bring back species that have become extinct on another planet," and the answer was "yes, if conditions were right"! Amazing.

And for a bit more depth into the sessions I attended:

• Day -1 - I attended day one of the _SOUTHSTART festival in Adelaide this year that overlapped with SXSW; some great insights on the ideation process, and Imma, Asia's #1 virtual human.
• Day 0 - travelling and conference prep time
• Day 1 - Austin & Adelaide sister city relationship, SETI program, de-extinction and non-obvious thinking
• Day 2 - web 1/2/3 = read/write/own, future of search in an LLM world, sound baths and flow priestesses
• Day 3 - failing is a part of success, not its opposite, there's a coming convergence of technologies, "not not how" and why the fear of starting and fear of asking holds people back
• Day 4 - Uber's plan to dominate transport and deliveries, why quantum computing is still a way off
• Day 5 - why AVs makes sense in dirty, dull and dangerous scenarios, transmedia is gaining momentum, and learning your curiosity style
• Day 6 - moving from human-centred design to earth-centred design, AI-powered personalised beer, and Australia House
• Day 7 - autonomous vehicles are way cool, but are still a way off, traffic congestion won't be solved by building more roads, and crossword construction is an interesting beast!
• Day 8 - Jack Conte (Patreon CEO) on how the internet has changed and affected creators over the last 30 years and how it might evolve next

If you want to listen to me talk about all of this, listen on the Idea Overflow podcast ?? PART ONE and PART TWO.

Or happy to share more if you want to DM me for a chat about!