Knomatic CTO, Juston Western, presents on key takeaways from SXSW Interactive 2015. Video of presentation also available online at http://youtu.be/t8g2OfX87tQ

1. SXSW Interactive 2015
A Recap for the Knomatic Team

2. Session Take Aways
Major Themes
Photos & Videos

3. Life in the Oasis
“Ready Player One”
envisioned as ‘what if
Willy Wonka made video
games instead of
chocolate?’
Also inspired by “Man
on a Mission”
documentary on Netflix.

5. - Ernest Cline
“Video games fill our hunter gather needs we spent
centuries perfecting but are no longer necessary.”

7. Text
Digital Shift
Tomorrow’s Relationships & Ideals

12. Digital Shift Take Aways
Tethered Self -> More Immersive Experiences ->
Manicured Self
Creativity + Nature (or VR?) + Connection = Happiness
What happens when everyone is capable of
perfection?
Ethical challenges will outweigh technical challenges

13. Steve Case
Pardon the Disruption:
Entrepreneurship in
Third Wave of the
Internet

14. History of AOL
AOL originally founded
in 1985; not legal for
consumers to connect
to “internet” until 7 yrs
later.
AOL was originally
AppleLink until Apple
yanked the licensing last
minute.

15. The 3 Waves of the Internet
1985 - 2000: focused on infrastructure; Cisco,
Netscape, AOL, etc. Getting plumbing in place.
2000 - 2015: not focused on building the internet,
focused on building on top of the internet. Google,
Facebook, Twitter.
2015 - 2030: will focus more on integrating internet
into daily life; will disrupt healthcare, education, energy
& food industries.

16. 4 Trends in Third Wave
Capital for All
Strategic Partnerships Reemerge
Social Enterprises or Impact Investing; Purpose +
Profits; B-Corps
Entrepreneurship goes both regional & global

17. Biz Stone
Creativity & Redefining
Success

18. Biz Stone on Creativity
Super.me app, pivoted
from Jelly
Empathy & feeling
based communication
Emotional investment in
what you’re working on

19. – Biz Stone
“If you want to build a platform capable of toppling a
despotic regime, it also has to support fart jokes.”

20. Text
@garyvee vs Jack Welch
What It Really Takes To Win in Business

21. @garyvee vs Jack Welch
Self Awareness is critical
Can’t judge businesses based on numbers; also must
have cultural fit
The generosity gene is the one thing you should look
for in a boss
Scale of new businesses in 2 - 3 years much larger;
examples of Uber & Snapchat

22. Text
Consumer Data
The Good, the Bad, and the Not-So-Ugly

23. Consumer Data
Consumer Needs // Business Needs // Technical
Capabilities
Share Early & Often with Stakeholders within your
business
Customization vs Personalization: personalization is
driven by behavior, not settings

24. Consumer Data
Avoiding Being Creepy
Target Predicting Pregnancy
Amazon’s Anticipatory Shipping
Hello Barbie Wi-Fi Connected Doll
TiVo knows what you’ll watch, and when…but
doesn’t necessarily tell you

25. – Margret Schmidt
“I don’t think I should own a watch that costs more
than the resale value of my car.”

26. Phil Libin
Be Epic: The Art of Bold
Decision Making

27. Evolution of a Company
Scissors: scrappy
startups
Rocks: mid-sized
companies
Papers: giant,
established companies

29. Epic Insights
When you do a pros/cons evaluation, you typically take
the least bad option, not really focusing on positives
When thinking strategically, you need to choose the
option that has the best upside
Focus on upsides, the positive outcomes if “we don’t
screw this up”
Saying no to stuff you don’t want to do isn’t focus.
Focus is saying no to things that you would want to do.

30. Bold Lessons
Avoid the Rocks: don’t go into a market that has 3 to 4
rocks already in it
Focus: be “impressive” at first; exert “sustained
pressure” once you reach rock phase
What if it’s Great: focus on the upside, not the
downside

31. Martine
Rothblatt
AI, Immortality & the
Future of Selves

32. Transhumanism
Mind Clones
Identity Will Transcend
Your Body
Disagreements with
Your Mind Clones;
Divorce from Clones;
Voting Rights for Clones

33. More Transhumanism
Parallels between mind clones & illegal aliens
Don’t want to create a slave vs free construct between
cyber beings & physical beings
New industry for cyber psychiatry
Lifenaut website available to create/preserve your own
mind file

34. Text
Your Connected World
What did you sign up for?
Quirky CEO, Ben Kaufman

36. Connected World
Importance of Retail
Education
Smart vs Connected
Products who “think” about
their owners (Ex: toothpaste)
Thread protocol for simplifying
Zigbee
Change UI based upon home
or away

37. Text
Design & Tech Trends 2015
John Maeda, KPCB

42. Design Focused Companies
Majority of designers
consider themselves self-
taught
Ratio of designers to
engineers in new reality is
1:4 to 1:5
Design for the “after wow”;
the long term wow based on
earning your user’s
confidence

43. Mobile
How To Build Beyond
the Phone

44. Beyond Mobile
Natural language processing will play an increasingly important
role
Importance of haptic/taptic communication, especially for
illiterate
Very few future wearables will have their own screen or own UI
Importance of mobile payments & extinction of paper money
to ensure accuracy in tax collections; Greece may be 1st
mover

45. Beyond Mobile
Advantages in designing for smallest screen first, then
scaling up from there
Increasing need for emotional context to
communications; Emoji have attempted to fill this gap
Dumb Screens will proliferate, on which smart devices
will “project” data that may be viewed on watches today
API Layer between the various services really becomes
the most important part

46. Magic Leap Retinal Projection
https://youtu.be/kPMHcanq0xM

47. Text
How Innovation Happens
Eric Schmidt, Megan Smith, Walter Isaacson

48. Keys for US Innovation
Best jobs of the future will be those that combine the
best of humans with the best of computers
Focus on digital service to country
Must encourage creation of entrepreneurs
Fixing female enrollment in Comp Sci (was 34% in ’85,
only 13% in ’15)
Universal broadband the key to the knowledge economy

49. Text
A Look Inside DARPA
Dan Kaufman, Director of DARPA’s Information
Innovation Office

50. A Look Inside DARPA
Last 10 years have been decade of data; next 10 will
be decade of biology
Capturing rat brain tissue to transfer learning; digital
intermediary also works
Planet X framework for cyber warriors to be extremely
effective even if they don’t know how it all works

51. A Look Inside DARPA
Code Diversity: make software slightly different per
instance to make it more resistant to virus attacks
Don’t worry about replicating a human with a computer;
instead create one that works with a human to
accomplish together what neither could independently
Value in asking your AI “Why?”
Example of getting non-snipers to shoot like snipers
when similar brain activity states are achieved

52. Text
Moonshots & Reality
Astro Teller, Director Google[x]

53. Moonshots
Huge Problem + Radical
Solution + Breakthrough
Technology = Google[x]
Embracing Failure
Building Social Norms via
Glass Explorer Pgm
Project Wing Flying
Delivery Airframe

54. Moonshots
Project Makani Airborne
Wind Turbines
For self-driving cars,
autonomous tech was
“done” 3 years ago
Had to go back to
drawing board because
humans were not reliable
backup

55. Key Take
Aways
Major Trends at SXSW
Interactive 2015

56. SXSW 2015
Meerkat is everywhere
Ethics matter more than
ever
Human needs rarely change;
just the tools
For better or worse,
government will become
increasingly involved in
technology

57. Photos & Videos
Austin through Juston’s iPhone 6