I came here for inspiration and to see the trends and ideas that are going to inform my work for the next 12 months (and yes, maybe a little bit of Texas BBQ…). So after the first two days, (which, for the second year in a row have involved both rain and Al Gore - a climate challenge coincidence?) what are the key themes so far???
1. Channel your inner hacker
Last year’s festival featured We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists, a documentary film that looks at the history of the hacker group Anonymous. This year hacking – in spirit and culture, if not actual form - is everywhere. Yesterday during his keynote, Al Gore even declared that democracy itself has been hacked (this seemed to be a graduation from his message last year that we need to "occupy democracy"). While a lower order of hacker culture, one of the most repeated messages has been about the importance of “gaming the system”: disrupting, but not destroying, the way that things operate. It seems that if coders are the new copywriters, this year hackers are their art directors.??
2. Buckets are on no one’s bucket list
One of the best parts of coming to SXSW is the opportunity to explore loads of fresh ideas and put them under the microscope. However, equally important is to keep an eye on the big picture and how people interact with these ideas. A key thought running throughout last year was SoLoMo - while it sounds like a cool new neighbourhood in NYC it stands for Social, Location and Mobile, and this year has been a strong reminder that the people that our clients' brands talk to don't break ideas down into their separate buckets - they just focus upon what needs to be done at any one time.??
3. Technology is moving from answering questions to anticipating them
For years Google has been great at answering people's questions - the next focus for the company is to focus on anticipating what those questions are, something that we all need to do. But how? The answer is in the data. While the term 'big data' is being used less often this year - we all know that there's mountains of stuff that needs to be analysed (or as one panelist said, "moneyballed") - it's increasingly vital in order to reduce 'friction', that is anything that gets in the way of transacting (and something that location-based technology can help us with).??
4. Location = right time, right place
With the increase in mobile usage comes an attendant rise in the importance of geolocation. Noting the inherent challenges in using mobile devices (they tend to be rather small and less than ideal for entering loads of details - as anyone who has had to enter both their suburb and their post code into a form via their phone can attest to) location-based technology can deliver relevancy, immediacy and the ability to talk to a very specific group. With so much going on it's really noisy out there for people, however the key for us is not to shout louder, but instead to be more relevant.??
5. The future of the living room is not in the living room
People are now completely untethered from the couch and the desktop device. While 'mobile first' design is not a new trend - last year Vevo announced that when they move into new markets they focus on designing for the mobile experience ahead of the desktop one - it is clearly becoming more important. Whether it involves Google Glass or gossip network TMZ's claim that in just five years neither TV nor the internet will exist, people are taking their digital life everywhere they go - we need to stop catching up to them and start meeting this need.
James Quinlan
Director of social media
DDB