One Green Bean creative director Kat Topp reflects on her five days spent in Austin, Texas at SXSW.
These are the three things that gave her hope:
1. Be your fully-sick self, whatever that entails
Having sat through about 20 talks during this soul-shaking festival, the speakers who were radically themselves were most mesmerising.
I instantly fell in love when I saw Bozoma Saint John strut onto the stage like an enchanting human disco-ball, resplendent in silver sequin jumpsuit… at 11am. For her, turning it around for Uber is all about the human story. She highlighted that there is a lot of therapy going on in Ubers around the world. It’s the one place you’re thrown into a situation with strangers where unique conversations naturally unfold. You’re connecting with people outside your typical social box and opening yourself up for a ‘Once upon an Uber’ story.
Bozoma Saint John
Her passionate challenge to white male executives to act on lack of diversity in the industry shook me to the core as well. ‘“Why do I—as the black woman—have to fix that?” Saint John said. “There’s 50 of you, there’s one of me. Ya’ll fix it… Everybody else needs to make the noise – I want white men to make the noise.” Hells yes.
Watching Ira Glass refuse to get off stage when his hour was up while his audience roared for him to keep going was a beauty to behold.
Listening to his iconic voice while he shared his seven secrets behind accidentally creating the world’s most successful podcasts was both spellbinding and soothing.
His wonderful tips on storytelling and creative adventurism were brilliant. But his tip on amusing yourself, appealed to me most deeply. ‘Be proudly out for your own pleasure’. If you are ridiculously excited about what you are creating, it will shine through. Being out for your own fun is important when creating because people can feel it. And in a world where it’s more and more challenging to get people to engage, this is important. ‘If you’re in the storytelling business, you’re in the feelings business’.
2. Out of tragedy and despair comes a cultural renaissance
It’s hard to see the light when you’re bombarded with Trump insanity and Brexit misery on a daily/hourly basis. It fills you with a sense of constant anxiety and appalled helplessness, but this has stirred so many to action. From these toxic ashes has arisen a cultural renaissance.
As a female creative who grew up in male dominated environments, it’s an exciting time to be alive, because it feels like things are beginning to change.
Watching the power-babe panel starring Melinda Gates, Stacy Brown-Philpot, Joanna Coles and Nina Shaw stoked my feminist fires. They held a riveting discussion on how the current workplace mould is holding all of us back and slowing innovation. Gates spoke of the need to disproportionally invest in women and people of colour. At the moment those with the majority of power – men – are investing in what they know – themselves. They don’t see the things a woman or a person from a very different cultural background sees. By investing more in diverse perspectives, we will create better and more diverse ideas to reflect the reality of the real world.
This is also true in film and art. Luvvie Ajayi, vibrant author of ‘I’m judging you’ sees a silver lining in the racially divided Trump America era. She believes black art is currently in a cultural renaissance because people resist through their art. ‘In times of chaos and trouble we create our best art’. With record-breaking box office successes like Black Panther and Straight Outta Compton trickling through, she hopes these successes have ‘not just opened the door, but blown it off its hinges... It’s our job to mollify the chaos and speak up for those who can’t, we’re giving the mic to the voiceless’.
3. And finally, it’s not the end of the world
Elon Musk says AI is more dangerous than nuclear weapons. Elsewhere, robots are taking all of our jobs. Climate change is creating a world of refugees. Splinternets and Information Wars are corrupting our reality.
Shit got dark at times during SXSW.
But it’s not necessarily the end of the world. Ray Kurzweil, one of the world’s most renowned futurists was like an optimistic warm blanket on my chilled soul. He says statistically speaking this is the most prosperous, peaceful and technologically hopeful times in history. Humans are naturally pessimistic and tend to focus on the negative, but ideas that are changing the world are rapidly accelerating right now. Technology will make this all happen, with things like blockchain, printable housing and Quantum computing democratising access to life essentials.
Copia is a tech platform that is starting to solve ‘the world’s dumbest problem– hunger’ in America. With one in four Americans going without food and 365M pounds of food wasted every day, founder Komal Ahmad says hunger is not a scarcity problem; it’s a logistical problem. Last year Copia recovered 950K tonnes of food to feed over two million people, including salvaging food from rockstar events like the Oscars and Superbowl.
And anyway, we’re going to live forever… at least digitally speaking. Brands and tech companies are giving more consideration to what happens to our digital lives after we are dead. Chatbots that scrape your data and learn how you speak have already been developed, which means Nanabots dispensing loving advice from the grave are on the horizon. Creepy yet slightly comforting and very Black Mirror.
By One Green Bean creative director Kat Topp