My SXSW, in a Giant Nutshell
Posted by RACHELLE DIGREGORIO
I know itâs late (really late), but here is my takeaway/summary/obligatorily long blog post about my experience at SXSWi 2011.
The sheer amount of stuff I learned there was insane. In the best way possible.
And while it was kind of all of over the place in terms of actual content, there was an underlying theme running through pretty much everything:
People want to care again.
First off, there exists a renewed desire for human authenticity and beauty, especially as design goes digital.
This idea was most prevalent in the presentation âHow Print Design Is the Future of Interactionâ given by Mike Kruzeniski, a creative director at Microsoft who worked on the Windows Phone. His discussion grappled with the question: âWhere did user interface depart from 100 years of learning and ingrained beauty?â He called for a re-engagement of print designers in the digital space to insure that visual design would be incorperated from the beginning of every project. And what do we get if this happens? More beautiful products. Saul Griffith also called for better products in his presentation âMaking the Future Better Than Today.â If our objects were beautiful again, maybe we would throw less away, he argued.
The theme of authenticity also showed up in the twisty part of human interaction called ânetworking.â When we sat down with writer Luke Sullivan for a chat about finding jobs, he made it pretty simple. His advice for impressing potential employers: âDonât come in and be a bump on a fucking log.â There you have it. Be human.
But being human isnât always easy, especially for brands. Unfortunately, in the realm of social media, brands are expected to behave as authentic individuals. Ben McAllister and Kate Canales of frog design brought this issue home in their talk, âUnwritten Rules: Brands, Social Psychology and Social Media.â They discussed how brands create awkwardness by mis-negotiating the rules of relationships in social media. Successful interactions agree to the rules of communality online where all contributing members are on equal ground. If brands can acknowledge and respect these rules, Kate and Ben argued, the authenticity of their interactions will remain intact.
Many projects have benefited from this new desire for human truism, including (but not limited to) the3six5 project, run by Len Kendall and Daniel Honigman, and Six Items or Less, run by Heidi Hackerman. As I found out from going to a panel where all of these people discussed âcommunity,â both projects draw on the real triumphs and struggles of their contributors to reveal our universal qualities.
The last piece of authenticity that came up was the industry/practice of craft (or lack there of). I went to a less-than-exciting panel about folk art, as I previously discussed, that looked into the challenges that craft faces in our world that is increasingly going digital. While the panel was a bit lackluster, one of the artists really sparked my interest. Magda Sayeg, artist and founder of Knitta, Please, has helped to keep craft alive by creating a community around her graffiti knitting. Some of her work was up in the Austin Convention Center during the conference. It was pretty awesome.
It gave me hope that handmade media is still alive, despite many designersâ insisting that craft is in decline.
The second major theme under the âcaringâ umbrella was that of collectivist problem solving. Itâs pretty clear that we, every inhabitant of this earth, have some big problems on our hands. People are starting to come together to solve them.
Many sessions made it clear: In working with others, running into obstacles is inevitable. One of my favorite presentations of SXSWi, âCreative and Effective Leadership in Design Enviromentsâ given by Sarah B. Nelson of Hot Studio, laid out some awesome strategies for facilitating great work within teams of creative people. She also identified a few processes to solve problems within teams, so that they can work together to solve the bigger problems.
Another interesting manifestation of collective problem solving is the emphasis on sharing. In fact, there was an entire panel on it: âThe New Sharing Economy,â moderated by Neal Gorenflo, the co-founder and publisher of Shareable Magazine. While the panel was scattered and redundant (are you getting the feeling that I didnât like many panels? Itâs true, I didnât, they were very hit or miss), one message came through: sharing can do a lot of good. Car sharing programs, for instance, have the potential to make a large dent in carbon emissions.
Another aid to collectivist problem solving is standardization. âOrdering Disorder: Grid Design for the New World,â a presentation Khoi Vihn of Subtraction.com, highlighted an obvious fact: standardization of communication enables collaboration. People canât work together if they donât have a basic framework to interact. In web design, grids make teamwork straight forward and nothing gets lost in translation because there is no translation.
The third sub-theme that came through in all of the panels was generousity. Saul Griffith touched on this in his presentation, saying that we need to âget data out to the people.â In order to empower people who care, they need to know the facts. Research should be transparent, unbiased and open to the public. This generosity is also displayed in Magda Sayegâs willingness to let her project grow into a larger community.
The 3six5 project and Six Items have both done similar things in letting their communities create side projects and guide the evolution of each project. The motif of generosity was no more present than in Blake Mycoskieâs keynote on the past and future of the little company he founded, TOMS Shoes. His agenda was simple: prove that a healthy business can, and should, incorporate giving into its DNA.
The last big piece in the âcaringâ trend is that the idea and story are always most important. People can only care about products, movements, brands or information if there is a genuine story behind them. The 3six5 diary-esque blog entries expose individual stories, while Blake Mycoskieâs company gives life to a story with every product sold. Rob Brunner, industrial designer extroadinaire of Ammunition Group, said it simply in his talk, âIdeas Not Objectsâ : âthe story needs to be there from inception.â
(a photo of Dan Johnsonâs artwork, displayed at local Austin ad agency, GSD&M)
I had an awesome chat with Adrian Alexander, one half of Third Culture Kidz, and he had the same feeling. As a writer, he said that his job description only matters in the last 5% of a project, the execution. The other 95% of the time is spent on the idea. If the idea is there, the rest will follow.
And in the realm of data, the information always contains an idea, but few people have the patience to tease it out of the numbers. In the session âSexy Dirty Data: Making Your Metrics Matter,â representatives from Google and the Bay Area Video Coallition (BAVC) announced a new tool they created, called Impact Dashboard, that letâs data from nonprofit organizations tell its story in a public facing medium. They understand the power of story and want to harness it.
Saul Griffith drove the importance of story home with his argument that in order to get out of our environmental degradation patterns, America needs a vision. If we had a story and idea to root for, citizens would be more motivated to work towards positive change.
All together, it warms my heart that people care about caring again. It was definitely an unexpected and pleasant surprise from a conference so focused on digital media. I feel so lucky that I was given the opportunity to be in Austin for the conference.
Oh, and one more lesson: Austin is weird and awesome.
