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[jwtsxsw]

The Importance of data

Kieran Antill shares his thoughts on data as the core of machines and robots’ ability to interpret the world around them.

[jwtsxsw]

What does everyone at SXSW have in common?

By Kieran Antill

The growth of SXSW attendance is so expansive that it changes the commercial flight schedule into Texas during March and anyone who is a veteran attendee will tell you that year on year the lines waiting outside each talk grow longer each year with many talks at capacity.

So what do all these people have in common? Why have they come? Why am I here?

While the festival does skew very liberal and over-index in tech it remains, all in all, one of the most diverse crowds you will find at a single conference. It is a collision of industries, which results in some of the most eclectic characters and topics. But to venture a guess at what all these people have in common I would say that it is a combination of ‘curiosity and fear’.

The ‘curiosity' part is probably easy to agree with - SXSW is full of big questions and unconnected answers in diverse industries from marketing, music, sports, tech, weaponry and more. And yes, I said weaponry - not the gaming type either.

To give example over the last few days I have sat though talks from ‘A/B testing methods used by Netflix to the future of warfare with the US Office Of The Secretary Of Defense, from designing infrastructure for autonomous cars to designing emotionally intelligent bots and from not-for-profit socially minded enterprises to empowering a billion women by 2020.

I think the 'fear’ comes from asking so many curious questions and it’s more than just business FOMO - it’s the moral implications of gene manipulation, brand monopolies of future data, the race for venture capital and more. However, this 'fear' is a healthy reaction to a world that is moving so fast.

It's even difficult for any speaker to talk in absolutes aware that they are so often talking about the blurry edge - the frontier of technology and of human behaviour. No one person or company stands on stable ground here with even some of the biggest companies only able to place bets on the future. Google talks of ‘moon shots’ investing in many long bets, from balloon internet to self driving vehicles; IBM continues to lead with ‘Watson', which remains brilliant but ill-defined, while Facebook iterates and acquires trending platforms. Even the US Office Of The Secretary Of Defense, which brags about having 70 billion in R&D funds, admitted that their focus is on tomorrow, knowing that the more distant future is anyone’s guess.

To augment a quote from the late Alan Fletcher (The Art of looking sideways) 'The more you know, the more you know you don’t know…and SXSW is an experience that will make you feel powerfully small.'

So, if you are someone that has all the answers then you’ll probably not find much at SXSW; but if you, like myself and many others, find questions more exciting than awards then book your tickets for SXSW 2018 now.

 Kieran Antill is the Executive Creative Director at J. Walter Thompson Melbourne