Ben and Bob’s SXSW Video Diary: Day 1 – 2
Clemenger BBDO Melbourne is at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Thirty thousand of the world’s early adopters and decision makers will gather to decide what new technology becomes part of our culture – and what doesn’t.
This year, Interactive Creative Director Ben Keenan (right) and new head of CRM, Gayle While, will be joined by Sydney’s Head of Creative Technology Brendan ‘Bob’ Forster (left) and colleagues from Colenso BBDO in Auckland for the five day festival.
Here are the wraps from their first two days at the festival. Ben has been Periscoping throughout the day (follow him @ClemsMelb) and the team is uploading content each evening at the Clemenger BBDO SXSW 2016 YouTube channel.
Day One: When Bob’s (above, right) luggage finally arrived (but he still felt the need to buy the t-shirt), we began to explore Austin. Apparently you now have to carry your guns in plain sight in Texas – the old shoulder holster is now a no-no.
The first day was all about man vs machine. Ben learned about the neurobiology of teaching, the science of mapping social media campaigns and went to a MeetUp with the man who invented the Nike Chalkbot, who spoke about how he got into advertising by accident.
Bob went to a session on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence. Despite computers now winning at chess, humans still come out on top when it comes to contextual decision making. For the moment.
He also heard from Adobe’s lead designer on their new products and the value of playing like a child, referencing an old talk by John Cleese on the Power of Creativity. From that, he dived into a talk on the deep web (which is 550 times bigger than the ‘open’ web) and dark social. Apparently that’s where all the cool kids are hanging out.
Day Two covered major developments in medical technology.
Ben learned about the delicate balance between fame and subversion on the internet and met some teddy bears who can give out hugs on the other side of the world. He also met a social robot called Jibo.
Bob saw an incredibly inspiring presentation on cyberbullying and how one brave woman has created a community to stop it, a mind-blowing SXSW Accelerator pitch for a breathalyser that can detect lung cancer and listened to the Department of Defence talk about their bioscience research helping quadriplegics control artificial limbs with their minds.
More updates to come tomorrow.