Next year it will be a full decade since I visited Austin for SXSW. It was the place, back in the day, that I met the most amazing people, learnt the most amazing things, and felt truly embedded in my industry. In the last 10 years, lots has happened. But most importantly, I’d like to see how these changes have affected all the things, technologies, and people I knew back then.
I was looking back over my very rarely updated blog recently, and I noted that I was at one of the most passionate periods of my career when I wrote about the first time I went to SXSW. And that included telling you why I was going to vote for some of the panels I did, at the time. In case you aren’t aware, proposals that make it to SXSW are somewhat significantly weighted by Community Voting. So here I am – asking you to consider spending a few minutes by this Sunday (August 20th) voting for my proposal with Hugh Garry – and highlighting some others that are worth your time.
- Formats Unpacked: How To Develop A Format Idea in 60 Minutes: At Storythings, we’re really keen on media formats of all kinds. One of the things my colleague Matt Locke decided when the company was launched was not to wed ourselves to one format or platform (a good decision, as I can’t tell you how many mobile or Vine agencies went bust when the time came). We love really being forensic about formats actually: why do we go crazy about podcasts like Serial or game shows like Crystal Maze (yep that one’s a favourite of mine) or a radio show like Desert Island Discs or a YouTube format like 73 Questions? We discuss this every couple of weeks in Formats Unpacked, but in Austin, Hugh and I want to go further and develop a format live. No speaking off a sheet. Anything could happen. You can make it so!
- Decolonizing Ourselves and Our Organisations: I’ve worked briefly with Samantha Slade, the organiser – she’s considerate and considered, and decolonizing my thinking is something I’me always trying to improve at, so I couldn’t not recommend this.
- Connecting Young People Through Meaningful Experiences: Again I’ve worked with Pablo Herrera, founder of Colectivo Piloto and the Teens Media Network on a project for PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs recently, and his passion for young people and media really shone through. Give his proposal and work a look please.
- Exit Strategy: How To Quit The Ad Industry For Good: Kaitlin Maud is a fellow member of Ladies Who Strategize. This one really spoke to me because when I left the traditional ad industry, I sort of became immediately less interesting to a lot of media folk – but it felt like the right thing to do. Storythings isn’t traditional ad agency at all. And since I left the industry, I know SO MANY people who did. I think Kaitlin’s session will be thought-provoking and come with a lot of experiences to draw on.
- Meet Gen Alpha: An Emerging Audience in the Age of Emerging: Zoe Scaman is very generous and very hardworking and she knows her stuff, working on some of the most frontier brands of our time. If we want to know what young people are like today, we want to be in that room.
- AI in Marketing: Is Your Job Safe? The Current State of Play: I’ve admired Stephanie Nadi Olson, a fellow agency owner, from afar, and her agency’s operating model means she knows a lot about how roles are changing in the industry.
- Using VR To Build Radical Empathy and Reduce Implicit Bias: As a co-founder of Ada’s List, back in the day I remember Yasmine Boudiaf ran a similar session at one of our annual conferences which was so interesting. This specific SXSW one came recommended by another Ladies Who Strategize member and I’m keen to know how the landscape has progressed in terms of both VR technology and machine/human understanding of implicit bias, which affects us more than we know (literally and figuratively).
- Breaking Down Waystar’s Breakdowns on HBO’s Succession: No words needed. Thank you panel organisers, if I get to Austin I will be in the room for this one! (I know no one on it though).
Thanks again for voting, folks. You are the best (but you already knew that) 🙂
One Size Fits One 