More SXSW Lists

Another list of Next Big Thing companies from SXSW. Some of them actually have vowels in their names. Most of them aren’t apps, which is kind of refreshing.

Pre-Stalk Your Meetings

Very cool from a Chicago company:
http://adverstuff.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/yo-charlie-sup/

Charlie is a highly useful mobile app that checks your calendar to see who you’re meeting with next, then uses the Internet data hoses to push interesting things about these people to you.

Attack of the Apps

There were more Next Big Thing apps than free beer parties down at SXSW (which is a lot). Here’s a couple that stood out:

Vyclone - social video shooting/editing tool. Collects multiple videos from users near each other, let’s others edit them together into one main video. Like Albumatic, but with video. “CoCreation" was a big buzzword this year.

GonnaBe - social-local-mobile app (or SoLoMo if you’re a digihipster) for planning/broadcasting social outings. SoLoMo apps were all the rage last year, although most have been acquired or folded. Highlight was launching themselves again this year.

Thirst - It’s like Flipboard except it’s, um, well, it’s basically Flipboard.

Bizzabo - business conference finder/networking tool. Probably just waiting to get acquired by LinkedIn. 

Takes - Turn your photos into videos. Better overview is here.

Songza - Not new, but I discovered it down there. Basically Pandora/Spotify where songs are grouped by specific themes. Not sure how defendable a strategy that is, but my 12 yr old loves it.

SXSW Presentations

Presentations from a variety of start ups. The Github presentation is not advised if you have cat allergies.

http://www.slideshare.net/500startups/ 

http://lanyrd.com/slides/?q=sxsw+2013

Next year I’m launching the “Airbnb of Power Strips" at SXSW.

Airbnb’s Brian Chesky Talks with Fortune

Here’s some sound bites from the interview:

It’s better to have 100 people who love your company/service, than 1,000 who kind of like you.

Make something a few people want. Use technology to scale once you have the product “right".

As your company and user base grows, there’s a real threat of overcomplicating your offering.  Also a threat of becoming detached from you audience.

Importance of discomfort in your business strategy was a theme, just like the Uber interview.

Storyboard the customer experience. Think about everything a customer goes through before and after they interact with your product.

Don’t build a product based on what appeals to investors. Employees should make a product customers love. Customers will then build a business that investors love.

Hire your community. A lot of their employees were early users or renters.

Don’t do just what will make you win (buy other companies, expand into “safe" offerings). You may not want to work there the next day.

Other companies were positioning themselves as the “Airbnb of X". So Airbnb asked “why can’t we be the Airbnb of X?" They realized that they are really in the mobility industry, not the travel industry. They now offer 1,000 boats for rent. 

President of Lichtenstein listed his country for rent for $7k. Removed it when Snoop Dogg tried to rent it.

Miku: The Open-Source Girl Who Conquered the World

Read this:
http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP3548

Watch this:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGt25mv4-2Q

Then this:
http://taraknight.net

Open source culture and collaborative entertainment is going to make the current online music trends look like gramophones.

Stephen Wolfram: The Computational Future

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP4325

Stephen Wolfram is legendary in the field of computational science. Crazy theoretical concepts that he has turned into a range of sophisticated software tools (Mathematica). You many have heard of his search engine WolframAlpha.

This engine provides answers based on natural language sentences. Type a question or data points and it quickly interprets what you want to know, searches the interweb for data that might answer it, then translates that data into an answer. What’s important is that it doesn’t link to web pages that exist and contain the solution. It actually creates answers, not just find them.

Try it out = http://wolframalpha.com/examples/Transportation.html

This is pretty cool too:
http://tones.wolfram.com

Special Touch: Special Needs Apps Need You

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP1676

I worked with Kevin Sitek back in our dot com days. He’s a great designer and happens to have a daughter with cerebral palsy. If you think designing a user experience for ecommerce is tough, try creating communication devices for kids who have extremely limited physical capabilities.

The iPad has been a major advancement in this area. The majority of special needs apps are homegrown tools developed by passionate individuals who have real world needs for them. They lack the usability and design that you would expect an app to deliver. Kevin is launching his own company to bring high-quality solutions to this under-serviced space.

When you are surrounded by thousands of companies at SXSW - each trying to pitch themselves as The Next Big Thing - it’s refreshing to find someone working on truly life-changing ideas. You can learn more about education and special needs apps on his blog = http://www.lilliespad.com

Hacking Cities for a Better, Sustainable Tomorrow

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP2591

Main takeaway is that cities are fixated on liberating Big Data, but they are even more fixated on getting the tech for free.

Some interesting programs:

http://codeforamerica.org

http://blightstatus.com

http://www.reinventpayphones.splashthat.com
http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/06/nyc-reinvent-payphones-finalists/

http://adoptahydrant.org

GEEKSTA PARADISE: The Ballers of Uber + GitHub

Part of the Lean Startup conference track. 

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP1572

Uber

His first startup in late 90s was a filesharing company that was sued globally for $250 billion until he shut it down (pre-Napster). Uber launches in cities where their business model is legal, expecting they’ll meet resistance. The regulatory playbook is predictable that cities/taxi industry use to try keep them out. It is mostly the taxi industry lobbying cities to pass new laws to regulate them out of operating there. Regulating technology is a threat to shut down innovation. Uber won’t meet them halfway to get a compromised offering into the city. They’d rather pull out and have users lobby city officials on their behalf.

As a fast-growing company, organizational scale is tougher than technology scale (go from 200 to 800 employees). Their first app barely worked and drivers’ phones died after 4 hrs of use. When growing a small company, you need to go from lean to muscular. Keep a lean culture but know when to bulk up offerings/services.

Best quote = “You need to push your business/strategy/services to the point where you get uncomfortable, otherwise you aren’t innovating.” In other words, if you aren’t nervous about a new strategy then you should reevaluate your plans. Discomfort Ideas.

Uber clones (Sidecar, Lyft in SF) are fast followers just recreating the Uber biz model at a local level. They forced Uber to innovate and bring two services to market = High end black car (existing model) and low end price offer/lesser quality (to compete).

GitHub

GitHub is an extremely decentralized company lacking a lot of the structure you would expect. No departments, no managers (“we replaced manager positions with technology/tools”), no work hours or location expectations.

Their approach to solving problems is what they call First Principles. Basically asking “what’s the problem?” and not allowing a standard solution. Mental reset to solve it in an interesting way. For example, as they grew staff, many started wanting an office. So instead of just moving into an office, they asked “Why do we need an office?” The reason was they were getting kicked out of cafes because too many employees were showing up and spending all day there without buying much. So they decided to treat their office space like a cafe = communal spaces, no set seating chart or hours, barista coffee machine.

Muppets to Mastery: UX Principles from Jim Henson

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP4911

If you are interested in user experience design, then you should buy Russ Unger’s books =http://www.amazon.com/Russ-Unger/e/B002OEMJR2/

Russ is currently the Sr UX Leader at GE Capital. I’m fortunate to know Russ, and more fortunate to get into his overflowing UX presentation at every SXSW. This year he presented a mash up of Jim Henson’s innovation cycles and storyboarding with UX principles. And the concept of Henson as hacker. Total crowd pleaser. The Fraggle Rock personification of design/dev departments was more relevant than you would expect. The street team approach to wireframe testing was also cool.

Other interesting tips:
Gamestorming = http://amzn.com/0596804172
Omg-wtf spectrum = http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2008/12/the-omgwtf-spectrum.html
Make your own Muppet = www.fao.com/MuppetWhatnot

Awesome Little Library Boxes

This is very cool. A fairly large Librarian contingent down here this year. Knowledge is data.

http://everylibrary.org/awesome-little-library-boxes-at-sxswi/

Hacking Transportation Meet Up

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP3555

I thought this session would either be either extremely interesting or extremely awkward. Fortunately it was awesome. It was moderated by this guy = http://www.scootnetworks.com

Approx 40 people and a mix of auto guys, public transportation champions, govt/DC, about 30% international. 

I sat with the Car People = those in the automotive technology area. There was one guy working on a public transportation gamification idea who I would have loved to spent time with.

I had a chance to meet Wired transportation blogger Doug Newcomb =
http://www.wired.com/autopia/author/doug-newcomb/

This is an interesting research report:
http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights/featured/key-to-driving-gen-y/
We discussed how for previous generations, owning a car was part of defining your identity. But kids today are relying on their mobile devices to define their identity, and you can expect they will want to apply that identity to their car. Imagine being able to personalize your in-car experience by synching your phone.

We discussed how we are starting to make car purchase decisions based on how well they interact with our mobile devices. The challenge is that auto manufacturers have multi-year dev cycles that restrict their ability to innovate tech.

One person mentioned they are working on the idea that future car purchases won’t require a one-stop-shop at an auto dealer. Instead cars will be modular where you can plug-n-play components to have a truly personalized product. Kind of like how we used to swap out computer motherboards, RAM, and SCSI boards back in the early days of computing.

A State Farm guy was worried about the insurance industry getting punked by new purchase and distribution models. Think about being able to buy an auto insurance policy in the check out line at Target. Or insurance hedge funds where you can “short" your coverage. Or “coverage sharing" across different unrelated drivers.

Crazy fact of the day = Smaller countries in Asia are starting to apply the car sharing model to their military equipment, sharing them with neighboring governments when they don’t need them. Think Zipcar but with tanks. I already checked and ZipTank.com is taken.

I Just Trademarked Tweet-N-Sniff

http://tmsw.tumblr.com/post/42434888289/show-smell-2-at-sxsw-interactive

Seriously, My Name Is On The Social Graph. Check Again.

Klout Offers 'Cirque du Soleil' VIP Perks at SXSW
Nothing more painful than a roomful of influencers trying to influence each other.

Taxi App Smackdown!

Open Marketplace = http://www.rsvpster.com/2013/02/sxswtips-uber-makes-getting-around-sxsw-easy/

VS

Closed Marketplace = http://www.yellowcabaustin.com

Hipster Tramp Stamp

Meet Nyan Cat's Creator at Mashable House During SXSWi

We're excited to announce another addition to the SXSWi Mashable House! Nyan Cat artist, Christopher Torres, will join us this Friday, Saturday and Sunday where he'll be drawing temporary tattoos of his artwork on whoever wants to adorn the adorable Nyan Cat.

Keep Austin Weird and Well Fed

Please opt out if you don’t plan on attending = https://quichecakeandcocktails.eventbrite.com/

Breakfast Menu:
Assorted Quiche Station 
Quiche Lorraine
Texas Chevre Quiche
Grilled Zucchini
Sweet and Savory Station
Mini banana nut loaves
Golden eggs
Assorted muffins
Savory kolaches
Shrimp and grits
Fruit and Cheese Station
Build Your Own Cupcake Station
Mimosa Station

Extreme Product Personalization

"GE is going to have a coffee truck from the future, housing GE’s Barista Bots that are printing portraits of coffee drinkers into the foam of their latte using face detection software. There will be 2 Barista Bot inside of a #BrilliantBrew coffee truck roaming around Austin during SXSWi, making the every day coffee experience a little more brilliant."