Jet lag. Coats. Only being able to find four types of M&Ms.
These are the realities of life back in Britain. But SXSWi lives on, in the hearts and minds of children (hurl), and more specifically in the huge wedge of notes I gathered over the last few days in Texas.
But what does it all mean? What springs out, and is does leaving it this long make me an evil person?
We’ll find out soon enough…
“INSPIRATION IS LIKE FOOD POISONING. IT JUST SPRINGS UP AT YOU”
Doing creative things in public is stressful. There’s really no easy fix for that feeling where you’re willing to crawl into a pit of shame and self-doubt and bury yourself alive. You either let you completely (and good luck with that), or you harden your self-esteem by regularly trying to do things that you’re proud of.
Here’s a tip from The Oatmeal‘s creator Matthew Inman on attaining Facebook stardom:
“Don’t focus on getting more likes. Focus on making your stuff more likeable”
Yes, there are other “technical” tips to success. For a start, there are hundreds of articles out there about SEO and promoting posts (and, yes, you can always fall back on ruining the internet’s day with linkbait). But that’s all “delivery”. And while getting folks to see what you’re doing is important, it’s gotta be all about the music.
If you’re confident you’re doing good work, continue to focus on making it even better. Because trying to make half-arsed crud go viral is a waste of everyone’s time. It’s basically like wandering around the world leaving flaming turd bags on everyone’s doorstep, like some sort of chuckling frat Santa.
“If you don’t have anything to say, don’t say anything. If you have nothing to write about it, don’t write anything. If you want something to write, read a book, meet new people, do something different. If you’ve done all these things and still have nothing to write, maybe you shouldn’t be a writer.”
Here’s an interview he did with TechCocktail during the event, in case you want MORE:
However, Matthew did have a couple of tips about crowdfunding. The Oatmeal raised a boatload of money on two Kickstarter campaigns last year, one that collected more than $1.37m to buy the site of Nikola Tesla’s lab in New York and another that turned a legal dispute with FunnyJunk into a $20,000 windfall for charity.
“They weren’t about perks and products. They were about righting a wrong. It was to deliver a sentiment.”
However, here are a few things to bear in mind:
1) Be wary of perks that have custom fitting. Remember that if you’re offering T-Shirts, there might need to be a range of sizes.
2) Keep the campaign short and sweet. Don’t drag it on too long, as the initial burst often raises the majority of the money.
3) Don’t feel obligated to make a video. Some people can find that promo videos take too long to warm up, and are frequently dull. Pick the approach that feels snappiest to you.
KEEP IT LIVE
I spent most of Monday night methodically peering into bars on 6th Street looking for bands in Texas’ “Live Music Capital of the World”. Probably the most fun I had was in Friends Bar, listening to The Eric Tessmer Band.
There are a hell of a lot of Hendrix stylings in there, but – trust me – this is far more interesting than listening to an acoustic Coldplay-clone sulk about missing out on the last granola bar at Whole Foods.
“THE OPPORTUNITIES ARE LIMITED ONLY BY OUR IMAGINATION”
3D printing was a big deal this year. Even if the opening keynote by MakerBot’s Bre Pettis veered a little into the Magical Forest of Salespitch, the focus didn’t stop on day one. I popped over to the Omni Downtown to watch a panel on The Future of 3D printing, which featured last year’s Thinking Digital speaker Alice Taylor.
Alice’s company MakieLab scored the winning pitch in SXSW Accelerator’s Entertainment and Gaming category, and Alice herself had some interesting points to make about the development of 3D printing.
For a start, she was luke-warm on the worry over the “printing” of weapons such as Defense Distributed’s semi-automatic rifle.
“I feel like it’s going to be easier for at least a decade to buy one off a shelf than it would be to print one that doesn’t blow your hands off when you use it. It’s not a practical threat for the next ten years. It’s being used as a decoy in a way for media to get all riled up and politicians to jump in.”
The panel also addressed the issue of patents. Alice pointed out that some 3D printing methods have more obstacles than others. She mentioned she paid a lot more for materials using powder, for example.
“It’s competition that’s brought the price down. Fused Deposition Modelling was a patent-free area so there are all these different types of FDM machine competing. We don’t have the same in powder and liquid as they’re still locked down by patents.”
While 3D Systems CEO Avi Reichental believes the current IP system is “antiquated”, he adds the industry is in danger of drifting into a habit of “replication rather than innovation”.
“When 55 companies are waiting for the next patent to run out…that tells me they’re focusing on recreating what is, but not on insightful rearrangement of what is. We’re a bit confused. Innovatve companies are not blocked by patents. Necessity creates innovative ideas.”
The panel agreed that 3D printing is an excellent opportunity to educate the younger generation in how to make their ideas a reality and “unleash their creativity”. 3D Systems CTO Scott Summit added it’s also great for smaller businesses.
“3d printing is really levelling the field. You can have a zero inventory business model which is basically a digital file. If no one buys your product, you’ve lost a lot of 1s and 0s. You don’t have tooling and trips to China to manage tools. What you now have is that risk costs basically nothing. You can be more nimble and agile and turn on a dime. The companies taking advantage of a 3D business model are now up against the big players.”
LEAVE STORYTELLING ALONE
Marketing can do great things for your product or business, but don’t leave some of those dudes alone with your dictionary. When it comes to adopting and adapting language, they sometimes feel like those annoying flatmates who borrow your clothes without asking and then spill burger sauce on them.
If there was one thing that ground my gears at SXSW this year (apart from the fact that NO ONE seemed to know that you’re not meant to stand like lumps on BOTH SIDES of the escalator. SORT IT OUT AMERICA), it was the amount of times I nearly turned up to a talk about “storytelling”, only to find out it was actually about mumbling a number of buzzwords into a microphone until someone shouted “bingo”.
Here’s one description:
“Stories are a powerful way to engage audiences, but have limitations that make it difficult to retain attention, build relationships and mobilize action. Narratives offer a more powerful vehicle to amplify impact, but are much less well understood. Narratives operate at three levels in parallel: the individual, the institution and the social unit. By understanding this and crafting narratives that operate at all three levels, it is possible to amplify impact.”
Hear that? That’s the sound of all of the joy being sucked out of the room.
SENSOR LITERACY
Smartphones collect a lot of data. In fact, carrying around a modern phone is like taking a kid to the supermarket. Whenever your back’s turned, they’re reaching out for all kinds of stuff and shoving it in your trolley.
In a panel on “detector-driven news”, Behavio CEO Nadav Aharony stated that more needs to be done to educate people about about smartphones, so they’re aware of the risks and the possibilities.
For example, he said:
“I was giving talks at MIT to activists. They’re using cellphones and networks in conflict area and don’t know it all has to go through a central point.
The cellphone structure at the moment is the ideal structure for dictatorships. You can switch it off at the touch of a button.”
Behavio is the company behind open source data collection platform Funf. It also has an easy option called Funf In A Box, which allows Android users to select the data they want to collect and have it sent straight to their Dropbox.
“Mobile phones today are sensor platforms that can also make phone calls. There are hundreds of signals of what the user is doing, if it’s plugged in and what they’re downloading, and that can give you a lot of insight into where they are.”
The panel also featured a talk by Sarah Williams of MIT, who discussed how her team had equipped Associated Press reporters with sensors to gauge the levels of pollution in Beijing during the Olympics. Matt Waite of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln also chatted about the time he put an accelerometer in his luggage to see how much it got hurled around by the baggage handlers.
“There are ways to gather data that nobody’s keeping, and in really interesting ways. As a journalist you’re going to run up against a story where you need data and nobody’s keeping it. The old way was to shrug your shoulders and give up. I don’t think we should do that, and sensors give us a real opportunity to do that.”
Here’s a lightning talk he did on the subject. Watch this. It’s pretty cool. And short.
Matt Waite – The soldering iron is the next great CAR tool from IRE/NICAR on Vimeo.
SOME STUFF YOU MAY HAVE HEARD ABOUT STARTUPS
We’ll close with some quick advice about your startup. Although it kinda feels like we’ve been here already.
It really doesn’t take that long until you feel like you’ve heard all the “big” revelations about setting up a startup. That doesn’t mean people ever need to stop hearing them, but it kinda feels like going to 90 creative writing classes because you want to write a book. You want to hear the stories of how other people failed and flew, and the network and the shared experience can be important. The revelations? Timing is important. As are you. But if you’ve got a good idea, the key thing is to throw as many awesome people as you can into your van and get out on the road before the traffic gets nasty.
Here’s a good start, from Andreessen Horowitz’s Tristan Walker (formerly business development VP for Foursquare:
“What makes you the single person in the world that can make this awesome? If you don’t have the courage and the integrity, you’re not going to be successful.”
In a panel called “Make it or Break it: Why Hot Startups Fail”, Menlo Ventures MD (and former Mozilla chief application officer) Shervin Pishevar argued that, if you see someone you want for your team, “you fly on a plane and go and get them, even if they’re in Moscow”.
He said:
“The world can change. Everything about the startup environment is not constant. The only thing that is constant for me is the importance of incredible founding teams. The only thing I can latch onto when investing is the team, regardless of the business model or where the business is.”
Want more? Here’s some tips on raising money:
“After a year of struggle, working as a security guard at night, I got a term sheet and I was so excited. But within a year I raised too much money. I was too young and didn’t know what I was doing. If I could talk to my 22 year old self, I would tell myself: ‘Take your time. Don’t be in a super rush to raise as much as you can. Get your product right. Get your team right’.” (Pishevar)
“It’s important that you raise enough capital that you have the runway to execute. You need the right framework to think about it and mentors to help you out. It has to be based on qualitative statistics rather than guesswork.” (Pishevar)
“If you really want to get to an investor you respect…don’t give up, even though it might take multiple calls. In my first startup, I cold-called Jamie Dimon. He actually picked up the phone and I was not expecting that. But when that moment happens, be on, be ready. I’m constantly surprised by people not following through and not following up. If you want to be a great founder, that’s the filter.” (Pishevar)
Megan Quinn left Square last year for a role Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. She says it’s important to find effective ways to communicate as the company grows beyond a single tiny office.
“You go from the stage where you can just lean back and talk to the chief engineer to a situation where not everybody knows everything and everyone anymore. What we focused on that stage was making sure how everyone at Square had the information they needed to make the decisions work. If there’s any meeting with three or four people notes go to the whole company, and that continues to this day.”
Finally, a little advice from Pishevar on selling an idea:
“The most magical products are the ones that people didn’t realise they really needed it. Look at Apple. If they’d listened to consumers on what they really wanted, they would have turned into this Frankenstein product, with this mish mash of features and not this simplicity.
“By the time someone tells you they have this problem and they need a solution, the time has already passed. You need to be able to forecast this. The best companies are the ones who live in the future – not too far in the future, but are hallucinating something. As investor, you have to have the courage to say, you sound really crazy, but I’m going to be crazy with you.”
We’ll be back shortly, with a round-up of some of the startups we met out in Texas…
