The funny thing about going to SXSW is that you always go expecting to come home with a big take-away; something that you can get everyone excited when you get back home. It might be a new service like Foursquare or Twitter, or a simple insight from one of the big keynotes. After a few years attending I’ve come to realize that the best take-aways usually come from either the experience as a whole, or from a moment that brings clarity to a number of SXSW experiences. I don’t think you can go to any one single session and come away with something as meaningful as you can get by going to many and intersecting the ideas.
As a former DJ I guess the analogy I’d make is SXSWi is like the Miami Winter Music Conference… only without the implants and waxed chests. Before you went to Miami you’d always think you knew what the big tunes were going to be. As a DJ that’s what your skill was right? You were paid to know what would make people throw their hands up in the air. The thing is Miami always threw up surprises. Making those kind of predictions in a cold record shop on a Saturday afternoon was always going to result in a few misplaced bets. Music can sound very different when it played at a poolside party in the afternoon sun when you are surrounded by scantily clad beautiful people. The smell of the suntan oil, the smiles on the faces, the cheers of the crowd all enhance the experience making some tunes sound like it was a gift from the gods rather than something knocked out in a studio in Rotherham. As Clay Shirky says ‘Technology only gets interesting when you add a social layer’. It’s not just the tune itself that makes it so good but they way people respond and more often than not you need to hear a tune in the right place to fully understand why everyone is raving about it.
So, back to Austin. It wasn’t just from Marissa Mayer’s talk about Google Maps or Seth Priebatsch’s brilliant Keynote on the Game Layer that I drew my first conclusion from SXSW 11. It was combination of the sessions, watching people using their phones for 5 days, trying new things with mine, and then seeing this…
At the end of the week the geeks rolled out of town the bands rolled in. Not only was there a notable gear shift in the style stakes on the streets of Austin, but the sidewalk décor also changed with the posters advertising new apps and services being replaced by posters of bands pushing their new download. What’s interesting about this isn’t just the fact that this band, like so many other this year, have used a QR code as a mechanic for pushing their music, it’s that they’ve used the world ‘Smartphone’ as a verb. Remember when 'Google' became a verb? The fact that a band was using it this way suggests a tipping point; non-geeks now get this stuff. I can hear the band saying it now 'Smartphone this shit'. The verb-ification of the word ‘Smartphone’ got me thinking. We've been using the word 'phone' as a verb since the phone was invented; but what it is the smartphone actually 'does' that the verb-ified phone doesn't.
When the telephone first arrived it was a device for communication. It went mobile, then got smart. With a smartphone you could can get content wherever you are, which is great for people like me who deal in ‘content’. What really makes a phone smart is the ability to ‘do things’ with it. So, rather than just consuming content – which you can do on ‘un-smart’ phones – you can use the senses built into the phone to do interesting things. The sense of direction can allow you to ‘check in’ or navigate maps. The phone’s eye can see and translate QR codes or pretty much anything using Google Goggles. The role of haptic design in the device can enhance the user experience in a multitude of brilliant ways making touch a playground of oppotunity. All these senses have helped break down the wall that separates the real world from the digital world with the mobile as the mouse that interfaces them. The smartphone helps you navigate between the two quite seamlessly.
Of course, this isn’t new, we’ve kinda known about this for ages. There was a session last year called ‘What if my phone had 5 senses’. What has changed from last year is the volume of people using services such as Foursquare, Instagram, Facebook Places and QR codes and trying out lots of new ones like Instaprint, PapaSangre, FlyPost all of which have some realworld element and make the most of their senses to create amazing functionality. The way I used my phone changed dramatically this year. If I were to break down my phone usage I would say that it is no longer just a tool to communicate and consume, but it has become an important physical switch that can open up the door between two worlds, wherever I may be. I have checked in, scanned, bumped, navigated and pinged other services using the phones senses, all made possible by physical objects such a piece of paper taped to a lamppost, a satellite in the sky or a nice restaurant. My phone now ‘communicates’, ‘provides’ and ‘does’ in equal measures. That’s my big take-away from SXSWi 2011 which won't change the world but will make me think a little more about how the device and the realworld work together when in the hands of the audience.
