By Henrique Russowsky, partner and director of Media Performance at All Set.
SXSW 24 is ending. Still on my way back to Brazil, I started to organize my ideas and put my reflections and perceptions on paper. But I confess that there are so many texts circulating about the festival, so many opinions, insights, happy and fulfilled people, others frustrated that their old festival is no longer the same, that it is difficult to find an angle to write about.
Firstly, it is natural that the festival is no longer the same. After all, it has been going on since 1987, and a lot has certainly changed since then. I imagine that the sense of exclusivity and belonging of those who were thrilled with the first editions of the event was waning. In their small groups, long before social media, they commented things like this festival is no longer the same. Still, SXSW continued to grow and turned into the giant we know today.
Controversies aside, the festival has always been known for generating that feeling of FOMO (from the English Fear Of Missing Out, which means fear of missing out) among participants. And no wonder: this year there were more than 1700 sessions offered over 8 days of the event. If each day there were only four blocks of one hour each to choose from, this means that making the most of the event consists of attending less than 2% of the sessions offered.
As the festival unfolds, the fear of missing out gives way to something much cooler: serendipity, the luck of finding something valuable where we weren’t looking. Below I share three moments of serendipity I had in Austin, in which positive sensations, which came by chance, filled my heart.
1. Being lucky enough to be in front of Holocaust survivors
As I carefully scrolled through the day’s agenda with my thumb to choose my next session, I decided to give a talk about the future of Holocaust memory through immersive technologies a try. The room was small, only holding about 60 people. In the middle of an innovation festival, where everyone is only talking about the future, we were surprised by the presence of two Holocaust survivors: Rodi Glass and Marion Deichmann.
Alongside VR film director Darren Emerson and Illinois Holocaust Museum director Kelley Szany, they showed us how technology can help us remember the past. They are releasing a series of immersive films about their lives, which will allow generations to come to vividly remember the horrific events, as this new generation will soon no longer have contact with any survivors. It was brilliant and exciting, but still unusual. I felt privileged and honored to hear the two tell their stories of life and overcoming in such an intimate environment.
2. Dive into the universe of dreams
One of the things I noticed in the first few days of the event was that many of the sessions related to marketing and branding were a little shallower than I expected. So, I started exploring sessions on more diverse topics, and ended up signing up for a workshop called Dream Incubation To Facilitate Creative Problem-Solving. It was by far the most sensational experience I had.
The session began with speakers Dr. Deirdre Barrett, professor of psychology at Harvard, and Michael Rohde Olsen, dream scientist and writer, explaining the process of dream incubation, that is, the ability to provoke our minds so that dreams contribute in solving a problem or in an important decision that needs to be made.
It seems to have a touch of quackery, but after the explanations, the speaker conducted a guided session, a type of collective hypnosis, and I was able to personally experience what was explained. I was simply impressed. So, I left the session with a feeling of peace of mind and a new subject to dive into: dreams.
3. As a gacho, I felt at home in Texas
South, barbecue, boots, hat. The only thing missing was the chimarro. He had never been to Texas except for layovers. It seems like we are in another United States, in the same way that sometimes Rio Grande do Sul also seems like another Brazil. This simple similarity centered on the appreciation of traditions was also a surprise that brought me good feelings, something I would never have expected, especially because I’ve lived in So Paulo for practically twenty years and I’m not even that connected to gacha culture anymore. Still, serendipity struck again.
In addition to these moments, I really enjoyed the event in each session, accessing topics directly connected to my area of activity, innovation and marketing. I heard from Amy Webb, Scott Galloway, Peter Deng, VP of consumer products at OpenAI, among many others. The event is extremely enriching, precisely because it delivers a complete and absolutely inspiring experience inside and outside our field of work.
This was my first time at SXSW and I came back satisfied and with my intellectual energy recharged. Every year, that same week, LinkedIn is flooded with the topic. In fact, there are a lot of repeated things, people simply wanting to show that they are at the event, wanting to give their opinion, just like I am doing now. But anyone who experiences this understands why. Whether you were there in 1987 or in 2024, SXSW is a big festival.
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