Psst. It’s here. On my desk. A unique collectable, high tech, no battery, impact resistant, always on, no-cloud and darn pretty carrier of wisdom on Mediabrands Belgium and its illustrious Mediabrandies. Who are they? What drives them? Where do they come from? What sets them apart? Why?
Find the answers in this book.
It’s inspiring, honest, right-in-your-face, unfiltered and glutenfree.
It truly takes a village to make Mediabrands. Discover the pure human side that powers us to be so much more than a media agency. Enjoy the stories, the anecdotes, the passion, the good… and the bad. Powered by People.
The Illuminati are secretly distributing copies of this book… if you can’t wait, take a glance at https://thecollectivepower.be/
I often get the question: Why would a civilized, sophisticated and handsome uptown citizen like myself fall for the dirty, muddy and dusty sins of off-roading? Why channel the inner beast in the reckless torturing of two-and-a-half tons of fragile steel on improbable slopes and challenging tracks? Why bear the dirt, the shocks, the smell, the grease, the danger while I could be sipping some Octomore, a nice careful marvel of the Scottish wood and peat whiskey, in my rocker?
Because off-roading is strategy. It’s brain gaming. It’s projecting, observing, calculating, adapting. It’s battlefield training of my management skills, making split second decisions, under pressure, with -literally- a life at stake: mine. Pivoting angles, projecting possible futures, and steering the Landrover in the most plausible one. It’s hardworking, blood boiling, heart-racing, mind-boggling, gut wrenching, nerve-racking and almost embarrassingly satisfying. It’s me.
Small interventions, and quick changes can deliver very different outcomes… in off-roading, in Lego… and in business life…
SXSW is tiring. An avalanche of insights, keynotes, business smarts, discoveries and things to think over. And Over. And again. After one week of SXSW, my neurons generate enough energized heat to propel a kilogram of vegetable pie in an orbit around Saturn. Now it’s time to let the dust settle down, to decant the wine, to take some distance. Not every shiny thing is a new diamond… and some pearls might still be hidden in the muddy waters…
Still, there is a lot to think about:
There will be no New Normal
Rest assured. The old normal is gone, and if you wait for the New Normal, you’re waiting for Godot. Change is here to stay. It’s so omnipresent that it became constant. It’s everywhere, and it is accelerating. It’s a giant snowball, gathering momentum, fuelled by tech, by data, by rapid learning, processing speed, quantum computing, and 5G. It’s spreading on, in and around the planet. It eyes the Moon and Mars. It is re-shuffling cities, schools, companies and countries. It blazes through energy, mobility, sociology, education, healthcare, anthropology, biology, nano-technology…
It’s about ethical living and working, while preserving the planet, enhancing well-being, and making a comfortable profit. Nothing normal about that.
The future is about experience
While tech and data are omnipresent (and soon omni-scient?), they are gently regressing to the background. Tech is here, is here to stay and it is giving us a giant boost. Like electricity, water and WiFi it just is. How to use this tech for good, for better; that is the gazillion dollar question impacting soon 8 billion people. The future is not about tech. It will be with tech. How to create better living, learning, progress, working, caring and prospering are the questions on everyone’s minds today. The future is about experience. About uniting. About sharing. About collaborating. About re-inventing. About having the courage to change. Going for a better experience. About becoming “better humans”: a giant challenge ahead.
(D)EX
Companies and organisations -and their workforce- are scrambling and re-inventing the workplace. The workplace will most probably a hybrid construction, where “where” and “when” work is done is less important than how its done. A business fundamental that shifts from a performance culture around cold KPI’s and being “present” to a collaborative culture on OKPI’s that are based on quality and pertinence. The (Digital) Employee Experience is re-shuffling the very fabric most businesses are build on. Organisations see that there real capital, their “liquid gold” are the people working for and with them. The term “human capital” was coined years ago, but is now more real than ever. If businesses have less and less walls, less and less real estate, less and less brick-and mortar presence, the real ambassadors are the people, on all levels. Culture and shared values are reliable ingredients for this new “mayonnaise”. Business Gatherings are the future for endless meetings: to meet to make a difference, to make an impact; rather than giving endless sit-reps.
CEX
Consumers are making their choices on experience to: seamless shopping, contactless paying, phygital set-ups, mobile and social shopping. On demand delivery. Painless paying. Those are the essential ingredients. But, they are not only looking at what a brand offers. They are interested in why a brand matters. They are hawk-eying the values and business purpose of the brands they want to associate themselves with. They are not content with a vague Value Proposition on a website anymore: they want Proof. Action. With great power, comes great responsibility. The total impact of a company, a brand, and organisation has a massive impact on the perceived Consumer/Brand/Experience. Lies and inconsistencies will be pointed out.
The Future is about values, and choices
So it comes down to making the right choices. Where, when and how to work. How to re-invent the workplace, the city, mobility, education. How to make the magic of inclusion work at all levels? How to let ethics co-exist with making a profit? How to gave more people chances without ruining our environment? How to take care of our children? Our elderly people? Fragile minorities? Our ecosystem? Will we be able to open the dialogue on all levels? Dare to really assess and change?
The Future is looking for the right leaders
Above all, SXSW showed that the very beginning of the next journey will not be about tech. It will be around leaders and leaderships. Navigators that show the way, while challenging the status-quo. That are keen and able to keep what is good, while opening up to new opportunities and possibilities. That constructs the future around human well-being, with respect for the planet, while making a healthy profit. Just making your numbers will no longer get you on the winning team any more.
Open, respectful, bidirectional and transparent communication will be the very backbone for this evolving society. Exciting times for us story-tellers, master-marketeers and magic-media wizards. Our trade will be in the middle of the action.
Will we be good enough to take Excalibur out of the Stone?
It has been a while since I wrote you. We were both very busy. You, rising your unicorns, being five, building Lego cities and making a space helmet from old newspapers, glue and tinfoil. Me, I spent ages watching you discover this planet, and protecting you from dragons and nightmares while keeping our economy going by keeping clients happy.
We certainly have not seen a lot of each other this week. You sleep, while I am happily hopping around at the biggest innovation show on the planet: SXSW. You asked me why SXSW makes me so happy. That struck me. Because it does, it really does. But how did you know?
It oxygenates my brain
Listening to enthusiast, energetic and passionate people talking about their art, their trade and their vision on things, activates every old neuron of my brain. Discovering what problem gets them excited; and how they proceeded to turn it around, examine it and plot ways to a solution is fascinating. I learned more from all these smart, but humble people’s failures and successes than I learned in all my school years combined.
“Use it, or lose it” said Willie Nelson, Texan legend: if you do not let your brain touch other brains, your view spar with other views your brain will shrink until it’s a peanut Tara. I cannot let that happen. My brain is feeding like a shark on all those thoughts.
It reassures me
There is a lot not right about the planet you start to discover Tara. Us, older humans, made rather a smelly mess. There are still kids with no education, no computer, no internet, no drinkable water, no food, and no access to a doctor. Kids your age still die because us adults are still spending more on shiny weapons and golden Rolexes than on feeding everyone.
Tara, kids your age, but with a skin as soft and fragile as yours, but just in another pantone color are at this very moment discriminated or in danger. Because they are labelled as different, “not like us”. They get bullied and beaten. Mocked.
We pollute. The air. The rivers. The seas. Our cities. Our bodies. We’re burning forests, killing trees. Annihilating complete species of plants and animals at a staggering pace. We’re slowly cooking this planet to death. Biting the very Mother Earth that harbors us.
But these last years Tara, in the different SXSW tracks, I found that some people have not given up. That there are ways to fight back. To get better. To address what is wrong. To find solutions, see opportunities, amplify strengths. I saw people stand up for good. With an intention to better the heaps of misery that is life for some.
It starts with astronauts
Yes, girls can become astronauts Tara. SXSW shows that too: the power of diversity: everyone regardless of age, race, hair color, sexual orientation or religion can make a difference. When I met Jessica Meir at SXSW a couple of years ago, she whacked me of my feet. Jessica Ulrika Meir was born in 1977. She is a professor at Harvard Medical School, and finished a postdoctoral research in comparative physiology at the University of British Columbia. As an intermezzo, she studied the diving physiology and behavior of emperor penguins in Antarctica and the physiology of bar-headed geese, whom are able to migrate over the Himalayas.
She flies T38 fighters, and graduated with a Master of Space Studies from the International Space University. She survived a NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operation. Something I can barely even spell. She outsmarted, outran, outbeat and outlearned an army of boys to become an astronaut. Because she knew she was the best, and she proved it. Having her tell that story to dads like me, is important for girls like you Tara.
But astronauts are real magicians Tara: when Jessica Meir points at the earth from the ISS where she was for 7 months, she shows us gently how small, fragile and breathtakingly beautiful our planet is. “In this window, on that marvelous blue ball lives every living creature we know” . And that hits home. She is so right. By showing us our planet from space, astronauts deliver a message of peace, and an urgent call to unite, and save what we still can.
Unite, mix and match
SXSW shows me also that one cannot do all Tara. We are so used to do things our way. To apply the things we know. To go the path we travelled earlier. To use yesterday’s thinking for tomorrow’s challenges. To rely on our skills. But the magic happens when we unite. When we think outside the box. When we discover thoughts from other people, from other trades, with other specialties and apply it to our own. SXSW shows that the future is in working together, rather than in endless specializing. Seeing the big picture, and learning from it to apply it in our work is an art we were losing.
Range
David Epstein showed in his book “Range” how we were let to believe that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead in their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up a whopping 10.000 hours of deliberate practice. Research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, showed him that early specialization is the exception, not the rule. The most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists in the world are… generalists, -especially in fields that are complex and unpredictable- They’re also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can’t see.
It should be mandatory
It should be mandatory Tara. To make sure you’ll still have a decent world to live in in a couple of years, we should take managers, CEO’s, teachers, dads, moms and journalists to gatherings like SXSW. To force them, even if it is only for a week, to observe where the puck is going. To invite them to ponder about all that new thinking for a while. To give them strength to challenge the status-quo. To dare them to put purpose over profit. The key to your future is somewhere in there Tara. And I hope that you, as the first princess-astronaut will find it.
Because, as Bertrand Piccard pointed out: your generation will have to do something big: save the planet.
There is tumbleweed rolling through the streets of Austin. Bars, music patio’s are running on near empty. BBQ joints wrap-in their smoked 7 meats platters for home-delivery. The receptionists in the impressive skyline-hotels play online poker. SXSW is very here, but very absent. It went virtual. Spooky, as the old cowboy would say.
On the metaverse and the interwebs, #SXSW2021 is thriving. Hundreds of keynotes. Star strategists and future-oriented thinkers, rock-legends, film wizards, neuroscientists, influencing gurus, spin-doctors, dreamers, astronauts, data-magicians, master marketeers and turbo-forecasters are painting their view of what the next years will bring us.
No more tech
Where a big chunk of the congress used to deal with new technologies, the launch of an application, the next world-conquering social network, the amazing 3D printing possibilities of a (n)early intelligent bot… there is none of that this year.
If you book a hotel, you never ask any more if there are clean sheets, hot water, electricity, and Wi-Fi. You unconsciously labelled that as “a given”, “normal”, “of course”. The minimum set of standards.
For SXSW, tech became exactly that: the minimum set of standards. Yes there will be tech in your future: ad-tech, bio-tech, farm-tech, fin-tech, nano-tech, space-tech, neuro-tech, data-tec, med-tech… you name it. Our future will be full of tech. Everywhere: around us, on us, in us. And none of that comes as a surprise anymore. Like fire and electricity, tech stopped to be magic. It just is. It will get better. It will get more annoying. More intruding. It will help us. It will open possibilities. It stopped to amaze us.
Experience
The focus shifted to “Experience ”. What will tech enable us to do better, quicker, smoother? How will it help building a better society? Will it finally turn poverty around? Will it impact climate change in a good way, and on time? Will it bring people together? Will it build more loyal employees, more faithful customers? Can we use tech to get less media messages, with greater relevance, to better targeted audiences, without hijacking their data?
Can we use it so that people have a better, more fluid and hybrid work-experience? Will we be able to re-build our companies around a new hybrid model where work is work, regardless of where that work is done?
Captains of industry and innovators unleashed a tidal wave of constructive thinking at #SXSW2021, urging political, societal and business leaders to rethink their very own future around “Experience”: Digital Employee eXperience, Physical consumer eXperience, Citizen and Community eXperience. Will these people succeed in turning the focus from votes, and short term shareholder value to long term engagement? Will they be able to shift from transactional thinking to establishing life time value?
Diversity. Inclusion
Seeing Melinda Gates, George Bush, Willy Nelson, Baratunde Thurston, P&G’s Marc Pritchard, and countless others hammering in the necessity to fix the fragile social web that holds us together. To move forward, we will need to make sure we go forward together: regardless of race, religion, sexual preference or geography. The tissue of our social web is breaking. Cohesion and understanding is under tremendous pressure. Here the question is: will technology help us to unite? To give everybody the same chances, in life, at work, on a healthy future? Or will technology divide us even further, and will the gap between the haves and have-nots become bigger and bigger?
We are becoming hybrid societies by necessity: we will need all to get through: humans ànd tech, leaders and employees, brands and consumers, planet and humanity.
Culture
This will require rethinking, reshaping, rebuilding our culture. More tech-supported, data-backed, diverse, understanding, caring, healing, educating. Building around values and purpose rather than around short term shareholder value.
How do you forge culture in enterprises that are next to empty? In countries where the very fabric around food, mobility and care is being rewritten as we speak?
Leadership
SXSW 2021 is very clear: we are in dare need of leadership. Not politicians, not managers: leaders. Leaders that are capable of telling the next story. Forging a culture that unites and conquers the future. Leaders that care and include. That have vision and values. That embrace human values and high-end technology.
SXSW is not about tech anymore…. It is about our future.
Can we talk about dr. Mayim Chaya Bialik for a second? You might know her as the neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler, Sheldon’s love interest in “The Big Bang Theory”. She was so stunning beautiful that the production had to dress her down, to make her an acceptable academic. Because, well beautiful women cannot have brains. *sigh*. Bialik actually has a doctorate in neuroscience, with a dissertation on hypothalamic activity.
Watching her debate today with Prof. Yuval Noah Harari, historian, bestselling author, and considered one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals, made my brain happy. In a world where half of the internet finds arguments for a flat earth on YouTube, and another third believes Bill Gates is interested in injecting 5G controlled nano-bots in our bloodstreams, finding two consenting adults in a sapiosexualparler-vrai is re-assuring.
Killing witches
Harari, in his bone-dry way, manipulates words like The Witcher wields his sword: precise, relentless, efficient. Information kills. The first mass medium, printing press, through solid catholic books, labelled smart women as “witches”. Sleeping with the devil, turning decent people into frogs, the works. Men, already feeling threatened by women with brains, found in these books the permission to kill: thousands of innocent women and girls were tortured, burned or drowned. Because the book said so. The parallel to today’s witch-hunt with virologists, epidemiologists and immunologists is frightening: a second mass-medium (the internet) is slowly stigmatizing them as “the enemy”, the “deep state”, “paid for by the 1 percenters”, “wanting to de-populate the world”. Information with the potential to kill. Because the web said so.
Weeks ago, thousands of people invaded The Capitol, because The Man said so… and the ones who said otherwise, the media, were ‘enemies of the state’: fake news. A story well-crafted, well told for years, grooms the masses.
It does not have to be true
Bialik chimed in on how we are programmed, neuro-scientifically, to react to stories. Stories wire us to believe, to do, to feel, to act. Stories make us understand, make us feel safe. Stories have a beginning, an ending. Innovation makes that if you change the story-line, you change the ending. You hurt our hard-wired programming. You will be met with resistance. If God created us, in the middle of the universe, a story placing the sun in the middle of the solar system, will be met with disbelieve, with anger, with violence.
Harari points out a bone chilling truth: the story does not need to be true. The truth does not matter, the story-line does. Find the story that is easier to believe, and it will become truth. The better told story wins over scientific evidence. Time after time. Look at religions, complot theories, sects; look how wars were started… Trying to point to the truth with facts and science is laudable, but very inefficient. Few people that have the right background to point out the truth, have the storytelling skills to make that truth compelling.
We are afraid of change
The debate showed how the introduction of almost any transformative technology has been met with wonder as well as fear, aggression and rejection. Our greatest inventors were considered heretics. The mad scientist is burned in our brain-wiring from our very youth. The new still scares us. We are afraid of change.
Media are stuck
Where journalists in bona-fida media for long showed the way through the muddy waters between disinformation and truth, they seem to have lost their magic. The fourth power has lost its steam. Logic investigative journalism is not great at storytelling. Some kids with a collective low double digit IQ, weaponed with a 4k camcorder and a YouTube channel tell way better and more compelling stories. A scary amount of people is not even able -or willing- to understand the very arguments that set out a theory in the first place. “Journalists are now stuck in arguments about basic established facts instead of moving the ball forward. This prevents true conversations… instead we’re wasting breath on whether or not the Earth is round” says news anchor Ben Collins.
Ethics should rule
Harari and Bialik point out that every single doctor needs to pass tests on his ethical skills before he can claim his degree. He swears an oath to Hippocrates. So do judges. And the rest of us?
What is the staggering power teachers have? The tremendous power -and responsibility- the coders have that build the very platforms that are designed to feed us with news? The people bringing the news? The corporations and brands that pay for the news? The spin-doctors creating the political and brand stories? The communication and media wizards and their data-loaded, AI driven programmatic machinery?
Is it not time that they take ethic courses? Pass an ethical exam? Swear an oath that matters? Should we not start working on a society that embeds ethics-by-design?
United, we conquer
How can we ensure that innovators, legislators, coders, data-architects, communicators and educators should consider these ethical issues and understand their staggering responsibility in ensuring outcomes that lead to the betterment of people and the planet?
In the end, the truth always prevails, like oil on water. Aids did not kill sex. Covid19 will not kill hugging. We will all be fine. Science will save us, once again.
But the better story, in the wrong skilled hands, with the wrong intentions, might cost humanity a lot more than a pandemic.
And you, you are the very first line of defense. I will do my part. I will tell my five year old daughter about dr. Mayim Chaya Bialik.
There. That got your attention? Well, that is Baratunde Thurston for you. A fast thinking, funny, multi-versed black activist that is easy on the eye, but deadly in the wielding of his favorite weapons: facts, wrapped in irony and vitriol. He is a tough believer in the inclusive power of citizens, the collective force of people standing up peacefully, but firmly, for what is good and right. His message to the media, marketing and communication professionals and to owners of businesses small and tall, is delivered with style, a twinkle in the eye, an ounce of pathos, and… squarely in the teeth.
How to be black
Baratunde Thurston was one of the star-writers for the satiric magazine “The Onion”. He quickly stood out of the pack with his ability to get his points through in hard and complex conversations. His vast knowledge on a multitude of social, historic, societal, economic and technical matters mixed well with his positive vibe, his blend of humor, intriguing depth and solid compassion. He was an adviser for Obama, produced the Daily Show, wrote a stellar book on “How to be black”, deconstructing in a very comprehensive way the racial politics in America. Reading that book, as a middle aged white European man, whacked me off my socks. Baratunde is Emmy-nominated, and hosts now his podcast “How To Citizen with Baratunde”. He received the Social Impact Award earlier this year.
Don’t focus on the negative
Thurston is tired of the avalanche of mostly and overwhelmingly negative messages that he was receiving every time something happened: from his friends, his white friends, the media. Way too much concentration on passive negativity. Way too much attention focused on problems in the world. He thinks just looking at problems, turning them around, nurturing them, only makes them bigger and uglier. He observes a blatant lack of focus on people working to alleviate or fix , or deal with this problems. Just pointing out a problem, and sit and wait until something gets done, is depressing, demeaning, dis-empowering. He finds it tiring, futile, exhausting and -frankly- sad.
How to citizen, in 4 steps.
Baratunde Thurston thinks citizenship is action. It starts from within, and it spreads around. That reminds me of a conversation I had with Nicolas Faret, Chief Digital Officer Group Randstad France: “There is no better place to change the world for good than starting with yourself. With being the best leader you possibly can. Offer choices and chances. Let people blossom. Show them their actions matter, for the team, the company, and -why not- the world. Change starts from within. It’s our responsibility”.
Thurston identifies 4 clear steps: First, get out of your bed, out of your comfort zone, show up and participate. Take it into your hands. Matter. Make a difference. Change. It’s active, it’s do-stuff. Secondly: invest in the people around you. Forge and build relationships of trust. You, and the others: you can’t do this alone, you need a family, a team, a tribe. You need to lead by example. You need this fragile relational exercise: it’s what living, working, activating together is about. It is about trust. About changing things together. Side by side, shoulder by shoulder. .
Thirdly: earn, claim, discover your power. As an individual, as a group. Understand your power, and what it can do and change if you use it. For good, and bad. Don’t be ashamed of it, just use it well, to perfection, smart and with a heart. Fourthly: focus on things that matter for the many, not the few. Shift, make, bend for the benefit of the many and not just the few. Thurston wants to clean the word “power”, educate people in its meaning and in its use. A philosophy of Power literacy. No less. Thurston wants to recognize collective power through individual action, reinterpreting the word “citizen” as a verb, a call for civic action everybody can/should do.
And you? What will you do?
Baratunde Thurston talked about racism, insurrection, and digital exploitation. He called on brands and businesses to claim and exercise their collective power as societal players. Businesses and brands need to invest in a wide range of people, from different backgrounds, and on all levels: up, down and through the organization. They need to look beyond the products they offer. What do they stand for? Why do they matter? How will they make a difference? For what cause? They need to invest in places that have been divested from. Creating new ways of doing business, smarter hiring, better retaining employees, telling stories that matter. Using the power, for good.
You are what you can dream
Baratunde highlighted the importance of using our dreams, our creativity and our imaginations to create a better society. We live in a world of illusion, let’s create something better: “SXSW isn’t real, it’s an illusion. Money, the Federal Reserve. It’s only real, because we believe in it. That’s what makes it happen. Our believes. Without that, there is nothing. … As marketers, makers and community builders, we conjure up realities all the time, so let’s conjure up a new one that benefits all of us, not just a minority.“
And that calls for standing your ground, and be faithful to your very values: “If you are against human trafficking, you should be against the trafficking of human data, in any way. We did not create the internet for it to be controlled by a handful of companies. Companies, that are nothing without our data, mind you. “
Thurston wants the “holders of power” to use that power for good. “Individual choices, team choices, tribe choices… choice by choice, is how we, as a society, will make wider, wilder change.A greater ‘me’ equals a greater ‘we’’. That is where it starts.”
What a year it has been for Hugh Forrest, director of the SXSW Interactive festival. Literally hours before the grand opening of SXSW 2020, the Austin authorities cancelled the show. Venues, speaker arrangements, swag… all had been paid for. Instead of basking in the light of yet another great festival, Forrest and his team had to think fast on their feet to roll with the wave. Tens of millions of dollars evaporated overnight, shading a serious doubt over the survival chances of the Texan festival of innovation and music. SXSW laid off at least 50 employees within days, a third of its staff. CEO Roland Swenson and Hugh Forrest ensured various media that the company was planning to put on a festival in 2021, “how we’re going to do that we’re not entirely sure.”
Everybody has a plan
Mike Tyson paraphrased Joe Louis when he said that “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”. The pillars of society, companies, countries and organizations are wedged deep in the securing rock of habits, tradition, structures. The art of viewing trends, is to accelerate the past. To be able to recognize the patterns that matter. And then the punch comes. With a sledgehammer. In the groin. SARS-COV-2, a little virus barely 50 nm to 140 nm in diameter stopped life-as-we-knew-it dead in its tracks.
Spiral to death, or see the light
Restaurants, bars and hotels closed. Towns in lock-down. Hospitals full. Sick people dying in corridors and in underground parking-buildings. Crematoria with back-logs. Politicians stunningly inadequate. Thousands of airplanes grounded. Schools closed. Hugging made more casualties than school shootings. Companies saw their corporate floors and buildings empty. Employees packed, and went home. A lot of them have not returned to their office yet. A lot of them never will. Brick and mortar shops saw themselves empty, week after week… Culture and entertainment went from multi thousand stadium extravaganza to underground or virtual overnight. Educational campuses saw tumbleweed rolling through the empty corridors and aulas. Town centers lost up to 30 % of their vital economic and social tissue: small and local businesses.
Some waited the return of the old normal, refusing to change. Refusing to adapt. Counting on the patterns that mattered. Counting on the new return of the old glory. But that old glory, like the man who left his family to buy his cigarettes at the night shop, will never return.
Others are waiting for the new normal, that almost holy moment when things will stabilize enough to assess, make a headcount, a reality check, get a bearing, and move onto a new sea. But that new normal will never come either, will it?
Survival lays in taking the sting, dancing like a butterfly, rolling with the wave. The leaders that concentrate on where the puck is going, rather than on where it is, are the ones that steer their vessel to the faint glow of the lighthouse called “future”.
Change will be constant
By lack of “new normal”, change will be constant. All indicators show there will be no return to the old ways. Employees and consumers shift their behavior after 28 constant days. We went through 12 of those cycles in a year. The human behavior shifts we’re seeing today from business leaders, consumers, and employees are here to stay. Accenture research shows that 77% of CEOs say their company will fundamentally change the way it does business, in a most dramatic way: re-imagining business through the impact of experiences on customers, employees and the world. Seeing the likes of Accenture Interactive’s Chief Strategy Officer, Baiju Shah, and Best Buy’s Chief Customer Officer, Allison Peterson on stage here at SXSW discussing how and why organizations need to be employee and customer centered and obsessed to adapt and survive will be most interesting.
Business Leaders Must Be The New Futurists
Change is accelerating at every level and the #BusinessOfExperience is moving to the top of the CEO survival agenda. Forbes described it well: Business Leaders Must Be The New Futurists. Every leader will need to be a technology leader instinctively aware that business and innovation strategies are now indistinguishable and able to fuse the two momentous transformations driving change : technical progress and sustainability
Austin: stirred and shaken
SXSW is a close to 360 million dollar affair for Austin. For the second year in a row, the city sees a colossal amount of cash burning, adding a bitter taste to the city’s notorious BBQ smoke. But, the city thrives. The innovation aura that SXSW beamed over the weirdest city of Texas is still doing its work. Start-ups flourish. 154 companies announced their plans to relocate to the hometown of SXSW. Names as Samsung, Domain/Simon Properties, Fotowatio Renewable Ventures Solar Farm, East Blackland Solar Project, Apple, HID Global, Charles Schwab and -yes- Tesla show a growing appreciation for the elasticity and brain-innovative power of the city.
No New Normal
I’m glad that Bruce Sterling, science fiction writer futurist and SXSW icon left me this wonderful quote to ponder about:
“Forget trying to pass for normal. Follow your geekdom. Embrace nerditude. In the immortal words of Lafcadio Hearn, a geek of incredible obscurity whose work is still in print after a hundred years, “Woo the muse of the odd.” You may be a geek. You may have geek written all over you. You should aim to be one geek they’ll never forget. Don’t aim to be civilized. Don’t hope that straight people will keep you on as some sort of pet. To hell with them. You should fully realize what society has made of you and take a terrible revenge. Get weird. Get way weird. Get dangerously weird. Get sophisticatedly, thoroughly weird, and don’t do it halfway. Put every ounce of horsepower you have behind it. Don’t become a well-rounded person. Well-rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish.”
SXSW 2021: still walking
Many companies, stores, concert halls, museums and workplaces are trying to move from in-person to virtual this year. Employers identified a new challenge in connecting teams and fostering a sense of belonging. Museums virtualized their catalogues of art all over the internet, national orchestras brought Wagner, Puccini and Vivaldi to YouTube and Microsoft Teams.
Hugh Forrest and his team stayed on their forefoot all year, anticipating every move, rolling with the punches. They’re bringing a complete virtual festival, partly on immersive platforms. The set-up is well beyond the Olympic Minimum for a transition year. It looks like SXSW 2021 simply “Is”. Unexpected, challenging, in your face. Weird. If this is a transition year, Hugh Forrest, you can already count me in for next year’s hybrid bonanza.
I has a sad. For the very first time in sixteen years I will not be spending my favorite two weeks of the year in Austin, Texas. Last year, braving hell, doom, lock-down, airspace closures, toilet paper shortage, Trump tantrums and a little bandit called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, I hopped to SXSW 2020. I found it with the doors locked, the festival cancelled, the town in shock, and a couple of thousand innovation die-hards stranded.
12 months, a new president, two lock-downs and three quarantines later, I am once again packing my bags. Not to go to Austin -sometimes I need to use the little sense that is left in me-, but I will be going to SXSW2021. I’ll be spending the next week in an innovation bubble, away from the world, on US time, following as much of SXSW as I can. My micro-brewed beer is cooling, the White Russiansare ready, and some BBQ baby-racks are slowly getting smoked to perfection. SXSW? You need to taste it Texan Style.
If you cannot join it: beat it
If I cannot roam the Austin Convention Center, hang out in the Techset Lounge, and watch the turtles at the County Line, I will settle for the next best thing: VR. SXSW is revealing an XR world for SXSW 2021: an online virtual event, but on steroids. They’ve recreated the speakers venues, hang-out stages and every downtown Austin landmark from Congress Avenue to Red River Street in virtual reality. Because, well, SXSW… and keeping Austin weird.
Austin 360 reports that SXSW worked with artists and XR companies to recreate the best parts of town, including the Paramount Theatre, the Contemporary Austin,Mohawk, Empire Control Room & Garage and Cedar Street Courtyard as virtual spaces. Inside these XR (extended reality: covering virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality)- spaces, SXSW 2021 attendees will be able to attend live panels, keynotes, enjoy meet-ups and special events. On top, virtual cinema programming and 2-D video feeds of all of the SXSW programming can be watched. SXSW’s XR experience runs on VRChat and is available via PC, PCVR and Oculus Quest headsets.
Ready for the future?
“This years festival is roughly build on 7 tracks which are specifically focused on this unique moment in history and a glimpse into what the future could look like” says congress boss Hugh Forrest. The #SXSW2021 chronicles give us a little more information (summarized here below):
2020 has amplified issues like racial injustice, poverty, nationalism, and the climate crisis amidst a global pandemic. The future depends on the business, non-profit, government, science, and technology communities all working together. What advancements are needed to create immediate and lasting progress?
If we are to achieve real change as a society, then the many ways in which the tech industry impacts our lives must be leveraged as a positive force. To build a better tomorrow, what lessons can an industry integral to our existence learn from its current failings?
Great art often thrives in times of turmoil and chaos. How will the eruption of creativity we are currently seeing across music, film, experiential, written, and visual arts impact our culture for the next decade and beyond?
From start-ups to small companies to major corporations, capitalism must be examined as we look to rebuild the global economy. A potential levelling of the playing field awaits if we seize this opportunity for more equitable systems across race, gender, and class.
Conventional wisdom from entertainment industries has lost its shine in the face of evolving consumer habits, technological advancements, and an increased focus on social issues. These pressures are forcing a much needed metamorphosis. What lessons can music, film, television, sports, and gaming learn to keep up with an ever-accelerating pace of change?
We’re living lives we never could have imagined as we head into our own brave new world. The consequences of social isolation have been brewing for years. Now online platforms are some of the only outlets available to foster a sense of community. How do we return to a world where individual concerns give way to embracing the value of humanity?
Biohacking, consumer space travel, quantum physics, radical life extension, drone delivery — these concepts that once belonged in science fiction are now part of our immediate future. What mind-blowing new ideas will inspire the next generation of innovators?
Brain candy
In addition to Willie Nelson, George W. Bush, Pete Buttigieg, and Ava DuVernay I’ll be able to listen to Emmy Award-winning host Samantha Bee; founder and Chief Executive Officer of Streamlytics, Angela Benton; Entrepreneur and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson; Cannabis rights activist Steve DeAngelo; Entrepreneur, author and academic Joost van Dreunen; Co-founder and CEO of Relativity Space Tim Ellis; Academy Award-winning actor, author, producer, director and philanthropist Matthew McConaughey; Square co-founder Jim McKelvey; Mathematician, data scientist and author Cathy O’Neil; Comedian, writer and How to Citizen podcast host Baratunde Thurston; Director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) Dr. Michael Watkins; Quantitative futurist, author and founder and CEO of the Future Today Institute Amy Webb; and Elizabeth Banks, Mary J. Blige, Erin Lee Carr, James Cameron, Mark Cuban,Dominique Crenn, Cynthia Erivo, Mick Fleetwood, Melinda Gates, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Bill Hader, Taraji P. Henson, Barry Jenkins, Mark Mothersbaugh, Desus Nice and the Kid Mero, Indra Nooyi, Amber Ruffin, The Russo Brothers, Werner Vogels, Chris Webber, and many many others.
Nothing better than some neuron-heating discussions and mind-popping content to bury a COVID infested year. SXSW, I missed you. My brain is ready.
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