THE LAB

I just got back from my first ever South by Southwest (SXSW) festival (and first-ever time to Texas…yee haw!). No, I was not there for the music. No, I was not there for the film. Although both of those portions are incredible and fun, I was there for the “interactive” portion: by self-proclamation, it exists to bring together “The Brightest Minds in Emerging Technology.” Sound like fun? Not so sure? Well, let me tell you…it was AWESOME.

I went to several panels over the 3 days I was there, all of which I found informative, exciting, and thought-provoking. Topics ranged from “Tips for Making Ideas Happen” to “Open Source Disability Tech” to Keynotes from the likes of Nate Silver, James Powderly, Chris Anderson and Guy Kawasaki.

Most exciting for me was participating on a panel titled “Regional Whuffie Building: Attracting Innovation to your City.” In addition to working for RVL, I own Office Nomads, a coworking space in Seattle. So I got to sit alongside four of my excellent coworking colleagues to discuss how coworking spaces around the country are helping to attract innovations and innovators in their cities. It was an honor to participate, and I will definitely write about that experience after a bit more time to reflect.

Here’s what I took away after 3 days of amazing talks, inspiring conversations, and excellent parties: in order to move forward in today’s world, you need to understand what technology can and cannot do. I’m going to break this into four major sub-points, so please read on:

1. Technology can help, if we understand that it works differently than all other communication tools have in the past.

I went to a great panel called “Presenting Straight to the Brain,” and got a nice reminder that although technology has advanced significantly, our brains still act, for the most part, as if we were cavemen. Scoff as you may, research shows that we respond strongly to words and images as they pertain to our survival, our happiness, and other basic wants and needs.

This is not all that new as far as information goes: traditional marketing has harnessed this idea in the past (for example, wooing us to drink horrible beer by placing scantily-clad women next to it). But as far as our relationship to technology, we still have a lot to learn. How can we make tools and use tools and understand that they will help us move forward, just not in the way that we’ve moved forward in the past?

This came up again in “Tips For Making Ideas Happen.” One of the interesting points made was by Scott Belsky (presenter, CEO of Behance): we have to understand that organizational strategies can be different now as computers and search-based operating systems have eliminated the need to “file” things in ways we may have done before. Gone are the days of filing systems (whether tangible or on the computer screen) with special tags on each one. If we are looking for a document, all we need to do now is to search for it and it’s there in a few short seconds. Rejoice! New methods are simple. Different. And that’s the point, right? New technology is supposed to make life easier.

The lesson to take away here is that the only way technology can really be as helpful as it’s meant to be, is if we are able to recognize that it is different, that it has things to teach us about the way we progress every day. Sticking to our same methods of communicating, organizing and presenting will only move us so far – in order to grow we have to really tap into the resources available to us.

2. Technology cannot serve as a substitute for human interactions.

This may sound obvious, but as the world of social marketing and social media crop up all over the place, I think it is worth repeating: Technology (and here I’d like to specifically refer to online social networks) is an amazing connector, and can bring people from all over the world to the virtual table (as long as they have access to said technology, which is worthy of another post altogether). But what it cannot do is substitute for the sheer authenticity of sitting across an actual table from someone. There is a reason why SXSW Interactive is an event and not just an online webinar. We know that by coming together – even just once a year – we have the opportunity for more conversations, we see the nuances of what a person is like in person, and maybe even we sit down over a beer together (or a margarita, as the case may be in Austin).

In her presentation “Making Whuffie: Raising Social Capitol in Online Communities,” Tara Hunt made this point: attempting to use social networking tools only for financial gain will get you nowhere. People know spam and boring marketing when they’re hit with it, and they instinctively run in the other direction.

Instead, Tara urges us to recognize that in order to truly connect and grow a community around anything, you need to become a part of that community. This takes time. It takes listening skills. It requires you to authentically connect with people, which can be done in part via online connections, but it also requires being in front of people – being in your community. Simply being a friend on Facebook will not get you very far.

Again: online interactions are no substitute for the real thing, but they can be a great additional connector.

3. Technology can be a lot of fun.

Self-explanatory, but worth mentioning. To speak honestly, I have poo-pooed tech geekdom for a long time. My brother, the greatest tech geek I know, was likely the reason for this. As a little sister, I have tried for years to differentiate myself somehow. I’ve criticized society (myself included) for spending too much time in front of computers and not enough time actually talking to one another, spending time outdoors, and tapping into the world around us.

This is all still true, but I did walk away with many reminders that the world of technology has a lot to offer, and a lot of that is incredibly and simply fun. For example, I went to SXSWi carrying my new iPhone (woot!): I could upload photos to share with friends, or let other attendees know which panels I watching (or which ones I was in!) quickly and easily.

Video was being used throughout the conference to share information, to connect us with the world outside of SXSW, and to document the event so that it could be shared to others outside of the event. Additionally, technology is being continually re-vamped and re-invented to be more useful, more user-friendly, and more fun. We live in an incredible age, and we can be happy and have fun, if we appreciate technology and constantly work to make it better.

[To that end, take 4 minutes and watch this. As Louis CK says, everything is amazing. I'd add that we just need to remember every once and a while to be thankful, and to see what we can do to make it better. Thanks to Louis for the fantastic, hilarious reminder of how far we've come.]

4. Technology cannot be a band-aid.

Finally, if you are a business or an organization struggling with employee morale, customer loyalty, or awareness of your product/service, you might look to technology to solve your problems. For example, you may be tempted to build a social networking tool to spread the word. Please, for all our sakes, hold off before you jump off the social networking cliff!

Social networks are incredibly useful and powerful, if used properly. But too many companies are applying them as some sort of band-aid to their problems, when problems likely stem from a larger systemic issue. Using technology to attempt to solve the entire system of your organization will likely only create more clutter for you. It will NOT (I am certain of this) solve any issues for you.

The beauty of technology is in how it is applied. When applied appropriately, a social media tool can bring people together around a cause, an organization, an alumni group, anything. But when used as a “slap it on and hope it helps” solution, it typically fizzles.

A quick recap:

There are a lot of things that technology can and cannot do. We are just beginning to undersand the reach and depth of what we can do with what we’ve already made. Things are really looking up. Instead of complaining about what we have now, we should all be encouraged to take everything we’ve done and make it even better. This is the stuff that gets me excited: there is so much potential out there to make our world a better place.

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