It’s that time of year, when we all need to promote the panels we have submitted to the SXSW Panel Picker. It feels far away, but now is the time when SXSW really gets planned so if you don’t have an idea what you’re doing then you’re already behind the ball!

Your votes really count — they account for 30% of the decision on whether or not a panel is accepted and can really help one stick out from others with the same topic.

Being part of a community means lifting each other up and one easy way you can do that is with your mouse clicks… please take 5 minutes to go and vote for these other Austin entrepreneurs!

Check out the panels that our members have submitted to the SXSW Panel Picker and vote today! Deadline to vote is August 30. If you are in the Austin startup community and have another panel to promote, please leave it in the comments below!

Missed your chance to submit a panel? Don’t worry. You can still get on a panel by finding an existing panel that was submitted and adding yourself to it. SXSW is very focused on promoting diversity and consequently most panel organizers are actively looking for women and people of color to add to their panel. It’s not too hard to find the panel organizer on social media and reach out to them.

 

Immersive Technology and the Next UI Revolution

With each great hardware revolution, technology has undergone an accelerated sprint of user interface and user interaction evolution. The explosion of immersive technologies such as augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) has served as a catalyst to begin this next UI evolution. This change, however, is just the beginning. As content becomes increasingly contextual and connected devices steadily embed themselves in our lives (IoT, connected home, tech enabled mobility, smart glasses, digital assistants, etc.), designers will need to reevaluate fundamentally how we interact with technology.
Join Unity Labs, Neurable, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Capital Factory for an exploration into the impending UI revolution and the future of UI in an immersive, connected digital world.

 

8-Bit Policies in a 4K World: Adapting Law to Tech

The speed at which technology is developing is unprecedented in our history, yet politicians are as jammed up and at loggerheads as ever. The Senate hearing with Mark Zuckerberg revealed how little our political leaders actually understand what’s going on, but we’re still bound by the decisions they make regarding the technology we use on a daily basis. SOPA, PIPA, and the FCC’s vote against Net Neutrality are specific instances of politicians being at odds with public opinion, where technology enthusiasts feel the constant struggle to stem the tide of harmful legislation, and many may be left wondering — where is this going?

Join us as we discuss how to engage with our representatives and help them craft flexible policies that address the ever-changing tech landscape.

 

Why Corporate Innovation Fails

Corporate innovation programs are currently popping up everywhere. But are these programs effective? Is it even possible to measure their performance? Transformative innovation is critical if legacy firms want to compete with the startups that are gaining on them because they are more nimble, hungry, and open. Most have not optimized for successful innovation programs.

Through sharing cautionary tales, we will explore how many corporate innovation programs fail to produce desired outcomes. The elements of a successful program will emerge as we discuss common pitfalls and their root causes. We will also look at how successful programs have addressed the issues and what new programs ought to consider before launching their innovation pipeline.

 

Design Sprints Done Right: Creating Lasting Change

User-centered design is critical in making or breaking consumer technologies, but sometimes, on small product teams, day-to-day needs can get in the way of larger, longer term goals and solutions that resonate with your customer can’t manage to get off the launch pad. Learn how to successfully execute design sprints to kickstart key initiatives, answer critical business questions, and create lasting organizational change within your company.

 

LightSpeed Prototyping: A Collaborative Workflow

This presentation will be a live tutorial demonstrating how designers at Voltage Control rapidly synchronize work during design sprints. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use sketch and version control tools to track changes and prevent lost work during prototyping day of the sprint process. The presentation will begin as if we were starting off prototyping a small app about design sprints. If you’re not familiar with these software tools this is a valuable event to attend so that you can learn more about tools that designers on your team are using to help make high fidelity prototypes.

 

Cultivating Conditions for Inclusion

Many organizations view diversity challenges as a numbers game… just a matter of hiring and retaining enough talent to balance the equation. This radically oversimplified approach to a complex challenge doesn’t work. There are surprisingly straightforward solutions that every organization should adopt to create the conditions for inclusiveness and diversity. This panel will discuss several heuristics and simple rules that are both actionable and effective in cultivating an environment that retains diverse talent. Considerations include: transparent qualifications for career progression, increase employee mobility, recognize and reward measurable contributions to diversity health, and highlight hiring gaps with simple questions like, “What are the diversity metrics for incoming candidates?”

 

What is a Fractional Executive (CTO, CMO, CFO)?

Growing a company is stage specific. You just raised $10MM from Sequoia, you’re 3 co-founders, and you want to go hire the VP of Engineering from Uber. WRONG! You need to get to Uber’s growth rate first before your a fit for someone that’s currently flying a plane of that size and speed. It’s painful, slow and expensive to hire/fire exec staff as you get through the various stages. Paint the rocket booster stage process: that’s the way big companies are built. Fractional executives can help you get there.

 

The Sun Beneath Our Feet: Our Geothermal Future

We are literally standing on the sun. The core of the earth is 6000C, and drilling only 5–10 miles down would give us access to temperatures that far exceed what we need to create unlimited, CO2 free, clean energy. So why haven’t we done this? Because a set of technical and engineering problems related to high temperature, deep drilling technologies are currently holding us back. These problems are solvable, and addressing them will enable our energy “silver bullet.” A consortium has formed at the University of Texas at Austin, combining legacy drilling engineering expertise with our robust entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our aim is to catalyze a geothermal renaissance, enabling baseload capable geothermal energy by 2030. We want to invite the world to engage with this problem set and process.

 

Creating Inclusive Innovation

Learn how businesses—large and small—are working together to attract the best and brightest innovators to solve some of the most complex challenges of our time. Find out you can take these concepts and apply them to public-private partnerships to spark innovation and diversity around the world.

 

Building a Tech Stack for Employee Engagement

Business success starts with engaged, empowered employees. Find out how Booz Allen built an “engagement tech stack” partnering with Dynamic Signal and Poppulo.

 

Incubators: A Startup Guide from the Field

Companies invest in startups to avoid missing the next big thing (“FOMO” or fear of missing out). While corporations initially built incubators for early-stage startups, most now focus on ventures with product/market fit (PMF) to capitalize on organizational scale and causal outcomes.

 

A Strong Belief, Loosely Held: Bringing Empathy to IT

How can we use behavioral economics and other processes to help IT organizations adopt DevOps practices? Technology is easy but, people are another story. We’ll consider using game theory to encourage empathy in an org and how you, help drive positive change in your team, company, and community.

 

Industrial Cyber Security & Complex Threats

Let’s gather to examine: (1) the basics of control systems and the threat of cyber attacks, (2) ways that installations and utility companies protect control systems, and (3) innovative methods and technologies to counter and defend.

 

Telepresence: You Don’t Need To Be Here To Be Here

This panel discussion is about how industry, government, and start-ups are collaborating to create immersive technologies that bring people together and how our businesses will be forever changed by it.

 

Machine Learning and On-line Wildlife Trafficking

Wildlife trafficking is a booming, $19 billion online business, using social media platforms and e-commerce sites. In response, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is partnering with Booz Allen Hamilton and Epidemico to apply a nuanced approach to this global problem.

 

Immersive Technology and the Next UI Revolution

With each great hardware revolution, technology has undergone an accelerated sprint of user interface. Join Unity Labs, Neurable, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Capital Factory for an exploration into the impending UI revolution and the future of UI in an immersive, connected digital world.

 

Where the Wild Things Are

In this talk, we’ll explore the convergence of immersive technology (XR) and AI discussing the conjecture of a world where these technologies are prevalent, who the explorers are that will be taming these wild concepts, and how these “wild” technological advancements are going to shape the future.

 

Where the Wild Things Are (SXSW EDU Version)

In this talk, we’ll explore the convergence of immersive technology (XR) and AI discussing the conjecture of a world where these technologies are prevalent, who the explorers are that will be taming these wild concepts, and how these “wild” technological advancements are going to shape the future.

 

Escaping the Post-truth Era with Good Design

A “Post-truth” era has taken over. A recent MIT study found that falsehoods are 70 percent more likely to get retweeted than accurate news. Subject matter experts are undermined. Biases are welcome. Lies become truth.

If your product amplifies engaging or provocative content, it runs the risk of adding legitimacy to fake news and false facts along with it. And that can cause a lot of harm for a lot of people.

This workshop will address how this new philosophy affects how customers use your product and how you need to support these changes. We’ll have an in-depth conversation and provide concrete exercises to help you and your team design a product that can promote a return to facts and logic. You’ll walk away with a fresh view on how to educate and influence in a post-truth world.