SXSW 2015 In Full Swing! Startup Winners Announced

SXSW (South by Southwest) kicked off its 10 day run on Friday March 13th in Austin, Texas. Every year Austin becomes the center of the country as it showcases a series of festivals and conferences focusing on music, film and technology. The film & tech (official name is Interactive) portions started on day one, with the music portion getting its start on the 17th. This ‘festival on steroids’ has been steadily growing since its inception in 1987.  I am particularly interested in the Interactive portion of the conference.

What’s Going On With Interactive (Tech)
The Interactive portion of the event features conferences and sessions with themes such as:

• Art, Science & Inspiration
• Branding & Marketing
• Design & Development
• Fashion & Wearable Tech
• Food & Experimental Dining
• Gaming
• The Intelligent Future

Within these major themes there are sessions as diverse as:

• 3D Printing
• Bitcoin
• Augmented Reality
• Virtual Reality
• Drones
• Humanizing Digital Content
• Women in Business
• The Future of Buying Groceries

There is literally something for everyone and anyone who is the least bit interested in the future of technology and social media.  The products proposed and the discussions that take place show us and inform us as to what we can expect to see in the near future.

Keynote speakers for the Interactive event include:

1)  Astros Teller of Google[x] – Google[x] is the technological advancement arm of Google; tasked with developing cutting edge innovation in technology. Some projects of Google[x] include Google Glass and a self-driving car.

2)  Logan Green, CEO of Lyft – Lyft is a peer-to-peer ride sharing company that operates in over 60 cities in the US.

3)  Princess Reema Bing Bandar Al Saud, CEO of Alfa Intl. – Alfa Intl. is a Saudi Arabian luxury retailer which employs over 100 Saudi women. She has also built a campaign around breast cancer awareness in Saudi Arabia.

There are over 800 sessions in the Interactive portion of SXSW. In addition to the themes mentioned above, there is also a start-up accelerator event in which 48 start-up technology companies compete by demonstrating their new and innovative products before judges and a live audience. The event took place on March 14th & 15th and as I’m sitting here writing this I can see the winners of this event have already been announced, I will list them here by category:

• Enterprise and Smart Data Technologies: Partpic – Visual search for replacement parts
• Entertainment and Content Technologies: Zype – Open platform for video content
• Digital Health and Life Sciences Technologies: Tinnitracks – music therapy for tinnitus
• Innovative World Technologies:  SLANTRANGE – Airborne remote sensing & analytics
• Social Technologies: RealSavvy – Centralized online real estate database
• Wearable Technologies: Tinitell – A wristphone for kids

There are volumes of information and content associated with this event and I will be attempting to ‘download’ some of it myself in order to understand the new products we can expect to see as well as write about them. This event is at worst an overwhelming experience and at best maybe even a life changing experience. I will be looking into attending next year so I may  have a first hand look at our future!

Follow me on Twitter – @rcrocc to get updates on further blog posts about the products and discussions of SXSW Interactive 2015.