SXSW Interactive 2016: Like the Food Trucks, it Promised a Lot, but Failed to Satisfy

HfS travelled down to Austin, Texas, last week to participate in SXSW (South by South West) Interactive 2016. Lured by the promise of panel titles addressing topics close to the heart of HfS, such as intelligent automation, design thinking, collaborative engagement, IoT, security threats, how to design for tech that doesn’t exist yet and more, we went looking for signs of progress toward the As-a-Service Economy amongst the Digital in-crowd.

In hindsight, we should have known better. The intriguing titles of many of these sessions were often left unmet by panelists and their content, which spoke to the promise of tech (and some of the threats) but in a way that often seemed disconnected from the daily operational realities of enterprises, still challenged by legacy capabilities and a lack of investment to bring their operations out of the dark ages.

Over the course of the event, we were subjected to presentations that reminded us of the near ubiquitous food trucks parked outside the event venues. These food trucks offer one-course treats with cool sounding names and exotic ingredients (The Waylon and Willie: sourdough bread, aged cheddar, gouda, caramelized onions, pepperoncini and spicy maple bacon sauce). Ultimately, somehow, the food is unfulfilling, leaving you wanting something more to keep you going.

This lack of fulfillment from SXSW can be explained by the three different skill clusters required to move to the As-a-Service future in an established enterprise:

1. Tech visionaries and designers
2. Day-to-day operational leaders
3. Senior executive sponsors

The challenge with SXSW 2016 was that the vast majority of the attendees were all representing cluster 1).  That works for start-ups which don’t have a 2) or a 3) and SXSW Interactive certainly has an impressive resume as a launching pad for transformative companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Spotify.

However, with the lure of the app ecosystem for iOS/android slowing down, SXSW clearly wants to pivot towards having a message for enterprises that goes beyond apps and simply having armies of millennial entrepreneurs, marketing agents and nose-ringed designers can’t address that gap.

Of the 8 HfS Ideals of the As-a-Service Economy, our time at SXSW captured the following impressions of how much substantive attention was being given to each on a scale of 1(very little) to 5 (constant).

1. Writing off Legacy (1): It was as though there was no legacy to write-off in the first place.
2. Design Thinking (4): Pervasive Ideal, but somewhat lacking in its application to services as opposed to products and user interfaces.
3. Brokers of Capability (3): Mostly around capabilities related to design and coding for the enterprise.
4. Collaborative Engagement (2): Lots of lessons for how designers should speak to each other and clients but very little on effective cross skill cluster teaming.
5. Intelligent Automation (2): Heaving on the theory of automation and cute demos but lacking in substantive case studies or experiences.
6. Accessible and Actionable Data (3): Effective visualization techniques and the promise of IoT data were strong topics, but again lacking a bridge to creating sustainable value for enterprises.
7. Holistic Security (3): Encryption and cyber threats were pervasive topics, in part, because of President Obama’s opening keynote, but finding examples of how to respond in the enterprise remained a gap.
8. Plug and Play Digital Services (2): This was a struggle, no new platforms seemed to be launched this year and existing application vendors don’t come to SXSW, but there was no shortage of demo rooms for future concepts.

At the end of the day, SXSW 2016 surely has a role as:

• A recruiting event for millennial designers
• A book tour destination for pundits and consultants
• A demo site for gadgets and apps especially this year for virtual and augmented reality 
• A five-day long party in a fun town occupied by food trucks

But, as an indicator for how the enterprise is moving towards as-a-service, it’s nothing more than a quick road-side stop for a flashy sounding snack that leaves you hungry as you carry on driving to where the real action is.