SXSW Continues to Drive Tech Innovators

South by Southwest, commonly referred to as SXSW, is an annual set of festivals. There are film, music and interactive media festivals that take place either concurrently or consecutively in mid-March in Austin, TX. The festival started in 1987. Each year has seen more attendees and many changes to the lineup, event formula and location. The interactive media portion of the festival tends to focus on the creativity, innovation and inspiration needed in the technology-based industries.

What Are The Events

SXSW Tech

There are a number of different types of events offered at this festival. Participants can attend lounge, screening, exhibition, party, session, showcase and special events. The type of event will dictate what will take place. For example, at the lounge event called “3M LifeLab: The Big Picture,” attendees were able to take a step back from the day-to-day aspects of life and get an inside look at what 3M is doing to confront earth’s challenges.

All of the events focus on creativity, innovation and inspiration. Creativity is weaved into the event through the sharing atmosphere as guests and speakers alike are encouraged to discuss new ideas. Innovation takes the main stage as new technologies and industry leaders are highlighted. Inspiration is pumped into the event through the enlivened, energized and excited atmosphere.

What’s Changed

This festival has been taking place for 29 years, but it has never been exactly the same. One major change for this year’s festival was the move of SX Create to the Palmer Events Center. This move gave a family-friendly play-space for the makers and hackers at the event. The move also allowed an addition of the Robot Ranch, which is a space where attendees can meet and greet A.I. animals and their creators.

Who Are the Speakers

With so much going on at the SXSW tech festival each year, it is hard to see every single speaker at the event. Some of the top speakers this year included:

Casey Gerald, co-founder and CEO of MBAs Across America

President Barack Obama

Dr. Brené Brown, bestselling author and founder and CEO of The Daring Way and COURAGEworks

Megan Smith, United States Chief Technology Officer

Kevin Plank, founder and CEO of Under Armour

Andy Puddicombe, co-founder of Headspace

Why It’s Important

The look at new technologies and the discussion of new ideas is a very important part of innovation in the industry. SXSW gives the top talent in technology a space to share their ideas and a way to improve their creations through community input. It is important to have this space where thinkers and creators can come together to improve new technologies, come up with new ideas and make plans to help shape the world.

Photo credit

Eastside-Online 

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How to Inspire Your Tech Employees

Inspire tech employees

The parable of “[...] give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime,” is not a new biblical allegory. If a person is teachable, he or she becomes better equipped for glitches that will inevitably happen; and therefore, be a more valuable part of the team – and that includes C-level managers. An entrepreneur starting out in the tech realm may have limited management skills but inspiring loyalty and creativity from employees may be as easy as following an age old fable.

If a leader, whether CTO, CEO or even storefront owner, isn’t equipped for some degree of “failure”, the world will perpetually seem a very difficult, disappointing place. A champion of mentorship will pave a more direct road to greater long-term achievement within a company. Developing an open teaching culture within your industry will ultimately produce better ideas, improve business transparency and maintain happier employees – as recent Gallup study will corroborate:

“Managerial actions and practices can impact employee work conditions and employee perceptions of these conditions, thereby improving key outcomes at the organizational level. Perceptions of specific work conditions that engage employees in their work provide practical guidance in how best to manage people to obtain desired results.”

Some teaching and engagement approaches that can align your employees with your company’s mission include 8 key practices:

Ask employees for their ideas
Inspire company camaraderie with team projects in and out of work
Enable employees to make mistakes
Welcome employee feedback on culture with monthly “All Hands On Deck” Discussions
Offer continuing education reimbursement
Fund industry conferences
Give specific praise
Make yourself available

When translating the ‘instructive fishing’ analogy into a tech startup’s development, it is important to note what agile means by definition. In dev allocution, it should describe the agility to turn miscalculations into opportunities, to execute better the next time around and to cut down the recidivism of similar blunders happening again. Agility at its best will promote adaptive strategies, evolutionary development and encourages rapid, flexible responses to an ever-changing technologies landscape.

What's Google Alphabet?

Google recently readjusted their business structure and introduced a parent company that will now house Google and its counterparts, called Alphabet.

Alphabet will be run by Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page; Sundar Pichai, formerly the senior vice president of product, will assume the role as Google’s new CEO. The tech giant’s announcement came as a bit of a surprise as it took news publications by storm but the structural change is well in-tune with Google’s roadmap.

Alphabet’s inception plans to give former Google companies the ability to build their own brands and allows Google to focus on different types of products among their different ventures. This move also helps Google retain top talent because it allows the CEOs of their acquired companies to still hold rank within their entity.

“The whole point is that Alphabet companies should have independence and develop their own brands,” said Page in the announcement.

Seven companies will exist under Alphabet, one of which is Google. Calico – research and biotech development lab, Google Ventures, Google X, Fiber, Google Capital, Nest, and Google itself now live under the new parent company.

Since the announcement of Alphabet, shares rose 6%. A relatively massive increase and a sign of belief from not only Google’s consumers but more importantly, Google’s investors. The public is more than likely going to see a larger plan than Google once actively publicized. It’s said that the creation of Alphabet gives Google a better ability to focus on future innovative products that affect the population on a grander scale. This includes their involvement with life sciences, research through their independent labs, and a few other ventures directed to improve society as a whole.

Alphabet will continue trade under GOOGL and GOOG stock symbols even when the umbrella company change manifests this year.