Opportunities abound

‘South by Southwest’ (SXSW) began life as a music festival. Running each year in Austin, Texas, it has subsequently grown to include film and interactive elements, and today the interactive conference – or SXSWi – is recognised as the landmark event for creative and emerging digital technology. The sheer intensity, scale and diversity of the event means that summarising the event from an arts perspective is no simple task, but three themes particularly stood out.

It’s not who you know… it’s where you are

The vast majority of new tech start-ups profiled at SXSWi were location-based mobile apps. While the biggest companies today, such as Facebook, Twitter and Groupon, are mainly browser-based and centre around your social graph – i.e. who you know – the next wave of services is mainly mobile-based, using GPS technology to centre around place – i.e. where you are. The other most common type of start-up generating buzz at the conference were group chat apps – I counted at least six different apps which in various ways allow you to message your friends in real-time in a more intimate and organised way than Twitter would otherwise allow. The typically nonsensically titled product Yobongo particularly stood out, in that it elegantly combines location and group chat. As take-up of location-based and small group messaging services grow, this will lead to new ways in which people organise their cultural experience and relate to cultural venues. So just as we have had to respond to the real-time nature of Twitter, we shall have to do the same for location-awareness and group messaging. Opportunities abound.

The game’s the thing

Location-based apps are not new – the market leader Foursquare launched at SXSWi in 2009 – but they are coming of age. This is also the case with ‘gamification’, a horrendous term for the use of game mechanics in contexts which were not hitherto game-like. It most commonly refers to how web and mobile apps use points systems and badges as devices for encouraging engagement and loyalty. (Better commentators than me have been quick to point out that points and badges doth not a game make and that this general trend is best called ‘pointsification’.)

Semantics-aside however, it appears that gamification is here to stay and in the opening keynote of SXSWi, the peculiarly clad Seth Priebatsch of SCVNGR talked about his vision of creating a “game-layer over the world” – or in other words a system of using game mechanics to solve all kinds of problem. Seth clearly borrows liberally from genuine visionaries, such as Jane McGonigal, about the intrinsic benefit of gaming and the power of games for social good, albeit with a much more commercial bent. I see gamification as a big opportunity as what the technologists typically lack is a strong sense of narrative and that is what the arts can provide. The UK already has a strong foundation in cultural game design through artists and organisations like Hide&Seek, Coney, Blast Theory and SlingShot, and if the sector as a whole becomes more literate in this form of practice and the diversity of business models it supports, there are very many points to gain.

Digital RIP

While digital is clearly not dead, what has died is its separation and special status. Surveying the vast array of conference sessions available, the bewildering choice included everything from Accessibility to Zoology. And while certainly the conference attenders represented a highly digitally literate demographic, SXSW was as much about twenty-first century life as it was about digital technology: the debate about Wikileaks is a democratic one not a digital one, and how games are used in the classroom is more about behaviours and pedagogy than technology.

It is an increasingly untenable position to separate digital from non-digital, online from offline, virtual from real. Despite this we often continue to do so in our arts organisations, silo-ing digital into an aspect of marketing or core IT provision. My experience of Austin was that of a conference about enterprise, people and ideas, all of which just happen to use digital as their language and expression. My hope is that the cultural sector follows this same trajectory.

Taking it home

SXSW was a fascinating experience for many reasons. From a technology perspective, there was much inspiration for our work at the Edinburgh Festivals Innovation Lab as we continue to explore themes such as open data, and how to use digital tools to make an already very social festival environment even more so. I was fortunate to co-host a session at the conference in which we compared Austin and Edinburgh: while there were clearly similarities, I now recognise more than ever that Edinburgh itself is the star. For while many cities can bring together world-class communities of people from different fields such as technology and the arts, it is not only the scale and diversity of Edinburgh that makes it special but its history, location and sheer physicality.