One of the challenges of SXSW is that’s there’s so much to see. From the inspiring, to the potentially useful, through the mundane, and finishing at the bizarre. The trade show in the main conference centre is a great example of that. I spent most of the spare part of my day wondering round chatting to the people on the stands, trying to figure out what is was they were actually selling. Sometimes it was harder than others. Here’s my rundown of some of the most eye-catching (for good and bad reasons):
Nasa
I was very excited to see Nasa in the hall. Every man’s a boy again when Nasa are in town. What were they selling? Well the American Dream I guess. A great example that when you do something exciting, the public will also get excited about it. They had with them a scale model of the international space station and a nice lady to tell you about it. Did you know that it’s almost exactly as big as an American Football Field on the outside. And roughly the size of a gutted boing 747 on the inside. Well you do now.
AxelSpace (Space within your reach)
So you can’t buy Nasa, but you can get your own satellite. This one is yours for $3,000,000, including launch. I haven’t quite worked out what I’d use mine for yet. So I’m going to save my money.
Skeletronics
It’s no surprise that there’s lots of chat about wearables this year. And there were three that caught my eye today. The first sits firmly at the silly end of the spectrum. Skeletronics looks like a Japanese boy’s home made efforts to turn himself into the big robot in Power Rangers. It seems to be unpowered and so is really just a very complicated version of that stick with a grabber on the end thing that lets you get stuff that’s got lost under the bed. Only this won’t go under the bed. The guys running around in it are funny though. Could make for some good comedy somewhere.
Ring
At the other end of the spectrum, a connected ring that will let you, in theory, control anything and everything. Point at the lights to turn them on. Wave your finger around to write on a tablet. And so on. I think this could be quite cool. You can buy them through kickstarter for $165. I think I might get one.
Epiphany Eyeware (not a massive fan of the name)
Are glasses with an HD video camera in them. They can store 2 hours film and run for around an hour on the internal battery ($299). Spend more and you can buy up to 8 hours storage. Not a game changer, but you probably less idiotic looking than wandering round with a GoPro stuck to your forehead.
Vinylrecoder T-560
This is great. A device created from a Technics 1210 turntable that cuts vinyl from any sound file. I would love to use this in a campaign for one of our clients - Win your own one-off record. Or you can send them the files and they’ll cut the record for you. Old school, new school, physical digital loveliness.
Beam Pro (Travel Instantly)
I thought I’d save the most crackpot till last. Beam Pro is essentially a tablet attached via 2 long poles to a set of wheels. The idea is that if you can’t be there, you can still a have that vital face to face conversation by sending one of these. And it won’t be weird at all. And it isn’t completely unnecessary. I’d like to send one into a pitch one time. See what happens.While a lot of this might just seem like creative dead ends at this point, the fun is that you never really know which stuff will end up inspiring a killer piece of work sometime over the next 12 months. So all you can do is try to see as much as you can and carry it with you when you get back to the office. Come on now, one of our clients must need a $3,000,000 satellite.
Alistair Campbell is ECD, Critical Mass UK
