My SXSW 2017 experience
This year was my first time at SXSW. My experience has been deliciously overwhelming. If you are one of those people who surprise yourself wondering what is going on in terms of content for media and entertainment our there, this is a perfect place to gather a whole panorama regarding those topics, on a global scale. The window is vast -while not very clear-, but for sure incredibly inspiring and a great place for networking.
It took a lot of effort to get there, as no organization -public or private- was backing us up. And the devil knows we tried (oh, how we did). But at the end of the day, we broke our piggy banks and packed our bags heading to Austin. Yes, I was kind of critical too because their statement regarding their politics towards official and nonofficial music events, which literally said that “If SXSW determines, in its sole discretion, that Artist or its representatives have acted in ways that adversely affect the viability of Artist’s official SXSW showcase, SXSW will notify the appropriate U.S. immigration authorities of the above actions.” but afterwards they made a statement clarifying their Music performers policies. So, I was a happy camper when I finally got to the convention center, and sent my loved ones this picture.
The Panel
In our case, we were invited to talk about The Rise of Latin American VR Storytelling with my amazingly out of this earth co-workers Maria Laura Ruggiero, José Celestino Campusano and Martiniano Caballieri. We exposed our experience regarding processes of generating spaces for experimentation, the generation of a team conformed by different agencies, producers and studios that wanted to encourage more people to explore the VR narratives; the community conformed by people of different industries, organizations, universities and media outlets, and exposed the results of these efforts such as Miradas 360 project or the film A Trigger’s Cult, directed by José Celestino Campusano. After the panel, which was an hour long, we got to talk with people from other countries, interested in replicating the same model of collaborative production that we are developing in Argentina. The realization of planting seeds in places, and encouraging people to do so, was of course satisfying.
The Hackathon
Among other hundreds of activities displayed in the massive program for this year’s SXSW, and fighting with FOMO 24/7, one of the activities I got involved in was the SXSW Hackathon. After a 24-hour event my team and I managed to build an App to link the physical and digital products of the artist Madame Gandhi. With an MBA, the former drummer of M.I.A fights for gender equality by her singing, drumming, acting and speaking. It was a whole experience to work with her in such an incredible project. We got very proud of our App. By the end of the event ended up with a functional MVP which would enhance all her merchandising (which is dope! #FutureIsFemale) with AR and VR content. We never understood very well if we had won or not officially. We were incubated, which consisted in mentoring for two hours the next two days after the hackathon was over. We also didn’t know who the mentors were or how would this process take place, but that’s something the organization of the hackathon should fix and put together for the coming years. Afterwards SXSW blogged about our project, and you can read it here.
Coming to SXSW has showed me the possibilities of our work as VR producers, storytellers and artists and the confirmation that I have been making good choices in my professional path, even though I was not really aware of them. I dare to say that coming to this mythical space for technology open the path for me to understand that I have a lot of experiences and knowledge to share with the global community regarding our geographical distance. And I have achieved this knowledge by doing. By failing fast. And by collaboration.
I also strongly believe that I am very lucky woman to have the opportunity to pay for this through my hard work. But there are millions of women and girls in Latin America that are not. I feel very committed to change this. I want more women from Latin America to be able to assist and experience what I did in SXSW 17, and this is my invitation to everyone with the same goal to contact me, and do this together.
