[SXSW] 9 Reasons why business leaders should exhibit their products in Austin
SXSW2018 just ended and it left us with some interesting topics to discuss.
Leaving all the information about technology trends and talks about the future to others, here I summarize what I learned from the exhibitors at the Trade Show about what “business leaders can learn from the SXSW experience”.
Premise: What’s the Trade Show?
The Trade Show is where people from all over the work interlace on a 4 day open exhibition. A huge amount of exhibitors line up side-to-side, share and compete for all the visitors’ time and attention.
The most popular booths are closer to a battlefield rather than a festival with more than 1,000 visitors in 4 days.
Conclusion: More than the product, the team was what became even stronger.
Of course we did get a lot of great direct feedback about the products and our services, but let’s not get into details about the obvious.
The growth of each team member who developed the products also leads to the improvement of the leaders themselves; the generator of confidence and a stronger fighting spirit.
In this article I will summarize the nine biggest changes we experienced.
[1] Rediscover value
Nowadays, the prototyping environment has changed a lot, the development of a product sometimes starts from a the smallest “I want that!”
This is a good quality from a innovative viewpoint, but it also comes along with the risk of advancing at high speed on a project and then realizing that doesn’t have a real or practical value.
After meeting such a large amount of visitors, we haven’t just verified our hypotheses, but we have also become aware of other uses or purposes our product could have that we didn’t think of before.
We came to realize that, for example, this product that was born from the idea of just wanting to play Othello while drinking, could also end up being a good programming learning kit for parents and their children. We found this new perspective thanks to the people who came to visit our booth.
[2] The dramatic improvement of our presentation skills.
Try to imagine. Have you ever had the experience of explaining something to people more than 100 times per day for 4 days？
Additionally, each presentation is like a match that is decided on the few first seconds. It is indeed the best presentation training one can have.
Putting the product you love in front of everybody, and from there it’s all up to you and if you can come up with a way to you catch people’s attention.
There are no other environments in which you can change the way you present a project from one visitor to the other, one minute after seeing how your initial input didn’t have the expected impact on the audience.
[3] Accepting that English is not a must.
The more than 100 presentations we had each day were all done in English. Despite of having a conversational English level, I didn’t have any particular breakdowns. Instead, I just tried to speak correctly and enjoy myself. The most important thing is to guide the guests throughout the project and know exactly when and which keywords to use to catch their attention.
I would just tell to the visitor playing with the glowing table tenis「Hit, then light,」.
For those who played with the Othello board with the blasting sounds 「Sound, Alcohol, Perfect.」
To the ones who stare at the hologram「It’s me.」
For people who have barely used conversation visualization tools「Brain becomes Transparent.」
As long as they can grasp the idea with these keywords, then they would patiently listen to the rest even if it is in a pretty basic English.
On the other hand, seems like people who are not that good at English compensate putting a lot of passion into it.
Ironically, I left motivated to the max to improve my English skills in the future. (Who would expect that I could communicate like this…！)
[4] The encounter with a lovely neighbor
Even if visitors are interested in speaking to you, it will rarely lead to business. But that’s also exactly why, if there is any chance to have a conversation that rises to the level that could lead to business it’s remarkably memorable.
Especially for engineers and designers who have very few opportunities to be in contact with people from the outside, it’s very exciting to see a potential client using and enjoying your prototype right in front of your eyes. This is an opportunity that you wouldn’t be able to experience at the office.
[5] Exponential improvement of our work philosophy
We found out some very specific points we could improve after the talks and presentations. As a result, we ended up with a big amount of very concrete tasks that needed immediate action. Once the engineers get a specific task they prioritize it like if nothing else mattered.
15 minutes after taking care of the points that could be improved, we would get another opinion from a different user, which means rethinking and fixing the product over and over. In a way its like an intensive course on improving yourself in a very short amount of time.
Naturally, the decision making speed between the engineers and the leader in charge of requesting those improvements rises too.
[6] Speeding up working remotely.
After one week working abroad, work back home starts chasing you. On this occasion I was lucky enough to have many excellent teammates helping me out from back home, but there’s always some task that only you can solve.
In order to be ready to jump into any opportunity that being abroad could bring me, I want to make the best use of my time, even if I’m only saving 1 minute. This is why I would try to finish my tasks as soon as possible and throw the ball to my teammates in the other time zone.
Despite of being a company with a lot of remote work, this week made us come together and it had a big impact on our productivity that I expect to keep from now on.
[7] Respect and appreciation for all the products out in the world.
We are no exception, but the products are being judged and criticized all over the world. People who criticize other’s are usually the ones who have never put out in public their own creation under their own responsibility. In my case I have to accept I’m the kind of person who doesn’t quite understand how my own product is being received by the world.
At the Talk Show, our product and other’s are equally showcased. And because we start to care for our fellow neighbors who poured all their passion into their products, even if we want to give them some of our positive feedback, no one is really looking forward to being criticized.
There are no products born without effort and I believe that there aren’t many other opportunities to approach a creature with respect and show interest in their work like this one.
[8] Finding the perfect fellows
When you are facing a situation with passion, you start to notice other passionate people around you. And of course it goes both ways. The connection born with this type of situation is very intense and with no reservations. Without realizing we end up caring for each other’s work as if it was our own.
This very unusual experience, something that we wouldn’t be able to experience on a normal business day created a very intense innate connection, rivals who motivate each other to work harder every day.
[9] Our pride and desire for more challenges.
These are lessons that apply to all of us, regardless if you are an engineer or a designer. And to answer the argument about if a business leader is necessary or not, I say, It’s not.
As a leader, there is no way I wouldn’t be inspired by how the other members adapt to the situation, working with a speed I haven’t seen before. I feel more and more proud about them, which leads to more confidence and gives us a what we need to challenge bigger and riskier projects.
And even if that takes us to failure, I believe as long as there was also a chance of a huge success it was totally worth the risk.
Return on Investment
Including labour work, the hotel, travel and exhibition expenses, it costed us around 150–2000.000Y, we can say that the ROI percentage was more than successful. For spending 2000.000Y (19.700USD) on a research expedition the results we bring back home are far bigger.
Not only we learned about how to improve our product, but improve as a team, we are ready to produce much bigger things.
These lessons we learned were not because of being there as an observer, but from the experience of taking the risk and standing on stage.
Conclusion
To all the leaders with a business plan, let’s take prototyping out to the world. Even for the engineers who normally only work with clients, once in a while, take an idea of something you want and make it happen, let’s show the world what we have.
Knowing why you want, it is all you need, take it for a test ride without overthinking it.
And now, to the land of the BBQ, Texas！
Mitsuyo Demura @Konel : Producer / Founder
Twitter | @dem_yeah
Facebook | mitsuyodemura
