Breakfast Taco Day 2: About relationships in the workplace and a new app that will disrupt the video market (maybe)
Howdy from Austin! 👋
I am disappointed. With Jonah Peretti and with my SXSW bacon tradition. So far, every year I have been woken up by an Airbnb smoke alarm on the first morning, which deafeningly beeped because someone started frying some bacon . This time, our kitchen is so modern that the bacon turned out fantastic without any fire alarm.
Peretti sadly wasn’t as fantastic. But more on that later on. First of all, my highlight on International Women’s Day at the SXSW: A comment by Meg Whitman, the grande dame of the tech industry. When she introduced her new short video streaming service “Quibi”, the presenter asked: “Did you do market research or is it just based on your gut feeling?”. And the 62-year-old ex-eBay and ex-Hewlett-Packard Boss countered: “I have been in the industry for over 30 years now.”
Of course, this question is put to the woman and not to her male co-founder on stage, and this shows that we can and should continue to celebrate International Women’s Day a little further. Despite “muddled masculinity”, one of the seven non-obvious trends of the day.
🔮 #MediaTrends
tl, dr: The disappointment of the day was Jonah Peretti from Buzzfeed. The surprise of the day: Quibi, a new streaming startup introduced yesterday at SXSW.
In short on Peretti, the founder of Buzzfeed: The most surprising thing was that he took a stand for the platforms. Peretti had figures on how much revenue the platforms now generate and what Buzzfeed has made of it. But there wasn’t much more to it, but rather a surprising amount of old stuff. Affiliate links to Amazon, for example, which are currently having a revival at Buzzfeed, and also how they sell their own product lines from their content brands, such as kitchen appliances from “Tasty”. I would have expected some more new things from Jonah.
But new things was what the keynote was about. Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman introduced their new startup: “Quibi”. An app that will make ten-minute videos in Game-of-Thrones quality available for subscribers. The exciting thing: Both are over 60, Jeffrey is a Hollywood Titan and Meg is super experienced in Tech and Silicon Valley. And: Quibi so far is no more than a landing page — but secured one billion (!) in funding from Alibaba(!).
The idea sounds clever and forward-looking. According to the speakers, people love high-quality video content and already watch 70 minutes of it — per day. The short form fits perfectly to the mobile concept and it is also a perfect usecase for the 5G discussion.
Every week they want to publish more than 100 videos in different languages, not television-style, but interactive and optimized for portrait and landscape formats.
But: The whole thing will not start for more than a year. And that shows how much of a PR machine SXSW is these days. One year before the app even exists, the founders give a keynote, and that raises the bar for them later.
👩 #TechThatChangesTheWorld
Last year, one of the most exciting talks for me came from Rohit Bhargava on his “Seven Non-Obvious Trends”. This year there was the 2019 edition — and maybe my expectations were too high, but the trends this year were pretty obvious.
1. Retro trust
If the world becomes too complex and we also have a big crisis of trust, then you go back to what you know. That’s why the 80s (Stranger Things!) and 90s (you remember 90s partys?) are so “In” again. Actually, thats great news for legacy media: Your 70+ year old brands are getting trendy again, hooray! 😅
2. Muddled Masculinity
Somehow obvious — at least if one deals with feminism a lot anyway — but well summarized by Rohit: The empowerment of women has led to insecurity among men. Should men speak up? Get involved? Or should they rather remain silent for once? And how to deal with the fact that one was apparently born privileged?
I don’t find the current discourse easy to follow, especially for men, and at this point I would like to hug allconfused men virtually and say: Hey, we all have no idea how to deal with some situations sometimes. But being aware of it is the first step. And: We can all shape the new social rules together, how cool is that?
3. Innovation Envy
Let’s do a hackathon to solve all the problems! Everyone wants to have and do innovation at the moment — but still with as little risk as possible. Of course, this does not fit together at all, so Rohit advises not to ask for case studies first, but to build them yourself. Of course, I can only support this from the bottom of my heart and this is exactly what our Media-Company-Intrapreneurs in the Media Lab Bavaria do. Be courageous, dear companies, and go ahead instead of following trodden paths!
4. Artifical Influence
I felt I heard it a couple of times last year. It’s about influencers who are no longer human, but 3D-animated avatars. Rohit’s tip: Dealing offensively with artificiality and being transparent about what’s man-made and what’s not.
5. Enterprise Empathy
Empathy is everywhere these days — and now it is also being turned into money. Checkouts, where everyone can take as much time as they need, deaf Starbucks employees who take orders in sign language. The world is becoming more inclusive and that’s fantastic — but I find it extremely questionable whether you should knit a business model out of it, as Rohit recommends. I don’t want to have his “Made with Empathy” label. I want to live in a world where it’s perfectly normal, not a profit centre, to be empathetic to one’s customers and to everyone.
6. Robot Renaissance
Rohit says the robots will come back in 2019… and I wonder: Have they ever been away? His tip, however, is very good: You should face robots with more curiosity than panic. After all, all non-digital humans take us as an example. Basically, I am in favour of more enthusiasm for technology and innovation, the problems will come soon enough anyway. But let’s find out what we can do with it before we call it stupid!
7. Back-Storytelling
In all seriousness, Rohit sells content marketing for brands as a trend. In 2019. Im not even commenting on that.
💡 #CrazyIdea
My highlight of the day was Esther Perel. My colleague Pia is a huge fan of the couple therapist’s podcast and she infected me with her enthusiasm. And what can I say: with good reason! At the SXSW, Esther put forward the theory that we need better relationships in our working environment. How many start-ups failed because the founders didn’t get along?
The reason is in a rather simple sentence: We are not a different person, just because we walk through the office door. How we are in our relationships and what we are struggling with is also with us in the workspace.
A development that is taking place, for example, both in private and at work: Never before have we had so many expectations. Our partner should be our best friend, see eye to eye with us intellectually and be a great father or mother. The job is supposed to nourish and to have meaning.
Esther distinguishes between two types of people. Those who were raised to loyalty and those who were raised to autonomy. With the former, you know that they can always be relied on. With the latter, they are very careful not to have to rely on anyone, because they do it best anyway. Or they believe there might be no one there when they need them.
In any case, I myself belong to the latter. Interestingly enough, I have never thought about the fact that this can affect not only my relationships but also my job. But after the talk it’s pretty clear to me why I often find it hard to let go, why I prefer to do some things myself and how much it can drive my colleagues crazy. An honest “Sorry” to them for that at this point! According to Esther, the opposite of autonomy is trust. I will practice that now, I promise!
💥 #Must SeeInAustin
For those of you who are in Austin, here are two more tips. First something practical: There are now Bathroom Pass Lines in Ballroom D at the Convention Center. This means that you can queue up to get a re-entry ticket into the room if you have to go to the toilet for a short time. Next level craziness, but it works.
HBO has also set up a “Game of Thrones”-setting at the Fair Market on 5th Street, which is open only from 12am to 6pm today (Who’s coming with me?).
Our Favourite Sessions for Saturday
9:30–10:30am: The Intersection of New Formats in Media. More and more formats are available for journalistic content: Video, Text, Podcast, Multi-Media-Story, Instagram-Story and so on. In this session, four journalists discuss how media companies must evolve to meet this new reality.
9:30–10:30am: Dear Gov’t: Regulate Us! Sincerely, AI Industry. Even many AI optimists warn of the negative impact the technology could have. There are biases in the algorithms and unethical fields of application. This panel will focus on what rules are necessary — and why the industry should not be content with self-regulation.
9:30–10:30am: The Successful Corporate Innovation Playbook. Representatives from four successful companies talk about how they pursue corporate innovation and reveal their top ten pieces of advice on how to link startups with an established company. The Media Lab Team readies the notebooks!
11:00–12:00am: Let’s Ask the Men: Ending the Newsroom Gender Gap. An all-male panel, but deliberately. Women in newsrooms are still under-represented. Moderator Amanda Bennet has invited three men to ask: Why is that? And what do *you* want to do about it?
11:00–12:00am: 2019 Emerging Tech Trends Report. There is hardly a media futurist who doesn’t admire Amy Webb, and the Media Lab Staff are no exception. When Webb presents her Future Today Institutes Tech Trends Report at the SXSW, we are definitely there. Are you, too?
12:30–1:30pm: What’s Next For News. A panel of Axios, NYT, CNN and Buzzfeed, and its about the future of journalism — economically, content-wise and socially. Certainly one of the must-see sessions for journalists at South By 2019.
2:00–3:00pm: AI For Storytellers: The Good The Bad and The Ugly. AI systems penetrate every area of modern entertainment from manufacture to sale. Jess Duselier from Sundance Institute discusses what good, bad and ugly influences this can have together with Yves Bergquist, who researches AI and neuroscience in the media.
2:00–3:00pm: The Next Uncanny Valley: Interaction in XR. The Uncanny Valley describes an animation that looks very real, but in which *something* doesn’t seem to be right and therefore triggers a uneasy feeling. Visually, this can often be avoided nowadays— but how to deal with it when music, feelings or interactions can now also be “uncanny” thanks to automatic production?
3:30–4:30pm: AI and Social Media: How to Take Control. A lot of content is generated daily on social media. Its difficult to reach your audience like that. This session will explain how companies can use AI to improve their social media marketing.
3:30–4:30pm: Back 2 the Future: Storytelling in Virtual Reality. In a project, an interdisciplinary team from Austin tried not only to tell a hyperlocal story in VR, but also to integrate the community and create its own virtual community. They talk about their experiences here.
3:30–4:30pm: Creative Ways to Solve the Bias Problem in AI. A big problem of Ai in the media and everywhere is bias: If biases manifest themselves in a data set, these biases are also transferred to an AI which is trained with this data set. An expert panel with representatives from companies and NGOs wants to find creative solutions to this problem.
3:30–4:30pm: A Global Tour of Disinformation On Social Media. Russia is not the only country to run disinformation campaigns on social media: there are actors and victims of such campaigns all over the world. This session will explain how modern disinformation works, what players exist and what tactics they use.
3:30–4:30pm: How Women are Rebuilding a Man-Made Internet. Even though the majority of social network users are female: Instagram, Facebook and Co. were built by men, and you can see that. Recently, however, more and more female founders have been trying to break new ground in social networking: Without trolls, bullying and sexual harassment. Four of them will be presented in this panel.
Like what we are doing? Join us for our Media Startup Night @SXSW!
