I’m not sure what day it is — SXSW
Well, that whole daily blogging thing didn’t work. Here we are again with another installment. Thinking back, I believe this day was Tuesday.
Tuesday I went to a session about designing VR from a human centered approach. Most of the conversation talked about the perspective and point of view to create a virtual reality experience from. Most seemed to agree that from the first person point of view is best. This is because it allows the user to experience things they wouldn’t normally have the chance as if they were there, looking at it themselves.
Parts of the session definitely went above my head as far as design and the technical part of design goes. I work closely with Scottie, our Creative Manager and have always been fascinated by the design world. I know that my brain does not work the same way that hers does and I thought it might be helpful for me to attend a session like this as Dan, Scottie and I have conversations about VR at Glensheen. Thankfully most of the conversation remained in theory and talking big picture. All of the design professionals on the panel were great. But I thoroughly enjoyed Isaac Cohen who was clearly passionate about his work and dropped some #truthbombs and awesomely inspiring questions.
“How do we use VR to better understand the world around us?”
Check out some of his work here,
It was reassuring to hear that no one in the field feels like they are doing VR and AR really well. Making a small-town house museum feel like we can tackle this virtual mountain.
“You don’t know what’s going on in VR until you’ve tried it. If you’ve tried to make it work, you are doing something right”
After the VR session it was off to one of the few museum specific sessions offered at SXSW. Presented by an museum expert from American Alliance of Museums or for those of you who are in the museum biz, AAM. Her session was about how to use museums as a resource for your project. Which as a museum I thought was great! After listening to her guide of ‘how to collaborate with museums’ It made me think, we all need to do a better job of being open to new possibilities. Here’s the cringe-worthy truth of what this woman had to explain to the audience about collaborating with museums.
- Museums move slow
- Museums will need to be courted to accept your idea
- Be patient
All of these made me a tad bit sad. Yes, there are measures in place which give many museums reason for moving slow and therefore making them slow to change. But since as an industry, house museums are dying, why is there not this scrambling effort to seek out solutions to a problem?
Haven’t we learned something from the birthday boy, Albert Einstein?
Okay, mini rant over. Here is a cool fun fact that she share with us:
Okay, no one can read that. Here we go:
Still not super readable. Anywho! A credible source, conducted a credible study and found that people find Historic Museums and Sites the most trustworthy sources of information. Score 1 for Glensheen!
After the morning sessions, Dan and I headed out to make sure we stopped at some of the best branded events going on for SXSW. Tuesday was the last official day of the interactive badge, which is the overall umbrella track for ‘business’. We had a mission to hit up the National Geographic house, or as the South By goers call it… the Nat Geo house. It. Was. Sweet.
Those folks are doing this whole virtual reality and augmented reality thing right. There was an entire wall that spanned a collection of 4 or 5 photos where when you held up GOOGLE TABLET THING it would animate the pictures and the wall would come to life. For example, here is me swimming with the jelly fish.
There were other cool ones where it looked like a whale was swimming in thin air. Plus, we met some cool Austinites. It was the UPS man for the SXSW office, his wife and their friends. If you’re reading this and will be seeing me in person in the near future, ask about this story.
National Geographic’s augment reality was sweet. I experienced that they got it right. The video was clear, Have I mentioned yet that this whole VR/AR thing is a big reason why Glensheen is at South By? It’s the next big thing at Glensheen, it’s the next big thing at museums. It’s just the next big thing period.
P.S. Here is the explanation of the difference between the two provided to you by a quick Google search. Augmented reality is the blending of virtual reality and real life, as developers can create images within applications that blend in with contents in the real world. With AR, users are able to interact with virtual contents in the real world, and are able to distinguish between the two.
Then we headed over to the YouTube house which unfortunately was not as cool and much more subdued than the National Geographic. But they did do a really neat job of showcasing one of their popular 360 videos
Then we were off to catch the end of the trade show. The trade show is Dan’s happy place. This is where he thrives and inspiration is bountiful. I more so get lost in my thoughts while listening to a session or attending one of the sweet branded events. It was cool to see the situations in which everyone was inspired best while on the trip.
SXSW also had an unexpected effect on me. With all the genuine kindness that the people of Austin and the conference goers were slinging around, it made me think about my people back home. Meeting people from across the country and world makes you really think about how you want to present yourself. Or ask yourself, why was a drawn to this one thing in the trade show? Well here is a cool example of an intersection of both for me.
Instagram- janiepede Hey mom, look! Ireland is here! Cool story… my mom was adopted and met her birth mother at age 30. She’s been an amazingly beautiful part of my mom’s life and therefore of course, mine too! Peggy, my grandma and my mom’s birth mom is Irish 🍀😊 It’s the reason why I love St Patrick’s Day so much. Can’t wait to celebrate one of my favorite holidays! @kjpederson28 #happystpatricksday#kissmeimirish #luckyme #luckycharms#ireland #irelandsxsw
This Instagram post didn’t go into the nitty-gritty, deep, feel-good people-feeling emotions I was feeling but it sums it up.
Seems like a good moment to start the chronological epic photo blog, right? Here we go. Please excuse the sometimes crappy iphone photos.
Voodo Doughnuts. Duluth needs one of these. Exhibit A.
Aside from the reason of showing you a picture of an awesome doughnut. I am showing you a picture of the innovative, crazy fun businesses that have popped up in Austin. You’d be silly to think that going to a crazy, cool doughnut shop wasn’t inspiring to do something crazy, cool in Duluth.
Until next time… TTFN!
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TTFN is an initialism for a colloquial valediction, ‘ta ta for now’, based on ‘ta ta’, an informal ‘goodbye’. The expression came to prominence, in the UK, during the Second World War.
Bah! Can’t forget the puppy!
