SXSW Interactive Day 3

Clay Shirky and Beth Ferguson are the Sunday highlights.

Sunday morning, after augmenting realities at the frog opening night party, and having two days of SXSWi under my belt, I realized I still didn’t know quite what to expect from the conference. I do know, however, that an emerging theme for my personal SXSW journey is “nothing is quite what it seems.” Of course, it’s hard to decipher from session titles and even their brief synopsis just how meaningful the presentation will be for you. But more importantly, I was concerned with avoiding the passive consumption of that knowledge and, if I was inspired enough after listening to a speaker, how might I shift my consciousness, and perhaps even my behavior.

The first session I attended featured NYU ITP professor and author Clay Shirky. His presentation was called “Monkeys with Internet Access: Sharing, Human Nature, and Digital Data.” The title was provocative and humorous enough, but it was Shirky’s ability to address the underlying human motives that drive our behavior and action for greater social change, that still has my mind stirring. One comment in particular that Shirky made that really resonated with me was that content sharing would change the world and catalyze revolution. Much more on that later.

Although I was skeptical that anything could possibly follow up that session, I decided to attend a smaller Core Conversation session, similar to a roundtable discussion, less famed than Shirky’s talk, on the Future of Green (Shirky had, after all, mentioned in his talk that “the greatest points of leverage are ones people aren’t paying attention to”).

So I went and that’s where I met Beth Ferguson, Founding director of the Sol Design Lab, whose mission is to create interactive and inspiring solutions for urban sustainability through public art and design. Sol Design Lab has designed and prototyped solar-powered charging stations for electric vehicles and mobile electronics for use at festivals, business districts, and campuses. Beth partnered with SXSW to bring the SolarPump to the conference. Beth believes that by giving people an interactive experience in which they can visualize and experience energy, they’ll reduce it. 

In the spirit of content sharing, I spoke with Beth about her project and how its design brings consciousness to the larger challenge to scale sustainable energy. Here’s a video of our conversation: