Meeting the futurists
Meeting my Heroes is an occasional essay series from Matt Carmichael.
I never went to SXSW when it was primarily a music festival and I was a concert photographer and rock reviewer. It sounded like a lot of hassle and late nights and all of the bands I wanted to see played Metro the week before or after anyway. I was cheap, and lazy and liked sleeping all of which were bad qualities for a concert photographer and rock reviewer. But I also had a bit of regret and FOMO.
Later it added an interactive festival when I was covering online things and I still didn’t go because I didn’t have anyone who would pay to send me. I had more FOMO because now I could follow along on Twitter and see in real time all the things I was missing. In 2009, my fb status was “is not at SXSW,” which offered no context but was either defiant or expressing that FOMO or maybe a little of both.
Finally, as a futurist, I got to go, starting in 2022, when it was first reopening after the pandemic. What changed? One thing was that my heroes shifted. My current heroes all were going to SXSW so it was time for me to go, too.
Straight off the plane I ducked into Amy Webb’s annual tech trends session (one of the biggest draws of the conference which in a normal year has an enormous line that starts hours beforehand) and walked right in and sat on the floor on the side. You could get into anything because there were only 30% of the usual people. I got to see Amy’s talk for the first time live and meet much of her awesome team in person for the first time at their events. And I got to meet lots of other futurists and future-thinkers.
I was in a new space and needed to meet new people and build a new network.
SXSW is a place where it pays to get over my introversion. I talk to people I’m walking near. I talk to the people sitting around me in the sessions. There are so many interesting folks from so many different walks of life and careers. Oh, you work for the sovereign fund of Norway which controls 1.8 trillion in assets? That’s cool. And you build instructions for the chips that are running all the AI? Sweet. You’re trying to figure out how we can communicate with other species? Ok, that’s rad. You write video games? Dude.
In the first two years I went I saw talks by (and later met) Rohit Bhargava and Ian Beacraft (whom Tracy Schmidt wanted me to meet). I watched Pete Buttigieg give a master class in how to hold a town hall. I saw internet heroes like Neal Stephenson and Bruce Schneier. And heard/met a trove of people who had already or would eventually wind up in the pages of WTF like Taryn Southern and Douglas Rushkoff. I asked questions during Q&A (following my personal rule that everyone should follow: Less preamble, more actual question, the mic in the audience doesn’t mean you’re now a speaker.) I chatted with presenters after their panels, which as a speaker myself I know speakers honestly appreciate. I learned that the featured speakers on the big ballroom stages are often doing six other things at SXSW where they are more approachable over the course of the conference.
I chatted with other people who asked interesting questions during Q&A, which is how I met Annie. I wandered through the VR exhibit and chatted with the people making amazing new things in amazing new media like AR, VR and XR. That’s how I met Cameron Kostopoulos, who was experimenting with story telling, and technology and empathy around issues of gender and transgender/gender queer topics.
I also just ran into people from other parts of my life who were drawn to this place, too. Sometimes that was deliberate, like meeting folks I’d interviewed in WTF in person. Love that. Especially if where we wind up meeting up is a small party with Paris Hilton as the DJ, because it’s SXSW after and these things happen. Or chance encounters with college-era friends I hadn’t seen in ages.
Then I did two things that are my favorite things. First, I followed up. I didn’t single-serve-friendship these folks. I tried to keep those interactions going. Second, I found ways to introduce these folks to each other and either expand existing communities or build new ones. That’s the most “everybody wins” outcome possible.
All of this set me up for this year. After three years (attending twice) of building networks and learning how SXSW works and pitching (unsuccessfully) a talk, I joined a group of these new SXSW friends doing something new. We debuted a new, fun but relevant format for thinking about the future: Foresight Improv.
Four of us talked about 18 audience-chosen “future of…” topics in an hour on stage. Some we pre-seeded but didn’t know which ones the audience would vote up. Some the audience suggested when they came in, on index cards we mostly pulled out of a rhinestone cowboy hat. We did everything from the future of war to thinking to vacation to toilet paper. I also took on one of the most popular suggestions: democracy.
I asked the audience if they wanted dystopian or utopian and they chose dystopian. I talked about how the currency of democracy is trust and participation and we’re lacking in both of those. I didn’t go too dark, however. And then I did the last suggestion which was about radio stations playing music, during which I talked about KEXP and my WTF interview with John in the Morning. of course.
In addition I helped launch a report I’d worked for quite some time on at Ipsos with our partner, the Global Futures Society, who brought their Museum of the Future to SXSW (with an awesome Refik Anadol installation, another awesome person I’d interviewed for WTF.) I taped a podcast talking about it and all its finding about how futurists view the world, and how that differs from everyone else.
And then I did all the things I do to keep building. I met cool people I was sitting next to in sessions like Adrianne and Cheryl. I reconnected with folks from past lives, like Tim from the Polyphonic Spree and his crew. I chatted with speakers after their talks, like Scott Galloway. I hung out with people I had met virtually but never gotten to spend time like Sarah and Joana and we all introduced each other to new people. And I reconnected with my SXSW friends whom I’m in more frequent touch with but either met or mostly see at SXSW like Amy, Rohit, Ian and Annie.
In most cases, I followed some advice from my high school English teacher, Dr. Welch, who told students to “get a seat in the front row, up close to the action.” That was not a lesson I took to heart in high school, but he was right and I listened…. eventually.
I also had the most SXSW experience possible:
I’m walking from my hotel and the guy next to me is wearing a flight suit. He could be in a band with a gimmick, sure. But no, a glance to the side and I catch a glimpse of a NASA patch. Then a fleet of cars go by advertising HOKA shoes. The cars say "Fly Human Fly." This is a sign, clearly, partially because I'm wearing a stylish and super comfy pair of shoes HOKA's sister Deckers Brands brand AHNU sent me (cf WTF Influence!). So I turn to the guy and say, "I guess some humans fly more than others." I tell him I can't quite see his name tag, but I'm assuming... He chuckles and introduces himself as A NASA TEST PILOT. It's Nils Larson! We chat and as we're walking we meet a teacher from the U.K. whose students have made mock NASA mission patches and he gives each of us one (they were adorable). And then another guy comes up introduces himself as the NASA guy making the cameras they're sending to the moon. This is all within a block or two.
I wound up interviewing Nils, Cathy Bahm (who is the project manager for the X59 program) and Larry Cliatt, (who is NASA's "Sonic Boom guy.") Want to read it? Stay tuned because that story is going to be, fittingly enough, a Test Pilot for a new feature of What the Future we're rolling out soon...
That was my third SXSW in a nutshell. I crushed it.
Then I hopped on my flight home.
The captain came on and asked us all to remain seated when we landed. He, choking up and struggling with his words, told us that our flight had the solemn duty of transporting the remains of a fallen U.S. serviceman home to his family. His uniformed escort was sitting a couple of rows in front of me and he was going to get off the plane first with the captain and join the family on the tarmac. As we landed the plane was quiet. No one stood except the soldier escort. The tarmac was full of fire fighters and other first responders with their equipment’s flashing lights creating a surreal scene at the airport. Standing in lines. Saluting. There was a full honor guard from the military. People watched the ceremony out the plane windows and then once they got off the plane they watched from the gate area as the honor guard placed the flag-draped coffin in the hearse. The soldier’s family was escorted over and at this point I turned away. I both wanted to show support but also thought this was a moment that didn’t need witnesses.
It got me thinking. About how suddenly fragile our democracy feels. About how this young man had given his life defending it. About how no matter his personal politics he died for the ideal of American democracy. Which we really are in danger of watching fade before us.
I wanted to go back and give a more strident answer to the future of democracy: That it really hinges on the present. Harm is being done to democratic ideals in the U.S. and other nations. Is that harm reversible? Is it irreparable?
Whatever your politics are, you have to admit. Project 2025 has been an impressive, decades-long effort in foresight and activation. The Heritage Foundation and others determined a vision, crafted a plan, elected people at all levels of government, helped create a media ecosystem to support it, appointed judges, built grassroots, co-opted and cooperated with other movements and then with power in sight drew up a 900+ page plan. They are now faithfully executing that plan with purpose, intent and vigor.
The folks who go to SXSW are well-positioned to fight for our democracy, or to benefit from its reshaping. In many ways it’s up to the people who were in Austin with me as much as anyone. Maybe it’s incumbent on us futurists to not only imagine possible futures but imagine better futures. Maybe it’s incumbent on us futurists to help others around us visualize what a better future can look like. Maybe that would help? Clearly for some, this future we seem to be headed toward is better for them. But an incrementally better future for some who are already successful in the present, but that comes at great cost to people who won’t thrive under a new system doesn’t seem truly better, does it?
So I’m going to be thinking, how can we use all of this energy and all of these smart people to make a difference.
Because I’m not quite ready to give up and say it’s too late.
But I was also glad the audience wanted me to go dystopian because that was a much easier future to imagine.