SXSW Interactive had so many great technology demos, events and parties that carried on through the entire festival, which has been rare in the years past. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to cover all the technology events; next year I should have a telepresence to cover everything I can’t. I didn’t make it to Youtube, Pandora, Capital One at the infamous Antone’s, OtterBox uniVERSE Case System, Mashable and many more.
While planning my SXSW schedule I picked out the below events based on my personal preferences. These four events were very fun and their lounges and or parties had a ton of interactive demos to try out during SXSW.
The SONY WOW Factory 
The SONY WOW Factory event was the most impressive virtual reality wise and the place I not only spent more time at than any others, I HAD A BLAST! The event had several booths but the below are my top three from the SONY WOW Factory.
The Spider-Man: Homecoming “Climbing Challenge” featuring SONY’s moving projector technology was another booth I had to check out. It’s the first immersive interactive experience featuring SONY’s moving projector technology with distortion-free projection anywhere.“Hashilus”, a VR attractions production company and SONY’s Music Group proudly present our epic VR attraction making the fullest possible use of five senses.
https://youtu.be/gKK8_tvHrDM%20
Another great booth I got to visit was the Any Surface UI on Xperia™ Touch. The ” Any Surface” experience converges on a single point. The SONY’s ideal and the future of UI design. I tested this out with the keyboard and musical keyboard and it’s pretty innovative. At the same booth was the Xperia™ Ear “Open-Style Concept” hands free, eyes free and ears free with it’s “Open-Style Concept.” It uses unique wireless ‘open-ear’ stereo headsets that are also designed to also let you hear sounds from the world around you without jeopardizing your music that you are listening to. I got to try these out and if this is the future for wireless stereo headset bring it on because they were super light to try on. The SONY WOW Factory really did wow; the VR if not is going to explode even more with VR products and games.
The Experience by DELL Technologies
I used to work for DELL several moons ago so it was on my list to visit during SX. The Experience by DELL Technologies at SXSW had virtual reality demos, gaming and other best-in-class Dell technology. Dell also had a huge bus decorated like the inside of a plane to give visitors that customer experience of what their DELL products would look like on a plane.
Displayed on the DELL bus were the newest notebook lines plus some or their rugged notebooks. DELL had a pretty cool event but I wasn’t blown away by their products since I saw most at CES 2017. If you want to see the live tour broadcast on twitter I did at the Dell event during SXSW click here. Fair warning the video is a tad shaky, I guess I was having too much fun with DELL!
Panasonic
Innovation was a wide spread theme throughout SXSW Interactive this year. I ran out of time spending so much time at Sony that I had to do a brisk walk throughout the Panasonic House but I had to stop by Panasonic! In the SXSW Panasonic House they showcased a dry-cleaning for the regular consumer home called the MonStyle, an Ambient Media Player that turned TV display into a work of art (I think the Intel Lounge had something very similar), DIY home-fermenting machine for kimchi fans, clothing and entertainment, including IoT, sensing technology and much more I did not get to check out.
My favorite Panasonic demo was the Monstyle which is a dry-cleaning machine for the consumer home. It would save me allot of time plus it also washes silk. I’m not sure if this is a regular Panasonic SXSW event from previous years but the Panasonic House this year showcased for a lot of prototypes. In fact most of the devices that were on display do not have a “suggested retail price” or “launch date.”
IBM
This year at SXSW IBM had different themes for days and I went to the Build a TJBot (see above picture) and Take Him Home day. I got a chance to learn about Build TJBot and get a demo (see below) but I did not have time to build one.
Each day they also had the:
The IBM Makers’ Garage which was dedicated space on the first floor set aside specifically for developer-focused deep-dives. These deep-dives give attendees an opportunity to engage with our developer tools in more depth, inviting them to open up the terminal and actually dig into the code. I had fun in the Makers Garage and checking out the innovative products on display though some were a tad over my head when it dealt with coding.
The rooftop of Brazos Hall is part lounge space, part live studio audience. Attendees can kick back and relax with some refreshments from the bar while watching live tapings of our IBM Asks and THINK Podcast series, which will be broadcast simultaneously on IBM Community Radio. I loved the lounge! Not only did we get to geek out on podcasts and broadcasts but we also got a nice adult beverage.
This concludes my “Part Duex” portion for SXSW Interactive experience.
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