For SXSW Interactive 2016, we sent a few 360i’ers to Austin, Texas to be our eyes and ears on-the-ground at the festival. While attending sessions, brand activations and parties, they found inspiration in some unlikely places. We asked them to share their some of their most memorable experiences to-date, and now we’re sharing these with you:
Shalini Agrawal, Media Supervisor at 360i:
“The IBM Cognitive Studio allowed us to experience first-hand how Watson, and other computing technologies, can learn from a variety of inputs that we give. By creating a few select questions for each entrant to answer, IBM was able to create a custom experience tailored to each guest’s preferences. I also enjoyed a simple game of ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ with Marvin, one of IBM’s other robots. Each guest was invited to play with Marvin until one of them – the human or the robot – won three times. While people were playing, a screen showed the different patterns of each player and how Marvin was learning and deciding which move to make next. Most of the time, Marvin ended up coming out on top.”
Katya Kotlyar, Strategist at 360i:
“It’s hard to stand out at SXSW when there’s so much going on. But USA Network’s Mr. Robot (client) is winning the visibility game by re-creating part of a key location from the show – Coney Island theme park – designed in the theme of the show. The space is luring Superfans like me with a giant Ferris wheel and cool activities related to the show’s plot. Overall, the trend of creating shareable content opportunities is felt throughout the conference, and our team is taking full advantage of the event marketing for the Instagram age.”
Maria Loida, Senior Social Publicist at 360i:
“Marie Claire magazine hosted Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson, co-creators and writers of the new hot show ‘Broad City’ on Comedy Central, to share their creative process, the latest on Season 3, and generally more behind-the-scenes dirt on our favorite it-funny girls. Besides being extremely cool and collected (to be expected), they dished on upcoming guest appearances (i.e. Hillary Clinton, Amy Poehler, and their own moms in episodes to come), their relationship, funny takes and career challenges. They left the audience with many takeaways, but my favorite was this: ‘We met at Upright Citizens Brigade, which is where we got our start, and we tried so hard to be put in a ‘track,’ but we couldn’t get in. Literally, they wouldn’t cast us. So we just said, ‘F* it, we’re making our own web series anyways.’ And now we have Broad City.’”
Juliette Leavey, Social Strategist at 360i:
“Part of the fun of SXSW is exploring between panels – stumbling on the best taco truck with no line, or running into an entertainment activation that’s giving away cool swag – which is exactly what happened when I wandered into this art installation that was built to showcase the importance of environmentalism and how we can all contribute to keeping this planet a beautiful place to live. The abstract art pieces worked together to tell how valuable technology can be in changing our eco-footprint and undoing any damage we’ve done. And, at the most basic level, abstract pieces like this one are enough to appeal to the ‘Ooh, shiny!’ mentality in all of us.”
Find out what else is catching our ambassadors’ attention on Twitter where they are sharing updates using the hashtag #SX360i.
