Vote for SXSW 2017 Panel Sessions

https://blog.adobe.com/media_c5141daa64079d8bbb621d27a828d883b1927f8a.gifYou want it, you got it! The time has come once again for you to vote for sessions you want to see at the 2017 SXSW festival. Schedules for the festival are created by popular demand, which means it’s time for you to get voting! The SXSW PanelPicker is now open and it is packed with a variety of Adobe sessions. Take a look at the full list below. When you’re voting, be sure you’re signed in so you can simply click the “thumbs up” to cast your vote for the sessions that you want to see. Don’t miss out – voting ends Friday, September 2nd. Be sure to check the SXSW website on October 17th to see the final schedule.

SXSW EDU (March 6-9, 2017)

****Creativity as a Force for Social Impact with Johnson Fung

The arts have always been a force for inspiring and enabling social change, but never before has creativity been able to spread to so many so quickly. For the first time in history, a young person can imagine, create, and publish an image or video for social justice and have it go viral and ignite a global campaign for change – within 24 hours.

With this opportunity in our hands, how might we as educators ensure students are equipped with the confidence and the means to express the change they want to see in the world they’ll inherit? How do foster courage within them to break away from existing social norms and create new ones? How do we empower them to be great creative change-makers?

Teaching Creativity: How, Why and the Impact with Jeff Vijungco

Creative skills and the ability to learn are increasingly valued by employers and critical for future success. How do we teach creativity? Why does it matter?

In this session, hear perspectives and lessons learned from an educator, a learning scientist and an employer. Then, we will challenge you to work in small groups to define strategies for teaching creativity and preparing students for the future. You’ll leave with an action plan and new colleagues.

Giving Student Voice: Empowering by Storytelling with Tacy Trowbridge

Our world is rapidly changing; increasingly we gather information from apps and social media rather than networks and newspapers. As such, the definition for basic literacy needs to grow to include communication in new media. This is not a tool for the privileged few with access, but a basic need for all students. In this session, you will explore how communication is changing and how you can prepare students to share their stories and ideas (or prepare to be effective communicators in a changing world). These practitioners will share how they have empowered students from diverse backgrounds to develop knowledge, confidence and the skill to tell their stories and communicate effectively.

Surviving Industry Disruption in Higher Education

This talk will explore how industry upheaval can affect institutional teaching and learning systems which make use of technology for media delivery and student interaction. With the tsunami of change introduced by mobile devices, adaptations in streaming technology, preferred file formats, and delivery platforms – there is a lot at stake when considering how systems must adapt to these changes to remain useful and beneficial. How is it possible to not only survive such monumental disruption – but even excel at adapting to the new order… while carefully weaving previous workflows, technologies, and standards into a changed world?

The High School as Change Agent

The high schools of the future must be designed to have the maximum impact on addressing poverty, providing career opportunities, and enhancing community redevelopment efforts. To affect this change we must upend the way instruction is delivered while making use of the lessons we’ve learned about the social and emotional needs of our most disadvantaged students.

Communities can take advantage of advances in personalized learning, adaptive technologies, and a thematic approach to instruction that honors student and teacher agency and provide students with the creative skills they need for the modern economy. Forming the schools that support these changes requires a community approach.

Play Build Brand: Passion-Driven Education

As “The Maker Movement” continues to gain momentum, educators from around the world are transforming their classrooms, libraries, and underused spaces into sites of community invention and creative possibility. Maker education has the potential to radically empower students to invent their own futures, but can be inaccessible to those without prerequisite fabrication, collaboration, and communication skill sets. In this session, we will explore the ways maker projects can be integrated into formal and informal learning settings and outline a summer program we designed for low-income middle-school youth that fuses invention literacy with traditional literacy and entrepreneurship skills.

Cross Country and Cultural Collaboration

How can educators engage in global and cross-cultural collaborations? This session uses the pilot program, Newsroom U, as a template of success for taking an idea from inception to innovation. In a 20 minute Future talk, I intend to present a case for working collaboratively globally and cross-culturally with limited resource, how to leverage funding opportunities and organize life changing experiences for marginalized populations.
Newsroom U facilitates and captures immersive learning experiences for journalism students. The White House Student Press Briefing and Multimedia Weekend marked the initiative’s inaugural launch.

CAPS (Crazy *** Projects): Moonshots in Education

This is the age of the empowered educator. Now, it is easier than ever for us to identify and fill needs in our respective educational spaces. By leveraging resources, such as edtech tools and social media, the members of our panel have truly created some Crazy *** Projects, which have transformed our schools, districts, and global communities. Forget thinking outside of the box…our panelists have ignored the box entirely. Join us in this panel discussion about empowerment, teacher leadership, and moonshot thinking.

SXSW Interactive (March 10-16, 2017)

****From Data Visualization to Predictive Analytics with Jeff Allen

When PopSugar creates an article on how to make Fruity Pebbles no-bake cheesecake, there’s little guesswork involved. The same technologies used to measure how often people are buying shoes online are being leveraged to better understand precisely what readers desire. PopSugar’s data encompasses an audience of more than 85 million and a product catalog featuring 30 million items from 1,400 retailers. Its 100 editors and creators are beginning to use the tool to understand what content is resonating cross-category. PopSugar uncovered that its top celebrity trend this summer was Taylor Swift; The article piece contributes to be more than 1 billion page views.

****The Transformation of Artificial Intelligence with Anandan Padmanabhan

During the last 15 years the way in which enterprises do marketing has undergone a radical transformation: from a previous era where insights into human psychology combined with creativity in advertising and pricing based on deep intuitions of marketers gained through experience to the age of Digital Marketing and the use of “Big Data”. This transformation, which is embodied in, the widely prevalent use of techniques broadly classified as “Data Science” is simply the beginning of a shift towards considerably greater degree of automation of the marketing function enabled by the use of Artificial Intelligence.

Design in All Dimensions: How 3D is the New Normal with Zorana Gee

How are designers today breaking the mold? Mavericks are incorporating 3D techniques to realize new levels of flexibility and realism in their work. Learn how these superstars create content for various platforms, from traditional print and web to AR, VR, and other immersive interfaces. This new approach to design goes further to delight clients with added efficiency and creativity in branding, advertising and marketing workflows.

With 16 years on the Photoshop team, Zorana Gee will discuss the evolution of 3D design and share Adobe’s vision for the future: when we no longer differentiate 2D and 3D, where prototypes and art are created via the next evolution of creative imaging.

Creativity in the Age of Machines with Gavin Miller

Learn new insights on what was lost in the convergence of creativity and tech in the evolution from analog to digital and how the arrival of machines, AI, VR/AR are stretching the traditional boundaries of interactive media and restoring much of the rich expression and serendipity. From 3D printing, the maker movement and robotics, machines themselves are becoming a new medium, reinvigorating sculpture, incorporating elements of the theatrical arts and other tangible artifacts – on the road to bringing back much of the creative magic. At the helm of Adobe Research, Gavin Miller, VP & Fellow of the Imagination Lab, has a unique perspective on what this journey has in store for art and tech.

5 Ways to Grow Fandom & Increase Followers with Adobe Creative Resident, Sara Dietschy

Want to grow your fandom and increase followers? Hear 5 ways to achieve YouTube success from Sara Dietschy who has made it her full-time career as a filmmaker and creator/host of Creative Spaces TV, a docs-series highlighting a variety of artists capturing how they do what they do. Along the way, Sara has learned what video skill sets are needed for new creatives who need to navigate the creative world – either in search of a higher-level job or a full-time career in filmmaking. Sara believes you’re always one tweet away from a job opportunity or one year of consistent YouTube uploads away from making filmmaking your full-time job. Hear how you can get there from here.

****150 Heads vs. One: Collaborating on Design with Jamie Myrold

A career in design isn’t just about design anymore. Collaboration sets exceptional designers apart from good designers. After all, building great products doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Hack-a-thons, meetings, team outings — companies go to serious lengths to encourage experimentation and bring different personalities together. Sometimes the toughest part of developing a new product is getting teams to collaborate. Enter an exercise called a “Charrette.”

A Charrette is an intense period of design or planning. It carries teams on a journey of design and user experience – helping designers take a step back to really try and identify with their users, and optimize their designs.

Design Thinking: A Manual for Innovation with Demian Borba

The truth about innovation is that it’s all about people. We’re people creating things for people. And finding out what people need is far more insightful from a design perspective than simply coming up with a solution to a problem.

What if there was a formula built on the need to, well, find the need? To help you create innovative products, experiences or services?

Enter the Design Thinking process. Developed by IDEO, the process has five clear phases that help designers create a product, service, or experience that is desirable, viable, and feasible. It all begins with the ability to find out what other people need, before you even start to think of ways to “fix” the problem.

****Why Is Simple XD So Complicated? with Talin Wadsworth

Designers constantly debate what constitutes simplicity in Experience Design (XD). Some view the design itself, a clean, straightforward layout that is easy to navigate. Others consider the complexity of the problem, or the code. But this variation in semantics is confusing. Not everyone has the same idea of what simplicity is, and this can vary significantly between users and designers.
It turns out simplicity is actually quite complicated, especially in today’s age of more complex user interfaces and instant gratification. While technology constantly evolves, the core principles of XD change very little—and it’s up to designers to use the tools that work, and discard the ones that don’t.

5 Things UX Designers Can Learn from Zen Culture with Josh Ulm

The future of design might have more to do with Zen culture than you think. Japanese decluttering guru Marie Kondo tells us to get rid of anything that doesn’t “spark joy.” The same is true for UX design. Adobe’s Senior Director of Experience Design shares 5 Things Designers Can Learn from Zen Culture such as: Get rid of anything that doesn’t need to be there, limit options, embrace the basics, and establish a flow. While minimalism itself is nothing new, a new wave of minimalists (most notably millennials) is bringing intention into minimalism, choosing to favor meaningful experiences and mindfully chosen possessions over clutter. It’s a movement the UX world can learn from.

SXSW Convergence

****Creating Brand Connection Through Virtual Reality with Campbell Foster

In the rapidly evolving virtual reality space, there is a big focus right now on devices and content. However, for VR to be sustainable in the long term, the right engagement needs to be in place. Several key factors have the potential to plague VR if not properly addressed, including everything from advertising and branding to content protection and predictive analytics. In the world of VR, there is a big focus right now on devices and content. Today, most VR video content isn’t monetized, and it will become increasingly difficult to recalibrate consumer expectations if advertising experiences aren’t natural, organic and non-intrusive from the outset.

The Future of Guest Experience with Loni Stark

As a guest of MGM Resorts International, you may not realize that watching knights jousting at Excalibur, seeing the fountains in front Bellagio and walking through the aquariums at Mandalay Bay are all coming from a single brand. In a world where consumers demand highly personalized and unified experiences, this creates both a challenge and an opportunity for MGM Resorts International and its 15 resorts in Las Vegas, Detroit and Mississippi. By leveraging some of the same technologies used online to make booking recommendations, MGM Resorts has transformed into a company that can deliver a great customized guest experience that draws from customer intelligence– not just gut instinct.

The Many Possibilities of Augmented Reality with Loni Stark

Augmented Reality (AR) has the potential to upend how brands engage with their customers, but in order to do so; it must truly enhance the user experience. AR has to create spaces that are easy to navigate, entertaining and hyper-personalized. It can become a complete paradigm shift for marketing, changing the ways in which consumers discover and buy products. Imagine the ability to see which sunglasses fit your face best without trying them on, or to see what hardwood floor or furnishings would look best in your home before installation, or even purchasing. Imagine the brand engagement that can happen as people search for Pokemon.

****Lessons on Staying Innovative After an Acquisition with Will Allen

In a world where startups are celebrated for a Lean approach, growth hacking and speed to market — how do these core principles translate when they become a product team inside a big company? Learn why building innovative products in a large company takes a deliberate strategy and smart execution. Will Allen acted as the COO of Behance, Inc. prior to its acquisition by Adobe in 2012, leading the integration of the team and its products into Adobe. Drawing on lessons in scaling Behance and 99U, and launching Adobe Portfolio and Adobe Talent, will shares insights on the common pitfalls to avoid, building institutional support, leveraging scale you have (while also learning when to avoid it).

****Why Art Needs Tech and Tech Needs Art with Lisa Temple

What does the future of creativity look like? Explore how cross-pollinating digital innovations like VR with analog painters, photographers & woodworkers incubates new ideas for the future, inspiring a model to replicate across industries. Learn how the power of art can effect change through tech. Lisa Temple, behind Adobe’s progressive initiatives, shares what drove her and leadership to embed some of the most cutting edge tech into SF’s arts community. A recent collaboration with the Minnesota Street Project is a model bringing corporations, nonprofits and local communities together to actively invest in the arts, for change. Hear from Lisa why if the arts don’t thrive, none of us thrive.

****360 VR Journalism: Taking Audiences Inside Stories

Bringing an audience face-to-face with a story isn’t enough. Now storytellers and journalists can put their audiences inside the stories. Learn about the 360-degree story arc and new VR methods and tools that journalists and storytellers are using. More than just beautiful video, a VR experience can affect change, educate and entertain. Stories about the human spirit – such as sharing VR experiences of war memorials with ill or aging Veterans who can’t travel in person, or a view from inside a stroke victim’s MRI – even giving the viewers the sense of blurred vision – are brought to life with VR. Narrative storytellers have an opportunity to give audiences an immersive view–from the inside.