BBQ Crash Course

From 11am-2pm on Friday, March 10, come network with your fellow registrants at the 5th annual BBQ Crash Course at the Southbites lot (604 Driskill St), just one block southeast of the Austin Convention Center. Sample savory brisket, ribs, and other delights from Central Texas’ best barbecue spots and mingle with their expert pit-masters. The ticket includes a tray brimming with meats, sides, desserts and one drink. BBQ Crash Course tickets can be purchased as a registration add-on through the SXSW Shopping Cart, but hurry because this will sell out!

Social Media Lounge
Celebrates 10th Year

2017 will mark the 10th year that Brian Solis and Stephanie Agresta of TechSet have hosted their digital influencer lounge at the Austin Convention Center, bringing the best of technology and media to the SXSW community. Originally known as the Blogger Lounge, the installation has evolved over the years to become the Social Media Lounge with Comcast returning as this year’s sponsor. All registered festival attendees are welcome to stop by Room 19AB on the 4th Floor of the ACC to caffeinate, connect, relax and recharge.

ATX Startup Crawl

Happening from 5-10pm on March 13, the ATX Startup Crawl, powered by Capital Factory, is a celebration of innovation and technology where local startups are showcased through a pub crawl experience. Participants gather each year to travel through downtown Austin experiencing the best the city has to offer the startup community. It’s a fantastic visibility opportunity for Austin startups. Launch your product, practice your pitch, and recruit talent. Register by downloading the ATX Startup Crawl app (iOS & Android).

Visit the New Podcast Stage

Open to all badgeholders, the 2017 SXSW Podcast Stage will host up to 42 unique podcasts from varying genres, including comedy, gaming, music, film, technology, science, inspiration, culture, news and more. Stop by the Brazos Room of the JW Marriott and be a part of the live recording.

SXSWfm®

Nearly 2,000 Showcasing Artists will perform at SXSW 2017 by the time the last note is played. Our online radio channel SXSWfm® is here to help you sort through the plethora of acts and find your new favorites. To listen, you can visit sxswfm.com, download the mobile app, or follow the SXSWfm Mixcloud page.

500 HBCU Students
to Attend SXSW 2017

Opportunity Hub plans to send 500 students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) to SXSW 2017 as part of a larger initiative to increase opportunities in the tech industry for diverse, high-potential students. Currently, less than 2% of the tech industry is African-American or Latino, and HBCU students aim to change that by tapping into SXSW’s history of inspiration, education and creating the right connections. Additionally, Opportunity Hub will be host programming on Saturday, March 11, at the Omni Austin Hotel Downtown.

Terrence Malick’s New Film to Kick Off the
SXSW Film Festival, + Six More Titles Announced!

American Gods (World Premiere)

Director: David Slade, Screenwriters/Showrunners: Bryan Fuller, Michael Green

Adapted from Neil Gaiman’s award-winning novel, American Gods follows Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle) and Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane) in a magical world where a battle is brewing between the Old Gods and the New Gods.

The Melody of Dust (World Premiere)

Director: Viacom NEXT

A musical journey for the HTC Vive. Explore a mysterious world where every object contains a unique melody. Featuring original musical compositions by Hot Sugar, this experience brings you inside the tortured mind of a musician.

Residente (World Premiere)

Director: René Pérez Joglar

After taking a DNA test, Latin America’s most decorated artist – Rene Perez (AKA Residente), embarks on a global adventure, to trace the footsteps of his ancestors and record his latest album.

Signature Move (World Premiere)

Director: Jennifer Reeder, Screenwriters: Fawzia Mirza, Lisa Donato

A secret new romance with Alma forces Zaynab to confront her complicated relationship with her recently widowed mother. In this coming-of-age Muslim melodrama, Zaynab copes by taking up Lucha-style wrestling.

Small Town Crime (World Premiere)

Directors/Screenwriters: Eshom Nelms, Ian Nelms

Ex-cop, Mike Kendall, finds the body of a young woman and, in an act of self-redemption, becomes hellbent on finding the killer. While his uncouth, quirky detective style helps break the case, his dogged determination puts his family in danger.

Song To Song (World Premiere)

Director: Terrence Malick

In this modern love story set against the Austin, Texas music scene, two entangled couples — struggling songwriters Faye and BV, and music mogul Cook and the waitress whom he ensnares — chase success through a rock ‘n’ roll landscape of seduction and betrayal.

Spettacolo (World Premiere)

Directors: Jeff Malmberg, Chris Shellen, Screenwriter: Chris Shellen

For the past 50 years, the villagers of a tiny hill town in Tuscany have turned their lives into a play that the entire town writes and performs. Spettacolo is a portrait of this tradition through the eyes of the last man trying to keep it alive.

More Showcasing Artists
Announced Weekly

Artists are now being added on a weekly basis! Hundreds of Showcasing Artists have been added to the SXSW 2017 schedule since the last edition of SXSWORLD. Our biggest announcement went out at the start of January, and it included standouts such as acclaimed hip-hop artist Goldlink, rising R&B singer Kadhja Bonet, renowned Pakistani band Fuzon, the solo project of Dr. Dog’s Eric Slick, Austin electronic duo CAPYAC, pop singer and producer Maggie Rogers, Tokyo synthpop band Satellite Young, Chilean shoegaze group Trementina, BBC Sound of 2017 nominee The Japanese House, and more ...

Check every Friday for the latest updates!

SXSW Accelerator

The SXSW Accelerator Pitch Event returns for its ninth year to showcase some of the global startup ecosystem’s most exciting, innovative and cutting edge technologies. SXSW Accelerator takes place Saturday and Sunday, March 11-12, in Salon AB at the Hilton Hotel Downtown, with the winners announced on Sunday.

The event provides an outlet for companies to present the latest ideas in ten categories: Enterprise and Smart Data Technologies, Health and Wearables Technologies, Innovative World Technologies, Payment and FinTech Technologies, Augmented & Virtual Reality Technologies, and Transportation Technologies—to a panel of industry experts, early adopters, and representatives from the venture capitalist/angel investor community.

New for 2017 is the SXSW Super Accelerator Pitch Event. On Monday, March 13, all ten winners will be back on stage to pitch once again in front of a new audience and a new set of judges at the Austin Convention Center. The winner will be named the 2017 Best Startup Pitch Company.

SXSW Hackathon Now Includes
Music + AR/VR & Video

The SXSW Hackathon runs March 14-15, bringing together artists and creators with hackers, programmers and developers to solve problems, create new tools, and push the tech boundaries of Music and—new for 2017—AR/VR + Video as well. Teams work for 24 straight hours, then present their hacks in front of a group of all-star judges and SXSW badgeholders on March 15, on the 4th Floor of the Hilton Austin Downtown. Hackathon participants will compete for cash prizes and the opportunity to take part in the a three-day Incubator with SXSW artists and mentors March 16-18. Apply

The
Benefits
of Adversity

Meet Adventure Photographer
Cory Richards

By Rob Preliasco

Cory Richards selfie taken at Base camp

after summiting Mount Everest with no oxygen

and going 36 hours without sleep.

People are always asking Nile Rodgers the secret to breaking into the music business. And the longtime Chic leader—whose studio resume includes signature hits by the likes of Madonna, Sister Sledge, Daft Punk and scores more—has plenty of stories to tell. But he generally doesn’t give out advice.

 “If I were to say something masquerading as advice, it would be to learn to embrace failure because that’s the one thing you can depend on,” Rodgers says. “I feel like everything I do has potential, but the reality is most records fail—not artistically or spiritually, but commercially. So all I know how to do is just persevere. You want a hit, but you’re gonna keep doing it either way. That’s the story of my life. Just keep doing it.”

 Four decades after Chic broke Rodgers out to the mainstream, Rodgers remains in high demand across a wide range of pop styles. One big reason for that is he’s always been a musical omnivore able to absorb and play pretty much anything, going back to his teenage years playing guitar in the Sesame Street touring band. Even while earning his funk and R&B bonafides in the Apollo Theater’s house band, however, Rodgers was more interested in jazz.

 “More than anyone else,” Rodgers says, “Wes Montgomery was who I was trying to copy back then.”

 By the time he hooked up with his key collaborator, Bernard Edwards, and began forming bands of his own in the 1970s, Rodgers really wanted to be in a rock band. And he had a very specific model in mind for what he was after: the fashionable flash of English art-rock band Roxy Music. Seeing the band live in London proved to be a formative experience.

 “I’d been in all these bands where whatever clothes you put on that morning, you’d be playing in that night,” Rodgers says. “But Roxy Music had couture clothing, very theatrical, and they had models and Playboy bunnies on their album covers. Very cool! So take Roxy Music’s high-fashion class and combine it with the anonymity of Kiss, and Chic comes out.”

 For all the cool conceptuality, Chic didn’t catch on until 1977’s “Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah),” a song Rodgers claims to have written “out of frustration” because record companies refused to take a black rock band seriously. Made on a borrowed $3,500, “Dance” would be the first Chic single to crack the Billboard Top 10.

 Chic’s heyday lasted just a handful of years in the late ’70s, but it included some of the disco era’s most enduring signpost hits—“Le Freak,” “I Want Your Love” and “Good Times” among them. The latter song was also the basis of the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” a song that launched hip-hop to the masses in 1979.

 It took until this year for Rodgers to finally get into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, where he’s set to receive the “Award for Musical Excellence” at the Hall’s April 7 induction ceremonies. But the Chic braintrust of Rodgers and Edwards (who passed away in 1996) were producers and writers that everyone in the pop world wanted to work with. After overseeing Sister Sledge’s career-making “We Are Family,” they gave Diana Ross the biggest-selling album of her career (1980’s Diana). Rodgers went on to co-produce David Bowie’s commercial high-water mark, 1983’s Let’s Dance, as well as the Vaughan Brothers, Keith Urban, the B-52s and many others. Recent years have found Rodgers still at the top of the charts with Sam Smith, Christina Aguilera and Avicii.

 “At least 95 percent of the records I do come about because I met someone somewhere,” Rodgers says. “At a gig, in the club, backstage. We’ll talk and then it’s, ‘Let’s try to do a record together.’ Whether it’s Bowie or Madonna or Disclosure or whoever. ‘Meet our friend, Sam. Oh, you sing? Cool, let’s write a song.’ That was Sam Smith. And Daft Punk, they were big Chic fans and we met at the listening party for their first album. It took 16 years for us to get together, and when they came over to play some demos, what I remember most was the conceptual part of it. I was enthralled, because I’m that kind of guy.”

 On tap for 2017 is Chic’s first album of new material in more than a quarter-century, It’s About Time. The album was originally set to be released in 2016, until last year’s wave of high-profile deaths (including Bowie and Prince) convinced Rodgers he should wait.

 “When 2016 rolled around, Bowie passed in the very first month, and then Glenn Frey, Paul Kantner,” Rodgers says. “Those felt like very powerful signs to me, especially after Prince died. ‘This is just not the year for it,’ I thought. Chic records are so celebratory, fun, tension-releasing, and all this just felt so dark and anti-Chic.

 “So 2017 is the year for it,” he concludes. “One thing I’ve always believed in is ‘next.’ I always want to do the next thing. When I did Diana, Berry Gordy called up to complain that, ‘It doesn’t sound like a Diana Ross album.’ And I had to correct him, ‘It doesn’t sound like an old Diana Ross album.’ That wound up being the biggest record of her career. So I’m always thinking about what’s next, even if it might fail.”

Nile Rodgers is a 2017 SXSW Conference Keynote (Music).

The economic and social advantages conferred by a college degree are well-documented, with graduates, on average, earning higher salaries and access to upward social mobility. Yet, one of the key constituencies that helped elect Donald Trump last year was non-college educated Americans. Did this reflect, as some suggested, a growing rejection of post-secondary education in the U.S.?

 Her groundbreaking work has given Sara Goldrick-Rab, Professor of Higher Education Policy and Sociology at Temple University and the author of 2016’s Paying The Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream, a more nuanced perspective on the social, economic and educational divides that the election exposed.

 Goldrick-Rab’s book has helped start a national conversation about the fact that the biggest obstacle to attaining a college education is not gaining admittance or being able to do the work. It is the simple fact that college costs too much, and the financial aid system intended to help extend college opportunity to low- and middle-income families is no longer adequate.

 As a social scientist, Goldrick-Rab is rigorous about grounding her claims in data. Her book was based on the Wisconsin Scholars Longitudinal Study, which she designed and ran with economist Douglas N. Harris. The study followed 3,000 students for six years, all of whom received multiple forms of financial aid.

 But the data that came out told only one part of the sobering story, so Goldrick-Rab provided context by presenting the data alongside case studies tracking the experiences of six students in her survey, all of whom started college in 2008.

 “I thought there would be power in the stories,” Goldrick-Rab said in a recent phone conversation. “Maybe I could get schools and administrators to feel closer to this, and feel like they’re ready to do something. It is so important to just really recognize the problem. There is so much rhetoric out there that money just is not really the issue in education.”

 One of the most infuriating revelations in Goldrick-Rab’s book is the extent to which colleges and universities go to keep students in the dark about the true price of the education they’re paying for. For instance, in their failing to inform recipients that the often paltry aid they get for their freshman year will likely be even more inadequate for subsequent years, as fees and tuition increase. And by pretending that the cost of college is simply limited to tuition, fees and books, not considering items such as food, shelter, clothing and transportation.

 “We have to address these living expenses,” Goldrick-Rab said. “For us to continue to not admit that food and housing are keeping people back is not OK.”

 Despite grants, loans and working multiple jobs at once, one of Goldrick-Rab’s case study subjects couldn’t make it and left college in her second year, exhausted, defeated, degree-less and in debt.

 “There are people (in the study) who got clobbered a lot worse, but they weren’t typical,” Goldrick-Rab said. “She got clobbered in a very typical way, which is why she’s in there.”

 Another typical way financially strapped students get clobbered? By taking the initiative to apply for private scholarships to supplement their existing grants and loans, only to learn that their schools can “claw back” a like amount from the students’ promised aid packages.

 “It’s got an official name,” Goldrick-Rab said. “It’s called aid displacement. The Gates Foundation loses millions because of this problem. Coca-Cola loses money because of this problem. (Schools) will claim in the name of equity that they’re just going to distribute that aid to another kid. Except they don’t.”

 And because the system is designed and administered to keep students in the dark about their own college finances, most don’t realize their hard-won scholarship will simply displace a like amount of existing aid until after the fact.

 If one hasn’t already suspected as much, by the end of Paying the Price, it is hard not to conclude that for many lower-income students, financial aid can be an inducement to try college that leaves many worse off than if they had never gone.

 “We open these doors to American higher education so widely, and we’re so proud of that. We say that that’s the epitome of the American dream,” Goldrick-Rab said. “But they get there and we’ve fooled them by not giving them the support they need, so that they can do more than walk in the door. Because they walk through and so now they have debt. That’s the infuriating trap to me.”

 So how does this connect with the election? “It was different 20 years ago,” Goldrick-Rab explained. ”You could go and not be harmed by just being (in college). Now you’re harmed because you couldn’t get in the door without taking on debt. And the public costs of this system are huge. The failures are costing us.”

 “This election was an example of this failure,” she continued. “Look at the divide (among voters) in college educated and non-college educated people. This is not just that non-college educated people don’t know stuff. It’s that they are angry. They are pissed because they couldn’t become college educated, because the system is stuck against them. They’re not saying they didn’t want an education—they couldn’t get an education. It’s so connectable.”

Sara Goldrick-Rab will be a Keynote speaker at SXSWedu: March 6-9 at the Austin Convention
Center.

Muslim melodrama might not yet be a cinematic genre on many American filmmakers or moviegoers’ minds, but that’s how actor and writer Fawzia Mirza describes her first feature film, Signature Move.

 “I’ve been talking a lot about the genre Muslim melodrama because, if you think about it, the film is sort of like if a telenovela meets a Pakistani drama, but is comedic,” Mirza says via phone from her home in Chicago, in December.

 That’s one, or three, ways of describing Signature Move, which follows the lives and interactions of a handful of women, some of whom are Muslim, some of whom are Mexican, and some of whom are gay. Dubbing the film Muslim, gay or even melodramatic sells this movie very short, though.

 Signature Move unfolds as a nuanced look at the struggles of these women: Zaynab, played by Mirza, is an immigration lawyer who struggles to come out to her traditional Pakistani mother, Parveen (Shabana Azmi). Parveen is grieving for her recently dead husband and has moved in with Zaynab but won’t leave the house and spends her days TV-glued and focused on her daughter finding a man.

 Zaynab meets Alma (Sari Sanchez), an openly gay Mexican woman, who seems to have it all worked out. Her former lucha libre champion mother, Rosa (Charin Alvarez) and Jayde (Audrey Francis), a stoic former wrestler who unwittingly becomes Zaynab’s spirit guide, offer contrasts to Parveen’s traditional view of gender roles.

 Still, despite the au courant powder keg issues of sexual orientation and immigrant assimilation, at its core, the film shouldn’t overshadow the way the film tries to undo stereotypes.

 “I think the film is inherently political, but I didn’t set out to make a political movie. My reality is intensely political to many people,” says Mirza, who grew up the daughter of Muslim Pakistani immigrants, first living in London, Ontario, and then in Indiana. “Some real-life things that happened in my life inspired some of it. In reality, I have an ex-girlfriend who is Mexican, and one of the things I found was there was this great connection across communities to be had.”

 Mirza’s reality potentially put her between a rock and a hard place: but she refused to allow being gay in the Muslim world, or Muslim in the Western world, prevent her growing into herself.

  “It can be hard to be Muslim. It can be hard to be gay. It can be hard to be both. What I know is that the only way I was able to be me was to embrace all of the me,” she says emphatically, “and almost create a new identity where all those things are inextricable.”

 Signature Move, co-written with Lisa Donato and directed by Jennifer Reeder, is a spin-off from one of Mirza’s short films. Her other shorts include “The Queen of My Dreams” and “The First Session,” which co-starred Mouzam Makkar (The Vampire Diaries, The Exorcist) and Parvesh Cheena (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Outsourced), and was shown at the NBC Diversity Short Film Festival, held at the Directors Guild of America in Hollywood, and at The American Pavilion at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

 Besides film and stand-up comedy, Mirza wrote a “one-person play,” as she puts it, “Me, My Mom & Sharmila,” which she performed in Pakistan last year. She also helmed and starred in the satirical web series Kam Kardashian, where she played a long lost lesbian Kardashian sister, and a mockumentary, The Muslim Trump, about Donald Trump’s fictitious illegitimate Muslim daughter.

 But the role of Zaynab is something for which she’s yearned: “Playing someone like Zaynab is why I started writing in the first place,” she says. “As an actor, you are always waiting to be cast in a role you fit into. I thought, why wait?”

 Like Zaynab, Mirza isn’t a wrestler either. But the allegory of wrestling— going through the motions of set moves, while seeking to define yourself with a unique signature move—is perfect for a story about following your individual path.

 Besides cultural and sexual orientation, Signature Move has one more stereotype buster that speaks across the female divide: these women are not bystanders in the own lives. Even Parveen, the house-bound mother who watches the world through binoculars, rises to the occasion.

 “This is not a film about Muslim women needing to be saved,” says Mirza. “Even Parveen, who is different from the rest, is this strong, rich woman. Part of it was finding those moments beyond being a mother. She’s as quirky as anyone else in the film. The actor playing her is the Meryl Streep of South Asia. She is amazing.”

 Mirza hopes the film will find a broad audience: “This movie is written by queer women, about women of color, and is directed by a woman. It is a film about women,” she adds, “but the audience, we believe, is even more expansive and the story is deeply relatable across communities. The relationship struggles, the fears, the awkwardness, trying something new, the self-discovery, the coming of age, the mother-child relationships and mother-child communication struggles, is all something that we think crosses culture and is deeply inclusive.”

Signature Move will World Premiere at SXSW 2017. Fawzia Mirza will also appear on panels in the Film and TV Industry and Experiential Storytelling tracks. See schedule.sxsw.com for more.

Can Autonomous Vehicles Really Save the Planet?

 By Shermakaye Bass

The self-driving car, a.k.a. the AV or autonomous vehicle, is no longer somewhere on the horizon. In the U.S., some mobility experts predict AV ride-hailing or autonomous taxis will be deployed within five years, with AVs supplementing public transit systems in five to 10. Large numbers of individual self-driving cars aren’t expected until further down the road due to policy, regulation, safety and licensing issues.

 “I think we’re talking about this kind of robo ride-hailing service in urban environments first, where it’s a fully autonomous shared car or taxi kind of approach,” says Ginger Goodin, director of the Transportation Policy Research Center at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

 Among the coming automation’s benefits, auto industry leaders tout the potential for AVs to have far-reaching implications for quality of life, especially for urban dwellers, the disabled and the working-poor.

 “The car has always been more than just a means to get from A to B,” says Dieter Zetsche, head of Mercedes-Benz Cars and Chairman of the Board of Management at Daimler. “It is and remains a personal Declaration of Independence. Self-driving cars will further enhance that individual freedom, while offering tremendous opportunities for our society.

 “They are able to reduce emissions by driving more efficiently, and they can make personal mobility available to people with physical impairments or the elderly,” Zetsche continues. “Most importantly, they will help reduce the biggest safety risk in driving: human error. So, autonomous driving will make traffic cleaner, more accessible and safer.”

 Daimler is deeply invested in self-driving vehicles and complementary technologies such as mapping. In May 2015, Daimler Trucks North America introduced the world’s first automated big rig, testing it in Nevada where it drove itself across Hoover Dam. American companies including Ford, Tesla and General Motors are testing AVs in multiple conditions and locations.

 “The technology is progressing very quickly,” says Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Company. “We will have several more generations of the software and the sensors and the LIDAR before it hits the road, but I think the bigger issue is all these kind of softer issues around the economy: Who’s going to own the vehicles? How are they going to be managed? And importantly, if there’s a setback early on with an autonomous vehicle, will that set their acceptance back for some time?”

 Ford was an early proponent of self-driving cars and ruffled major feathers in the auto business when he gave a TED Talk on AVs back in 2011. On the surface, it appeared that the great-grandson of Henry Ford was advocating against the industry’s best interests, because as AVs take off, city dwellers will surely buy fewer cars.

 Ford explains that “It wasn’t really an ‘aha’ moment—it was more just a function of traveling all around the world and being stuck in traffic in almost every major city… and I thought about our industry projections. The people in our industry were looking ahead and saying, ‘We have rising GDPs and a rising middle class around the world, and therefore we’re going to sell almost infinitely more cars and trucks.’ And it just struck me that that was a ludicrous proposition.”

 Now, car manufacturers are surging forward in this brave new market of self-drivers. In fact, they appear to have surpassed tech firms like Google and Uber, which only a year or so ago were leading the AV sector.

 As Daimler’s Zetsche explains, it’s an obvious pairing because cities around the globe are built around cars and their needs: “As the car changes, the city changes, too. Just think about parking, alone: Today, an average car is parked for about 23 hours a day. That is a lot of idle time. It also means we need huge parking garages that occupy scarce space in our city centers. A self-driving car could drive us to work, fetch our laundry from the dry cleaner, pick up the groceries at the supermarket, park itself at a remote location and return to us when required. The possibilities and benefits could truly transform our lives. That’s why autonomous driving will have such a significant effect on many people and businesses.”

 Another major impact of AVs will be socio-economic. Increased mobility for the working class and working poor—whether it be through AV-supplemented public transit or in ride-hailing—can only make life easier.

 “Brookings did a study that one of the biggest determinants of getting out of poverty is the ability to get to where your job is,” Ford says. “And so I believe that the beneficiaries are going to be everybody—but especially people who today are out of work because they simply can’t get to where their job is. So actually part of my great belief in all of this, is that this is really going to be a technology that liberates all parts of our society, and to me that’s really compelling.”

 Zetsche also sees the arrival of AVs as a key development: “I’m convinced we’re in the most exciting and revolutionary era of individual mobility since its very start.”

Autonomous cars will be among the topics explored in the Intelligent Future track at SXSW 2017.

The ingenuity and resourcefulness of the people of Cuba is legendary. Faced with chronic shortages since the early ‘60s due to a U.S. trade embargo, the country was truly left to its own devices following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late ‘80s. In response, Cubans became inventors out of necessity. Using whatever materials available, they have been able to repair and repurpose almost anything—the classic American cars on the streets of Havana being a famous example.

 While their parents grappled with washing machine motors, old telephones and bicycle parts, a new generation of developers and entrepreneurs is innovating in the fields of technology and connectivity. Since most of the population has little to no Internet access, an increasing number of developers are working on offline solutions to stay connected within and outside the island.

 According to information from the Cuban government, the goal is that 50% of the population has Internet access by 2020. “This number, while not small, seems insufficient,” says Darsi Fernandez, founding partner of 4C Producciones and a key player in bringing the first “Sounds from Cuba” showcase to SXSW in 2016. “Considering the apparent state of development of ETECSA, the company that controls the telecommunications monopoly in Cuba, this projection seems ambitious and far from reality.”

 Most Cubans desire connectivity, but home Internet connections are banned for most, and the government charges the equivalent of a quarter of the island’s monthly salary for a one hour connection to the global network, either at state-run hotels or Internet cafes. Hence, the DIY spirit of the population has sprouted a number of alternatives, including a semi-clandestine network called SNET (Street Network) and cutting-edge offline technology platforms.

 4C Producciones coordinates AM-PM (América Por su Música), an event at the Fábrica de Arte Cubano that seeks to unite and connect music industry professionals in Latin America. There, they organized the first Brainstorm Music & Tech session to connect the new media and music sectors. “The idea is to strengthen the connection between the music industry and technology entrepreneurs, something that is common worldwide but which is still in its infancy in Cuba,” says Fernandez. “The purpose of the project is to promote joint lines of work for both groups, based on the common space that has opened up new information and communication technologies (on demand consumption, social networks, collaborative culture, crowdfunding, etc.), as well as the main difficulties and advantages of the current Cuban entrepreneurial environment. In addition, one of our objectives is to foster the generation of a ‘business portfolio,’ based on the creativity and innovative spirit that both industries share.”

 What started as a way for a few young Cubans to play online games, SNET has blossomed into a vast alternative neighborhood intranet, now connecting up to 20,000 users in Havana. Ian Pedro Carbonell, SNET’s “general organizer,” is one of the tech entrepreneurs who will participate in the #OffCuba panel during SXSW 2017. SNET is an example of how technology can be an important force for community development on the island and beyond.

 “People can create their own audience through their profile, invite friends, and send their ads for free,” explains Carlos García, founder of Kewelta, a free social portal for advertising content created to encourage entrepreneurs. At SXSW he will present the mobile application, which will work online and offline.

 “We publicize our services and projects working directly with people who need to advertise their businesses, and with the people who join our community through ads we place in magazines, mobile applications, or events such as fairs,” says García. “As startups, we have created business models that allow us to generate income, and the (SNET) community uses different ways of internal crowdfunding for its infrastructure and maintenance. Creativity has prevailed, allowing us to survive by creating a different technology while we look for income to sustain our projects.”

 Also participating in SXSW are Yondaine Gutiérrez and Ariel Causa, co-founders of AlaMesa, the leading platform for information about Cuban gastronomy, which comprises a website with information on approximately 70% of the restaurants in Cuba, alongside a mobile app that works without Internet access and contains maps and geolocation offline.

 These entrepreneurs have studied and immersed themselves in technology. However, they think of technology in a different way from those who have always lived with Internet and see offline technology as an alternative to the web, not a replacement. Their success lies in the ability to create services and technological products that are not dictated or controlled by the state’s telecommunications infrastructure.

 “On the Internet there are many applications and systems that are already offline,” says García. “Our mission as entrepreneurs is to have a far-reaching impact on the mass media, allowing us to show Cuban offline technology and the ways to export it. There is a thaw in Cuba’s relationships with the USA and the EU, and the private sector has benefited the most. It is important to show the success of our startups so we can attract investors and create business opportunities for our community.”

Click for information about the #OffCuba session and other international programming at SXSW 2017.

Cuba’s DIY Culture Extends to Technology

By Claudia Alarcon

Félix & Paul Studios, the most acclaimed partnership in virtual reality filmmaking, actually began with its principals competing with each other. A decade ago, Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël were vying for the same directing gig in Montréal when they decided, instead, to collaborate on the project. The two have worked together ever since.

 Though they both began their careers in traditional filmmaking with music videos and commercials, even in the beginning of their partnership, they created immersive experiences by using 3D projections in their own video installations. This resulted in “VR with a more narrow field of view,” Raphaël says.

 Several years later, when consumers seemed poised for VR, the studio was ready. “Once the very first signs virtual reality might be becoming more of a consumer medium, and not so much of a research and military application … as soon as we saw that coming, we shifted all our resources to developing what ended up being that first VR camera,” says Raphaël.

 Their early adaptation paid off, and in just a few years, Félix & Paul Studios has produced award-winning VR experiences, including content that every Oculus or Gear purchaser receives on his or her devices. The duo recently entered into a deal with Fox to create experiences based on films. Their nonfiction, documentary-oriented work includes capturing Cirque du Soleil performances and working with U.S. Presidents Obama and Clinton.

 The three films in their Nomads series document nomadic people from different parts of the world: the Maasai in Kenya, the sea-living Sama-Bajau on the Borneo coast and Mongolian yak herders. In the films, the viewer is situated in moments in everyday life, the traditional documentary voiceover traded in for simply being there with the subjects. The series had high-tech and high-risk accomplishments, like underwater scenes and the placement of a camera in a herd of wild horses, but it also employed the lower-tech creative choice to simply fade in and out to gently move the viewer from scene to scene.

 Sustaining the viewer’s experience is one of the creative principles that has guided both Félix & Paul’s technical innovations and creative decisions. “What to avoid in breaking presence, and what are the things that can break presence, all of those are extremely important to disseminate as widely as possible,” says Chief Technical Officer, Sebastian Sylwan.

 Those creative concerns go hand-in-hand with technical execution. Raphaël says that they weigh factors such as how scale, movement, frame rates and sound behave differently in VR than in traditional filmmaking, and how they affect the viewer’s experience and ability to stay in the moment: “Interactivity is a big topic, when and how to do it, and what are the challenges as well. That’s one of the things with the most potential, but is also one of the hardest nuts to crack.”

 Successfully maintaining that experience also means there’s a new set of concerns for filmmakers, whose audiences now don’t just lose the fourth wall, but also the first, second and third. And that calls for a careful approach to intense material.

 “I think that people have gotten used to what it’s like to watch a violent scene in a film, but if you push too hard on that button on an unsuspecting viewer, that can have a measurable traumatizing effect on someone,” says Raphaël. “We haven’t done any violence or horror-based content yet, but we do have some stuff in development that’s gonna kind of scratch that surface a little bit, and so we’re going to be very careful in how we handle the intensity of that.”

 At SXSW 2017, Lajeunesse and Raphaël, along with Sylwan and Chief Content Officer Ryan Horrigan, will present a “Master Class with Felix & Paul” for VR filmmakers. They plan to go through different projects they’ve produced and discuss both the challenges they encountered, and the solutions they found.

 Central to Felix & Paul’s ability to execute has been its managing every step of the process, as a full-spectrum studio. Sylwan actually compares the current state of VR to the early studio system, when everything was done in-house.

 “We kind of see this as the requirement for doing VR properly, or at the highest quality level at least,” he explains. “So what we want to talk about is really this full-spectrum concept in which you have to develop stories that are VR natives, and you have to build the technology to be able to shoot them. And you have to have the technology to post-produce them, and you have to distribute them.”

 Raphaël says that having close contact with hardware manufacturers is one of the most important things filmmakers can do to succeed in a medium especially unforgiving of technical flaws. Not every filmmaker will be building their own gear, but they can talk to whoever is: “One of the main takeaways we want people to walk out with is that you need very tight integration at every step of the way,” says Raphaël. “If you don’t master as many of those pieces as possible, you’re going to fall short on some level.”

 “I don’t think we will reveal our trade secrets, but (instead) the principles that guide the development of our trade secrets, or the principles that guide the way we approach projects,” says Sylwan. “It’s in our own interest that the industry develops as broadly, and as high-quality, as possible.”

Click the link for more information about attending the “Master Class with Felix & Paul”.

“Interactivity is a big topic, when and how to do it, and what are the challenges as well. That’s one of the things with the most potential, but is also one of the hardest nuts to crack.”

Vint Cerf is a man with many titles: Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, founder of the People Centered Internet, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom among other honors. This year, he will add something new to his already illustrious resume—SXSW speaker and attendee.

 Even if you aren’t familiar with Vint Cerf, you almost certainly use a product of his work on a daily basis. Cerf’s pioneering research on Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) began at Stanford University in 1973. Combined with Internet Protocol (IP), the TCP/IP protocols would become one of the backbone architectures of the Internet. He would later be given the nickname “Father of the Internet.”

 While appreciative, Cerf is quick to point out that he is not the only father figure. “Many cultures tend to look for heroes to whom they can attribute major accomplishments,” he said. “In the 1990s, when the World Wide Web became popular, the Internet was recognized as the underlying infrastructure that made the web useful and widespread. Sir Tim Berners-Lee developed the WWW protocols to run on top of TCP/IP. People asked where TCP/IP came from and discovered the first paper about the Internet that was written by Robert Kahn and me and published in May 1974 in IEEE Transactions on Communications. Bob and I were identified with the Internet’s early development.”

 Countless others have contributed to the implementation, testing and expansion of their work in the ensuing decades. “Several thousand engineers have worked over the last 30 years on standards for the TCP/IP protocol suite in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and hundreds of thousands if not millions of others have developed applications for the Internet since it was first made operational on January 1, 1983,” said Cerf. “There is a great deal of credit to go around, so I feel that this term needs to be taken with some humility.”

 After leaving the Stanford faculty, Cerf worked in executive roles at such influential technology organizations as DARPA, MCI and the Corporation for National Research Initiatives before joining Google in 2005. He recently co-founded People Centered Internet (PCI) with Mei Lin Fung.

 Cerf will make his SXSW debut as a headliner of the sixth-annual IEEE Tech for Humanity Series. An IEEE Life Fellow, he will highlight the transformational potential of grassroots innovation in expanding global Internet connectivity.

 “Once connected to the net, users have access to vast quantities of information, discoveries of new products, services and advanced scientific and engineering data from which beneficial applications can be built. We see the Internet as a 21st century means to improve GDP growth, education and opportunity to invent,” he said.

 “A good example of how we’ll achieve this is a current project undertaken in Tunisia named TAWASOL, which translates to ‘connectivity’ from Arabic. PCI, in partnership with the IEEE Tunisia Section Special Interest Group on Humanitarian Technologies (SIGHT), is working to greatly extend Internet access and deliver practical, value-based application knowledge in order to educate and empower young people throughout the country.”

 His goal for SXSW is to inspire those attending his session to generate new ideas and lend their entrepreneurial talents to help make the Internet more affordable, accessible and sustainable. “My hope is that people leave the session with thoughts to how they might get involved and make a contribution to these efforts,” he said.

 Cerf also invites those unable to attend his session to join in the push for global connectivity. “We urge people to come to our website, peoplecentered.net, and to share their ideas and their willingness to join the effort to take the Internet where it has not gone before and to make it locally useful. We look for sustainable growth of Internet applications and Internet-enabled businesses that can serve local and global users.”

 Such growth is likely to come through a blend of public and private sector initiatives, meaning there is room for corporations, NGOs and everyone in between. Cerf explains: “We think many business models are feasible, some commercial, some non-profit, some citizen and community oriented, some government sponsored. If the conditions that support, encourage and facilitate entrepreneurs are present, one can anticipate a great deal of creative development.”

 While this will be Cerf’s first SXSW, he is a long-time admirer of the festival and looks forward to the experience. “More than anything, I am eager to mingle with the SXSW audience and participants in the IEEE-hosted events and parties, to hear more about what is exciting them, what challenges they see in the future, and what new technologies are coming to light that will bear fruit in the future.”

The IEEE Tech for Humanity Series will run March 11-16, with 15 total events including the Interactive session “Vint Cerf: An Internet For and By the People,” an official SXSW Party at the Driskill Hotel, and the “IEEE and PCI Future of the Internet Meetup” with Vint Cerf.

Traditionally, media outlets have ignored fake news in an effort not to give it traction. Today, however, with the rise of social media and the ease with which consumers can get and share information, there is the need for a new strategy for vetting legitimate and false news. This was especially evident after the 2016 election, when claims that false news articles had affected people’s votes increased concerns - and prompted the search for a solution.

 Kathleen Culver, an assistant journalism professor and the Director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been discussing fake news in her classroom since last fall. In August, Facebook fired its editors from the Trending news section after they were accused of being biased against conservative news. It was then that Culver noticed an uptick in fake news on Facebook, not just in the Trending section, but also in posts that her friends shared on her feed. Culver wasn’t the only one who noticed. She cited a Washington Post article that reported that three days after Facebook fired its editors, a fake story about Megyn Kelly being fired from Fox News for supporting Hillary Clinton was one of their trending topics.

 The trend continued throughout the election. Stories that claimed that the Pope supported Donald Trump, and that Hillary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS were among some of the top fake news posts shared. An analysis by BuzzFeed News even found that those fake stories gained more shares and interactions than real stories from traditional and reputable media outlets. A Guardian report found more than 150 websites registered and apparently run by people in Macedonia were created to look like legitimate news outlets while peddling false information, all for the purpose of attracting readers and their profitable ad clicks.

 “That’s an important piece of the fake news phenomena,” said Stephanie Agresta, a marketing expert and TechSet co-host of SXSW’s Social Media Lounge. “Some of it is absolutely motivated by financial interest, whether it’s the teen expert in the Balkans or entrepreneurs who just see it as a way to make significant amounts of money per month from Google and Facebook.”

 As talk about the rise and influence of fake news picked up, focus turned to big companies such as Google and Facebook. Google AdSense allows nearly any website to be monetized through it, and Facebook’s dependence on only an algorithm for its Trending section made the platform a major hub for the easy spread of fake stories. Facebook’s initial response to the concerns was a defensive dismissal.

 “Personally I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, which is a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way — I think is a pretty crazy idea,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, said during the Techonomy conference after the election. “Voters make decisions based on their lived experience.”

 “But that misses the point,” Culver said. “If it’s easy to identify that this information is fake or that it’s a hoax, so why should it be there at all? Plus, some analyses show that the fake news stories received far better engagement than the top trending real news stories. So even if they were smaller in quantity, they were greater in impact.”

 Although Culver agrees that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how fake news affected the election, she believes that “You don’t have to show that something had a specific impact to show that it had negative consequences. This isn’t just about the U.S. presidential election ... it’s about the integrity of news on this platform that 1.7 billion people use.”

 Later in November, Google and Facebook both took steps to address their fake news problems. Google stated it would ban websites that post fake news from using Google AdSense, and Facebook updated its Facebook Audience Network policy to include fake news in its category of websites for which it would not display ads.

 In December, Facebook took more definitive steps. Its new program includes a feature that allows users to flag articles they believe are fake. Facebook also partnered with organizations that have agreed to the Poynter Institute for Media Studies’ International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) code of principles to help fact check articles that have been flagged.

 “The way it works is that we are one of a handful of news and fact-checking organizations who have access to a dashboard that Facebook created, that allows us to see a lot of the content that’s being flagged as fake by users,” said Eric Carvin, social media editor for the Associated Press. “We get to see those items. We make individual decisions on a case-by-case basis whether we want to write our own story debunking what’s fake or more importantly, reporting what’s true about the subject at hand.”

 When a story has been marked as fake or “disputed” and a user attempts to share it, a pop-up warns that the story might be fake. That notification is what Culver refers to as “engineering ethics” because it makes consumers more aware -- and responsible -- for what they’re sharing.

 “I think the onus is really on the consumer of content,” Agresta said. “My best advice is be more aware of the credibility of who is influencing you. Do more research. The main message here is for people to think twice before just sharing.”

Journalism is one of the 24 programming tracks at SXSW 2017.

the point. Because the audience out there, they love music, and they’re hungry. They’re deep diving on free sites looking for stuff that’s never been picked up or released yet.

And more artists are going independent and handling their own business, realizing they can reach their audience directly. It’s wide-open, and what we’re trying to do is keep pace and provide a trustworthy force that believes in that and wants to play as much music as we possibly can.

You worked at the Music & Video Exchange in London before you started DJing at XFM. Even with all the changes in the music business and in technology, the fundamentals of discovery aren’t that different, are they?

That’s exactly right! That sense of recommendation that you got from people that you respected. That idea of being able to rifle through a record bin. That feeling that you’re part of a community, and that you can get a recommendation from someone standing next to you in the hip-hop aisle, or from someone across the counter. All that stuff still exists. It’s just a new place for it. We want to create that experience in the digital age.

And pop changes shape all the time! When Skrillex came out, he spent a year touring, people were talking about him, he had an underground buzz, then he won a bunch of Grammys, and then that sound, which just seemed unlistenable to a lot of people when it first happened, it just became everywhere! Pop had changed shape.

And last year, pop changed shape again ... all of sudden it was dark and weird. The Weeknd’s “The Hills” being like a massive radio record here in America; that’s a HARD fucking record … distorted, and uncompromising, and lyrically it’s really on the edge, and yet, you couldn’t get it off the radio.

So pop changes shape all the time. And I would much rather go along and be surprised than try to make pop work for me, or for our station, or play what our version of pop is. How are we ever going to have any fun if we play what we think is pop? I’d rather learn that lesson myself!

Zane Lowe is a 2017 SXSW Conference Keynote (Music).

Did you design your job, or are you doing what Apple interviewed you to do?

I guess I did design the job. They were looking for potential DJs who might want to be involved in this sort of radio idea that Trent Reznor, Larry Jackson and Jimmy Iovine had. As that progressed, they sort of said, we’re looking for a creative director to help define what it is, and visually what it could be. We’re really lucky: Apple has never pulled the reins and said, ‘You guys are going too far out there.’ We take risks … the riskier the better in some respects.

Is there still a role for regional scenes in a global digital world?

That’s where it all begins! We’re listening to what’s moving in the U.K., and we’re saying, ‘oh wow, that’s really exciting. I wonder if anyone cares about that in Australia?’ We’re constantly searching. We’re in a situation where we can cherry-pick the most exciting shit and reach corners of the globe really effectively and really easily.

So how different is it programming for a worldwide audience?

There are big challenges. How do you program a livestream when you’re dealing with all different time zones and different countries and different languages? We’re in cities and towns that I’ve never heard of, and time zones that are asleep when I’m awake and awake when I’m asleep. When you’re only dealing with one time zone, city or town, you know what works best when and where on the schedule.

But, we’re in a different place. Those challenges actually helped to really refine the mission statement. We want to create a community experience and make music the event … to create a place where we could all talk about it at the same time.

Have radio and record companies’ ideas about taste always been more narrow than listeners’ actual preferences?

They were the gatekeepers, and now it seems like the walls have fallen down. That’s why we’ve all decided to curate our own lives. If you’re taking a look at a small list of records and think ‘this is going to satisfy our audience,’ you’re missing

Zane Lowe is a music fan just like the rest of us, albeit a music fan who also has a Grammy (for co-writing and co-producing Sam Smith’s “Restart”), will present a live DJ set at this summer’s Governor’s Ball Festival and bears as much responsibility as anyone for determining where digital music and music streaming might go next.

After a decade-plus at the BBC’s Radio 1, Lowe became the creative director of Apple Music’s Beats 1 in 2015. In addition to hosting his own show, conducting artist interviews and taking a lead role in programming the station, Lowe spends a lot of his time lining up artists to do their own thing on Beats 1. “We’re as insatiable as the audiences,” he says. “If you don’t like music, then we’re not for you.”

Lowe recently shared his insights on his job and the music world, at large:

When Brjann Sigurgeirsson, CEO of games studio Image & Form, began work on SteamWorld Heist—the sequel to the wildly successful Nintendo 3DS 2013 platform action/adventure game SteamWorld Dig—he knew that one of the areas in which he wanted to improve the player’s experience was the music.

 Early in Image & Form’s existence, that was an afterthought. The developers would leave the music until the last minute, then add it on the cheap after finding something acceptable on a royalty-free website. But as the studio, and the games industry as a whole, have evolved, so has the thinking about how music can help create a more engaging, immersive world for the player to enjoy. Suddenly, music is at the forefront of designing a compelling game.

 “These days, we try to think of it in the same way we think about graphics,” Sigurgeirsson says. “The right kind of music is really important for our games in order to convey the right mood.”

 When it comes to SteamWorld Heist, the developer searched for a way to make the music a gameplay element that fans would embrace. Citing inspiration like the role-playing game (RPG) Bastion, Sigurgeirsson’s team included bar scenes where players recruit new crew members, buy equipment, and more—and because they’re bars, he says, “They’re always flooded with music.”

 When the Swedish studio found the San Diego, California-based band Steam Powered Giraffe, he knew he was onto something special. “It turned out to be a more integrated part of the game than we had intended at first, since we found the perfect band,” he says. “They pretend to be steam-driven robots, so it was a perfect match. We could therefore animate them and have them in the game as the ‘constant band’ that tours all of the bars in space that our heroes go to visit.”

 That sort of synergy is rare, of course. There are only so many games about steam-powered robots, and only so many rock bands who perform as steam-powered robots, so the key to finding new creative—and business—opportunities in the comingling of music and games isn’t usually so literal. That doesn’t mean that music can’t still be a huge part of how players interact with, and experience, the game that they’re enjoying.

 For Image & Form, there are a few different things that music can accomplish. A spooky melody can always set the tone for a spooky scene, but as game developers innovate, and truly collaborate with musicians, music is used for broader purposes.

 “We try to use music as much as possible for setting moods, but it can also be super useful to indicate movement. Panning the sound can really work well, especially if you’re playing with headphones. Other games do a tremendous job of using music in clever ways,” Sigurgeiersson says, noting an iOS game called Mini Metro that uses a music algorithm to compose as you play.

 From the musician’s perspective, the benefits of pursuing work in games are multifold: Financially, it doesn’t hurt to have more opportunities for licensing and syncs. And the exposure to an audience of gamers who may seek out new music primarily through their consoles is no small benefit, either.

 Dutch DJ/producer Oliver Heldens knows the power of all of that. He licensed the song “Good Life” to French games developer Ubisoft—the company behind blockbuster franchises like Assassin’s Creed and Prince of Persia—for the company’s new Watch Dogs 2, and turned the entire project into a large-scale collaboration, basing the video for the song on the game.

 “Producing for projects like that can be a really big step in a DJ’s career,” Heldens says. “It’s not what we usually do, but it’s definitely very interesting to get the chance.”

 It’s not just interesting because of the career rewards, either. While Heldens had produced “Good Life” before Ubisoft chose it for the collaboration, he’s excited about the creative possibilities of working in games. “I can imagine that when you compose your music around a game, it can definitely be challenging—there are more factors to take into account, it has to fit the overall vibe of the game, those sorts of things,” he says. “These challenges keep our work really interesting.”

 “If a good opportunity arises, there needs to be a sort of instant connection for me,” Heldens continues. “With Ubisoft, it was there, because I already play a lot of their games, so it felt right instantly. If that instant connection is there, most of the time the rest will fall into place.”

 Finding artists who are ready to serve as collaborators, and who are passionate about the project, is the key from the game developer side, too. At Image & Form, that can be anybody—Steam Powered Giraffe, for example, had never done music for a game before signing on to SteamWorld Heist. Meanwhile, Sigurgeirsson says, “For our next game, we’re doing the opposite, working with someone who is actually a famous game-music composer.”

 Ultimately, the mix of music and video games is like any other creative collaboration—it’s not so much about a formula as it is finding the right partner for the right project, and trusting the process. “It’s all in the exploration, I guess,” Sigurgeirsson muses. “We think it’s interesting to try different things. The results will never be the same, but they’re usually very good.”

SXSW Gaming Expo will be March 16–18. SXSW Music Festival runs March 13-19.

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