![]() ![]() “Entrepreneurs’ Guide to Battling Depression & ADHD”? (Description: “49% of entrepreneurs have some form of mental health condition and 30% of entrepreneurs suffer from depression ).” Rows of conference rooms featured “speed pitches,” “accelerator pitches” and “super accelerators,” flanked by: “It’s Not Ready Yet: The Perfectionist’s Struggle,” “You Can Survive Creative Burnout Meetup” and “The Threat Is Evolving: Are You?” Was there an unspoken connection between “Psychopaths in Silicon Valley: A Guide” and the With “Seconds Matter: Capturing Attention in Mobile Feed,” seconds mattered so much there wasn’t time for an article. Sample SXSW presentations included: “The Pitch: Selling Your Disruptive Health Startup,” “Shark, Billionaire, Activist” and “Outthink the Future with Just 10 Ideas a Day.” There was a strong spiritual element, too, à la “The Love Algorithm,” “Good Is the New Cool” and “The Future of Emotional Machines.” The futuristic neo-words were dizzying: “grocerants,” “chatbots,” “artivism,” “foodporn,” “wayknowing,” “biopunk,” and “hackpharma”! More familiar, but just as zeitgeisty? “Burkini,” “cannabis” (along with its amiable bro “cannabis startup”) and, of course, never out of style (“Keep Austin Weird”!) “vinyl.”Īnd yet, there was a palpable undercurrent of stress, too. On the one hand, it was easy to get caught up in the DIY (“Do It Yourself,” for you laggards) excitement. Picture a $12 Korean-Mexican Belgian waffle rolled into a cone filled with kimchi pork and panko fried chipotle avocado. They were inventing fashion apps and microbrews and, I want to say, crowd-sourced design memes for sustainability - sometimes all at the same time! Even the food trucks were mix-taping disruption. ![]() ![]() Here were guys sporting new-growth, mountain-man beards and modern-primitive ear plugs, and gals with nose piercings, blue hair and combat boots. I couldn’t wait to share my “soft skills” with our next-gen Bill Gateses.īut SXSW Startup Village entrepreneurs weren’t just nerdy science-mathletes. A trendsetting music, film and interactive media festival, SXSW also features a tech-based “Startup Village.” My colleagues Mark Davis and Sarah Mojarad (both joining the USC faculty this year) had invited me to their panel “Getting to Yes: Communication and Entrepreneurship.” Communication for techies is my expertise: I’m a specialist on what I like to call, with apologies to Mark Twain, “The Awful Scientific Language” - a hodgepodge of Greek, Latin, mistranslated German and pirate-speak, it often does not make sense to ordinary humans. All this - and more - is what I learned when I attended South by Southwest (SXSW) recently in Austin, Texas. Like - wait for it - Gary Vaynerchuk! Doesn’t ring a bell? (Think moussed hair, parachute pants, eerily shiny Members Only jackets).īy contrast, today, in the “twentyteens,” it seems what many dreamy-eyed, creative young people aspire to be are not artists or writers or musicians but … entrepreneurs. ![]() When I came of age - this was back in the ’80s - my tribe of impressionable youths all wanted to be performance artists like Laurie Anderson, writers like Bret Easton Ellis, rockers like …? True, it wasn’t a golden age for rock. ![]()
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