Flying Taxis, Continued Innovation, and the End of Websites: Tech Industry & Enterprise Track Sessions for SXSW 2019

New for SXSW 2019, the Tech Industry & Enterprise Track offers programming focused on the forward-thinking innovations of today and what we project to be trending tomorrow.

"The Tech Industry & Enterprise Track covers many of the ongoing multi-faceted conversations within the greater technology industry," noted SXSW Programmer Dhinuka Perera. "This track brings together executives and leaders from a variety of established organizations and enterprises to talk about the evolving landscape of technology-driven industries and what innovations are projected for the future."

Join us this March for the Tech Industry & Enterprise Track from March 8-13 during the SXSW Conference. Connect with and learn from executives and business leaders on the cutting edge of trends and innovation across a wide array of industries. Dive into sessions focused on new developments from established organizations, global technology ecosystems, strategic B2B practices, and the changing nature of tech-based services. Impress your co-workers and tell your friends about some of the exciting programming highlights for the Tech Industry & Enterprise Track at SXSW 2019 listed below.

Tech Industry & Enterprise Session Highlights

Corporations are Failing to Innovate, or Are They?

Speakers: Mike Erwin (Ecliptic Capital), Emily Keeton (WeWork), and Ben Lamm (Hypergiant Films)

75% of the S&P 500 is expected to be replaced by 2027. It's more important than ever for corporations to explore new markets for growth. The seeds of innovation are being cultivated as fast as millions of new startups launch every year. Corporations have ineffectively capitalized on early-stage startup innovation, which brings with it, proof of concept, intelligence and tailored solutions. This panel will feature leaders from corporations pushing themselves to rethink their approach towards innovation and entrepreneurs. Our panelists have both successfully and unsuccessfully built partnerships with startups to bring their new ideas to larger markets. We'll explore all sides of this innovation conundrum and how corporations can capture this opportunity in the future as the stakes get higher.

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RIP Websites, the End is Nigh

Speakers: Alex Spinelli (LivePerson)

Innovation drives technology forward, so what do you do when one of the industry's biggest advancements, the website, is failing us? Simple, you kill it. In this session, Alex Spinelli will speak to how conversational commerce - through AI (think: Alexa, Apple Business Chat and chatbots) - will kill the website, and revolutionize the digital economy to capture nearly 90 percent of industry sales in the future. He’ll share insights gleaned from working with some of the biggest global brands, like AMEX, T-Mobile, The Home Depot and Citibank, and how they are evolving based on consumer needs and preferences to meet the demand of having a deeper relationship - a conversational relationship - with them.

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Simulating Criminal Hackers to Strengthen Security

Speakers: Josh Schwartz (Oath)

Criminal hacking and unauthorized digital intrusions are at an all-time high and we frequently witness cyber espionage play out on a global stage. Still, public understanding of the techniques employed to accomplish these digital intrusions remains stagnant. Meanwhile, technology systems continue to grow in complexity as layers of abstraction enable building intricate systems without fully understanding the supporting technology. These realities cumulate into an inability to properly defend information assets. In other words, things get “hacked” because we don’t understand what we are protecting or who we are protecting it from. To combat this digital fog of war modern enterprises deploy Red Teams to simulate the adversary. In this session, learn how and why it pays to play the bad guy.

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Flying Taxis & Ambulance Drones: SciFi 2 Reality

Speakers: Roland Gerhards (ZAL GmbH), Mark Moore (Uber), Henriette Van Eijl (European Commission), and Susan Ying (Ampaire )

It looks like the skies over metro areas will become a lot more exciting very soon: Whether it’s urban air taxies shuttling you to work and back, or drones flying blood samples between labs and hospitals above struck road traffic. New services are due to revolutionize both our living standards and service sectors. Or will they really? After all, early 20th century drawings already showed urban skies in the 2000s filled with zeppelins, and neighborhoods seamlessly connected by stream train lines. What needs to be done to ensure the urban air mobility sector will really take off, and not remain a daydream? Which laws and regulations still need to be written? What are the pivotal challenges and milestones? And who will be the real game changer: technology or politics?

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Continuous Innovation

Speakers: Ash Maurya (Lean Stack)

The way we build products has fundamentally changed. As products have gone from being delivered in a box to being delivered over the Internet, there's been a dramatic shift in how customers consume, demand, and interact with products. The challenge today isn’t delivering more products and features, but uncovering what to build. The only way to do this is to engage your customers continuously. The speed of learning has become the new unfair advantage. And companies that continuously outlearn their competition win. In this talk, Ash Maurya defines the new rules for mastering Continuous Innovation and shares practical techniques for putting them to practice.

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Featured Image by Aaron Rogosin

By Ari Roth

11/21/2018