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Honored two years in a row as a top tech podcast by The Webby Awards, CRAFTED. is show about great products and the people who make them. Featuring incredible founders, innovators, and makers that reveal how they've built game-changing products — and how you can, too.
What trade-offs did they make? What experiments did they run? And what was the moment when they knew they were on to something BIG?
Hosted by Dan Blumberg, an entrepreneur, product leader, and public radio host with chops as both a technologist and as a public radio host. Dan has founded startups and led product releases and growth initiatives at LinkedIn, The New York Times, and as a consultant to big banks and startups. Before getting into tech, Dan produced and guest hosted WNYC's Morning Edition, the most listened to show on the country's largest NPR station.
Listen to CRAFTED. to find out what it *really* takes to build great products and companies.
[00:00:00] We just hijacked a table here at the rooftop of one of the hotels. Hey Crafted listeners, we have a fun little bonus episode for you this week, recorded live on a rooftop in Austin during South by Southwest. This is the Europe themed house. Behind this, uh, hedge there are a lot of really tall, good looking people speaking Danish and etc.
So that's, that's where we are right now. It's a good vibe here in Austin. And we're just gonna talk about what we learned this week at South by Southwest. This special Friday afternoon episode of Crafted is a quick and thoroughly uncomprehensive review of what four innovators learned during the craziness that is South by Southwest.
Here's who I'm on the roof with. Hi, I'm James Burdine. I'm the founder and principal at Bishop Linville. We're a branding and fractional CMO consultancy. Hi, I'm Christie Nicholson. I'm an advisor on the program committee for South by Southwest, but my day job is a founder of the studio for communicating complexity.
Hi, I'm Kwaku Aning. [00:01:00] My day job is I'm the director for the Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurial Thinking. And I'm also the founder of Retro Futurism Consulting. And I'm Dan Blumberg. I'm the host of Crafted, this here show about great products and the people who make them. The show is produced by my company, Modern Product Minds, where I also advise founders and makers on how to build and grow incredible products.
Learn more and sign up for the Crafted newsletter at modernproductminds. com. Crafted is sponsored by Artium, a next generation software development consultancy that combines elite human craftsmanship and artificial intelligence. See how Artium can help you build your future at Artium. ai. Okay, back to South by Southwest where it's always happy hour.
Kwaku, you got here first. You were here for the education conference. What'd you figure out this week? What I figured out is mostly about AI. Okay. And there's a lot of fear and excitement at the [00:02:00] same time around what it is and how to use it. And all the educators I spoke to, they're like, This is great, but what do I do with it?
And what do I know, how do I know that this is valuable, this is not valuable? What is real? What is just a sales pitch? There's, maybe the, I think the overall term might be confusion. That's right. And excitement. Yeah, at this point, I find that anyone who mentions AI doesn't go deep enough with examples or actual measurements so then you end up just being afraid.
Still not knowing what to do. So there was no clarity that you got from last? I had clarity coming in and I led a session or a co led a session with, uh, uh, my friends from the TFA reinvention lab. And that we felt that the people left there with a lot of clarity, but a lot of the feedback that we got in that session was, Oh, I've been to two to three other sessions here.
I actually built something. I feel like I understand how I would use this, but otherwise, it just, it felt like people were talking in platitudes or around what the potential of it was, but not the actual [00:03:00] application within schools. So what was the Clarity? What was it that you built? There's this amazing software called PlayLab, uh, which is a non profit, and they give the software to teachers and students to use for free.
And with this software, you can build your own LLM. This teacher has a side hustle where she leads bike tours to historically black, uh, landmarks in different cities. And then ends the tour with lunch at a black owned business. And she's like, normally plans me months to do this. And using PlayLab, she was able to do it in 15 minutes.
And her mind was blown, she's like, well what else could I be doing to augment what I do in this side hustle? And she also applied it to her class. Lots of teachers who are giving state tests and they are not grading it, but they want to give kids time to practice with it and give them the experience of what that assessment looks like.
They're like, oh, I could set this LLM up. To grade this test in the way that it would normally be graded. So the kids get reps. Very cool. [00:04:00] You said there's a lot of concern and fear around AI, which is true at every space. So what, what's it specifically in education that you're as far as the fear? I think there's definitely a level of where does teaching sit with AI?
In other words, where does teaching end and where does AI begin? I'm sure there's some people are like, wait, is this going to take my job? And then there are other people who are just sort of like, all right, well, this is great. And it's simplifying a lot of the things that I don't love about teaching.
Grading, assessments, and some other way. Even coming up with the, uh, initial concepts that you would use. Prompts within classes. Or providing feedback. That was a thing that happened a lot, where a lot of people were like, I want to give feedback to 40 kids instantaneously. I cannot do that. So that's the excitement piece.
But I think there's also the, is this going to take my job? Which is kind of viable. And you know, as we move into the talk around interactive, it's interesting to see the contrast about what people are worried about on the [00:05:00] education side versus, I guess, the corporate design side and also the similarities.
I happened to hear a panelist yesterday named Dre Wallace with a company called Opener that does touring and tour tickets for venues. She's also a long time techno DJ and she was talking about AI and for creators. And she made a very similar argument where, and if it reduces the high volume, low impact work she has to do so much, the better, if it helps her research to find the right base tone for whatever it is she's building, that's great.
But to build a baseline, to put together the music, absolutely not. And it's just, not only is it not there yet, but that would begin to diminish how she thought of herself as a creator. So it's, it's just not dissimilar to when, uh, for, for those folks, like when garage band came out and lots of other tools where they, uh, you know, Suddenly had to get used to the tool and figure out what about it was going to make their high impact, low volume, like really impactful work that much more important.
I went to a talk here, right at this venue where we are, a couple days ago. So there was basically like the chief technology [00:06:00] officer of the city of Kelowna in British Columbia. And there was a panel conversation about the use of AI in cities and how it can be used to, one example that came up was like approved building permits instantaneously because they take photographs and you can see that this, this building is good, like approve and don't wait three months to do it.
And in his city of Kelowna, he put it very pointedly. I was really shocked actually how he put it. He's a, you know, city government. Is meant to be fiscally responsible. It is not meant to be an employer. And there are people that have, bureaucrats that have left or, or maybe not taken a job in his city and have gone to the one next door because they just see more job security there.
It was, it was, it was kind of striking how he put it. What did you think was amazing about when you. It's just a different perspective on, on politics and, and public life that I'm not used to living here where people have these jobs for. Tens of years and it and it becomes something encased in glass It's like you have this job and now you're a Polaroid you're this person and so it's [00:07:00] also kind of refreshing the idea of the constant influx of new ideas as a result of new people coming into roles Christy you've come to South by many times.
What's striking you this year? I think the biggest thing so I've been coming since 2008 or 2007 we're back You know, back to levels that we saw before the pandemic. I know everyone keeps hearing that, but it's remarkable. So South by Southwest reopened in 2022, I believe. And it was, that's when we were, yeah, that's when we met.
And, um, we went to see Lizzo, for example, that would have been impossible. That would have been like, you needed a bracelet plus a, you know, a magnet plus a line, plus a God knows what, the QR code to get in. That time, uh, Kwaku and I just. We just sauntered in and there was Lizzo and we had a good time. So it was, it was a South by Southwest that I had never experienced because all of the content was there, all of the stars, all of the good shows, and yet you could move, [00:08:00] there was space, you could get into everything you wanted, you could talk to a lot of people, it was wonderful.
And not to say this year isn't wonderful, but when it grows and balloons to the size that it's at right now where people are not are spending more time in their lines than they are in the rooms. They need to just figure out the logistics of that. But what I have seen that's amazing this year is, is also its size, which has led to incredible experiences outside the conference center, in the houses that are branded, that have huge amounts of programming, tons of free food, free drink, and just the people that you get to meet.
This year has been, for me, more about the people inside the conference, but a lot of people outside the conference too. Yeah, totally. Uh, James, what is your first one? What, what's, what struck you? Um, it is my first one. And I think the thing that struck me most, so I came here with the goal of sort of humbling myself and going to classes on something I like to think I know a lot about, which was a ton of fun.
And what I loved seeing was the real focus on storytelling, particularly for brands and [00:09:00] getting away from, you know, companies defining themselves inside the context of compare and contrast. And really like, how do you tell a story about what makes your company authentically, um, Impactful. The CEO, sorry, the CMO of Andrea of Spanx was fantastic on a panel as was the Ben, the CMO at Alipop in just telling their story and how they had to move away from defining themselves because they were something completely different.
They created brand new entirely, like entirely new ideas, entirely new constructs to operate in. And then watching that run, I think that's really stood out. And the Rohit Bhargava. Non, uh, obvious thinking was an absolutely fantastic, um, exercise as he sort of led the group through not only his outcomes and what he's done in his fantastic career, but here's my methodology.
So it was very much a like expert talking about to practitioners and talking in a way of like, Here's how you can do this too. Here's how you can expand your, your work and your outcomes. But it's been great. It's been a great week. I, I want to hear more about non obvious thinking and how, how we can do that.
Sure. [00:10:00] So, they brand themselves as futurists and future thinkers and primarily trend spotters. So the idea is, What can you study in the culture? What signals or what signal mining is? We know some of our, our shared friends do a lot of work in that space. And how do you then blend what our signal mining efforts into seeing what's not readily apparent to other folks.
Seth Godin did this, something similar 20 years ago with his purple cow. Are you actually seeing what's in front of you when it's happening in front of you, or are you just looking for the things in the image that you already recognize and already know, and frankly, already feel comfortable with. So a lot of this is about getting uncomfortable.
Moving, having some level of resilience to like have ideas, challenge your preconceived notions, and quite frankly, to unlock us from the pathways and solutions that have ended us up as sort of culturally societally. In, um, a lot of the very obvious problems we keep stumbling into. That point that you raised about who we are versus who we can be.
So, uh, I don't know if you guys remember Augusta from dinner the other night. She interviewed this guy, I think he writes for [00:11:00] The Atlantic. But they were talking about social media and how, um, we are entrenched within who we've declared ourselves to be. at a young age and that we can't move past that because there's all this documentation of who we are.
And within that conversation, one of them brought up the point of it is hard for people to envision things that they haven't seen versus validating something that does exist that's new to them. And I think that tied into your point around the non obvious thinking, but I think the The point of that talk was if you're trying to do something that's new and different and you feel it's going to form a trend but you keep looking backwards to data to validate your thinking, you'll never find your answer.
You need to just, if you believe in it and you see how it aligns with what's happening in the culture, you need to just do it. The idea is like how do you uncover insights to find unfamiliar stories? How do you keep leaning into the unfamiliar and what makes you uncomfortable? What you were talking about, Kwaku, requires [00:12:00] a huge amount.
I mean, this idea of not having to look backwards and gather the data to put to buffer whatever new thought or new insight or even just a point of creative imagination. We need a much more open minded world, and I don't think we're living in that right now. We're kind of converging. We're not in the divergent state.
So I guess I'm feeling less than optimistic and I, maybe you guys can help me feel more optimistic. I would also love more critical thinking and debate being taught in K 6. And I believe it can happen. And it should be part of the curriculum. So that was a whole other theme on the Ed side, was mental health.
Whether it be mental health of the teachers, of the students, where we don't really talk about it, but the parents, because we're all parents here, and our kids make us crazy with worry or anything else. And I think that that's the counterweight to what Christy was just talking about. And I'm gonna gush, because I literally planned my entire interactive experience around Amy Webb's speech.
[00:13:00] And a lot of what she talked about was the fear, uncertainty and doubt, but also the idea of how, what did she call it? It's basically like the internet of things. All of these new pieces of technology that are actually collecting data about our decision making, to go from, uh, LLMs, Large Language Models, to LAMs, Large Action Models.
And so, for instance, the, uh, Apple Vision Pro, the idea that you're wearing a computer on your face, and she talked about the fact that our eyes dilate. About five to 10 seconds before an idea strikes and being able to readily give up that data, like in our heads, as we're forming an idea, my eyes are dilating right now, as you're saying, this is, I'm like, wow, I didn't know that.
That's cool. And by the way, there'll be like 10 people wearing vision pros right behind us right now on this rooftop. Go on. And so the idea there's. Technology like this, there's all this other random technology that, that measures where you're moving, uh, what kind of groceries you're buying, all of that, and being able to pool all of that data and put it into [00:14:00] a large action model that will give you predictive things.
Oh, it's, you know, we see light forms of it in our phone. It's 2. 30, this is normally when you drive home, as opposed to it's 2. 30, this is normally when you get up and get that matcha. I've pre ordered it for you. My point is that kind of technology has to be balanced with mental health because that drives us deeper into our silos because we don't have to think anymore and we aren't challenged anymore.
So I'm hoping to your point about wanting to create a positive spin on it. The idea of the focus on mental health will create a counterweight to us going into these bubbles of automation where we don't have to think because the theory is like, Oh, we'll think about things that are better and bigger and be more ethereal.
But the reality of it is that we'll watch more Netflix. It feels like one of the things I think is interesting and what Kwaku is saying is, Part of this is, I wonder if we're in five years from now, South by Southwest, there's going to be a yearning for imprecision for lack of a better term. Wherein there's so much [00:15:00] data now is precise.
We are more and more, you know, geo located your preordered matcha or whatever the case may be. And I wonder if we're going to go in the other direction, we'll have founders and technologists figuring out how to be imprecise, how to let you just wander the, you know, wander the grid or whatever the case may be.
That. I find interesting and also I suppose a secondary point, but there's a real need to create space for new ideas. And while that kind of automation essentially frees you up from the high volume, low impact, taking time to preorder your thing. It also means you don't wait in line and get bored and have to let your mind wander and talk to the person next to you.
And that to me, going all the way back to what we were saying at the top is like, How do we re engage and leverage technology in society to, you know, be better humans? I think that's a great question. How could technology leverage this city and the wide open spaces that we never see at this conference to provide that counterweight or that antidote to the automation that we're talking about?
What you were just saying was making me [00:16:00] think of I've worked on a lot of like personalization technologies and there's, there's two things, there's explore and there's exploit. And so, you know, if you learn exactly what someone wants, then you're exploiting that, oh, you listen to, you know, Nirvana, here's Nirvana.
Here's Pearl Jam. I don't know why I'm thinking grunge right now. I'm not even a big grunge guy, but then there's explore of like, here, try this. It's totally different. And Spotify, you know, you talk about like helping you explore a city. Spotify is kind of a city in its own way of like helping you explore everything in there.
And you know, do you get into a filter bubble? And I think they're actually quite good. I think it. At, at, at highlighting stuff, but you can easily get sucked into one genre or one, you know, type of food or whatever. And so I think, I think there's a lot of interesting technology, not just around cities, just around helping you discover different things, but also, you know, sometimes you want to just.
Go to your neighborhood joint. You're, you're, you know, play, play the favorites. The interesting thing too, I would say a couple of things. So Hugh Forrest, who's the head of South by Southwest Interactive, and he may actually be the head of all programming now. He's been, he's been just, uh, uh, an [00:17:00] anchor for a South by Southwest.
I have a huge amount of respect for him. And he always says in his opening introduction of how to How to navigate the conference. And he also says this over and over again, South by Southwest should always be done that you should just walk into a room that you don't even know what's going to be behind the door.
Just randomly move your finger, put it on a, uh, one of the talks and say, I'm going to go there. Throw yourself very far away. Now people, unfortunately, we are scared of the unfamiliar very naturally and probably because that was a safety thing for us and it probably still is. So people need a huge amount of direction.
I don't want to use the word forcing, but they need a lot of guidance. And so I think that you're right. Some form of maybe technology or maybe something where you're paired up. Like we do at PopTech, the PopTech Institute and the conference there in D. C. We have randomized lunches, or we used to do this, where we would pair people up.
So you had no, you didn't have to walk in a room and find yourself. But it requires that, otherwise it's going to be a flop. [00:18:00] I totally agree with that advice of go to random stuff at South By. Most of the panels end up being at, More or less a 101, 102 level if you know the subject already. So when I go to conferences, you typically go to conferences just to meet people.
It's not necessarily to learn per se. I learn a lot when I'm there, but it is for me always more fun to go to stuff that I know nothing about because then it, then it opens my mind. My eyes dilate and all that. I'm going to tie this back to the Amy Webb conversations. I mean, I advise everyone watch this talk either through the app or when it comes out on YouTube.
So. The idea of growing, basically, chips for LLMs using brain matter. The idea that chips are going to become the real commodity within this AI space, due to Moore's Law, we are running out of space on the chips to speed them up, and the idea of using brain matter to do that. And there is a company that she describes in her talk, that did a really loose version of this, um, [00:19:00] but right after her talk, I went to an AI talk about the arts and one of the things I was thinking about is, you know, a famous musician passes away.
I don't want this to happen to someone like Stevie Wonder and being able to build a large music model based upon his brain tissue, like the possibilities of what's happening, especially the way these spaces are converging the physical and the digital is really astounding. I mean, quantum computing is going to take care of some of the Moore's Law problem.
Um, you know, Moore's Law is the amount of computing power on a chip and it's, it's basically doubled every year since 1968. That's what's caused us to, you know, go from room sized computers to the tiny little ones and the, and the price drops right down. The issue is that, that, Ones and zeros are going through and suddenly it's getting thinner and thinner and thinner, almost like like seeing through a thin waterfall.
The ones and zeros will never be distinct anymore. And that's the problem.
Here's the hot goss. [00:20:00] One of the volunteers mentioned is like, Oh yeah, they're tearing down the convention center. And then I spoke to someone else at the conference and he explained to me that after next year, They're going to tear down the convention center and build up a new one that's even bigger and taller.
And if you've been to Austin, you will see that everything here keeps getting taller. And so, for five years, there will be no convention center. They haven't quite figured out what they're going to do. They have a whole other year until it's closed. But how does that change what this conference is if you don't have the grounding of that physical space?
I orient myself in the city. By the convention center. And I'm sure there'll be a site, a construction site, but it is really integral to the conference. And so that to me is really interesting how South by will evolve as a result of that. I think we go into the ranch country and it becomes burning man or something.
Is that, is that what happens? Speaking of psychedelics, [00:21:00] maybe, yeah, we'll go up into the hills. Somewhere out in the desert. We're in Texas. I mean to your point though about, you know, this city is getting taller and taller. At one point we were together a couple nights ago. I looked up and just started counting the number of cranes.
Like I, you know, just in one little corner of the sky I saw eight different cranes on, you know, new skyscrapers going up. It reminds me of what the Brooklyn Queens waterfront did the last like 10, 15 years. Uh, it looks completely different than it did, I grew up there. Facing the Queens waterfront group on Roosevelt Island.
So I could see it out my window and there was nothing There was one tall building. It was city's building It was the tallest building between Manhattan and Boston forever And now it's just there's a whole city in Austin It reminds me of of that our cab driver the other night was saying what a what a boomtown it is Right now this idea of is striking me of like Austin being this catalyst for transformation and is now almost going through this postmodern Moment of we were driving in today and watching there's a stadium being torn down and Dan was saying used to these would just get Dynamited and poof it's gone Whereas this [00:22:00] one is being quite literally Deconstructed as you drive along the freeway and you can see that you know where they're taking walls out taking the structure out And I, it just makes me think that that's a, you know, a metaphor for what you've just described that the conference is going to do.
Where in the, from a proximity perspective, from a how do we locate ourselves. And I wonder, I just wonder what new and different experiences will happen from that. Because we're going to have to get unfamiliar. We're going to have to walk the other side of Congress. We're going to have to walk the other side of Los Brasos and, um, La Vaca and, and all the other streets.
And like, keep expanding out into the city. Or maybe we do get to go to Hill Country. That'd be fun too. When we get to be uncomfortable, to what you were saying about Hugh Forrest, where we get to do the thing, that we come here, we know where we are, we know where the coffee place is, you know where you can get your scooter, all that's gonna change.
Which means maybe you're bumping into different people as well, as you're struggling through that experience. I think that's great. Yeah, that's a way to force it. And it wasn't necessarily technology. It's just like, let's just blow up the building and then see where they have to go. That'd be great. I'm in, you know, that, that, that arena, I [00:23:00] think it's a university of Texas arena is being deconstructed.
The way you put it, it makes me think of like modernist food, you know, like a dish that's been, what's the, is it deconstructed? What's the word they use when they, when they take a burger, but then it's like, they, yeah, it's like, Deconstruct, deconstruct the Wiley Dufresne, the Wiley Dufresne kind of thing.
Yeah, that's exactly it. And then you throw some like foam on top and then you charge like, you know, 75 for it. Um, but yeah, so I guess, I guess that's what next year's conferences. So now I'm even more excited for next year. This is my first time back here. I was here three years in a row, but I haven't been here in 12 years.
And so now you're telling me next year is gonna be totally different. And I can't wait to come back. I imagine y'all will be here as well. Yes, yes. Yeah, I'm coming back. I'm coming back. Yeah. Yeah, I'll be back as well. And as we are having this conversation, I'm excited. Like, the idea of this moving out into the city is one of the hallmarks and the tenets of hands on education and experiential learning.
Like, what if we just keep experiencing new things and, you know, getting comfortable with the uncomfortable and the unfamiliar? Well, I hope you got comfortable with that uncomfortable and unfamiliar episode [00:24:00] of Crafted with me and my friends and fellow innovators James Burdine, Kwaku Aning, and Christy Nicholson.
I'll be back soon with more stories about great products and the people who make them. Also, Christy and I co led a session at South by Southwest on new frontiers in health. We interviewed two biotech VCs about how AI, psychedelics, and the gut brain axis are leading to new therapies in mental health.
Plus, we discussed what's real and what's overhyped. Subscribe to Crafted and you'll hear that episode soon. And one quick correction, after our rooftop conversation I did some more research, and the construction and 1. 6 billion dollar redevelopment of the Austin Convention Center will begin after next year's South by Southwest.
But once it starts, it'll take a few years before the new convention center, which will be twice the size of today's, We'll be ready to host us all again. In the meantime, from 2026 to 2030 or so, South by Will, as we just discussed, be distributed around Austin, even more so than it is today. Crafted is produced by my company, [00:25:00] Modern Product Minds, where I also advise founders and makers on how to build and grow incredible products.
Learn more and sign up for the crafted newsletter and get episode alerts and tips on how you can build incredible products at modernproductminds. com. Crafted is sponsored by Artium, a next generation software development consultancy that combines elite human craftsmanship and artificial intelligence.
See how Artium can help you build your future at artium. ai. Hope you enjoyed this special happy hour edition of Crafted. Our eyes dilate about five to ten seconds before an idea strikes. My eyes are dilating right now as you're saying this, as I'm like, wow, I didn't know that. That's cool.